Building Stories: John Pawson’s Sanctuary of Simplicity

What makes a building remarkable? How does a person’s vision and narrative shape that building into an exceptional home?  A new series explores these questions through three distinctive houses and the individual creatives who live in them. In the inaugural video of the series, architectural designer John Pawson tells the story of seeking a country home where he could spend time with his family, and how, in a group of dilapidated of medieval farm structures in the United Kingdom’s Cotswolds region, he saw the opportunity to create a rural retreat that fully reflected his values. ‘I rebuilt the whole thing, literally stone by stone. I didn’t want to say, well, I’ve compromised here.’ Renowned for projects ranging from Calvin Klein’s New York City flagship to London’s Design Museum, countless private homes and even a monastery in the Czech Republic, Pawson has become an international icon of a minimalist aesthetic. In Home Farm, however, he defines his approach more humbly: ‘All these things that I do, controlling the light, the proportion and everything else, is really to make things more comfortable.’

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