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Before I even began my thesis for the program at NYU London, I knew wanted to study traditional farm buildings and their ways of surviving rapid change. My thesis advisor suggested I focus on an area near where I lived in London, so I could travel to see the buildings in real life. On her advice, I narrowed my research to the counties of Kent and Essex. Thus began an often-ridiculous adventure of searching the counties for historic farms whose structures I could visit using trains, buses, and my own two feet. I never managed to find many of the buildings I looked for, but discovered many beautiful and surprising landscapes, buildings, and people along the way.​

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The architecture of farm buildings possibly reveals more about a society than monumental or civic architecture; those are the things imposed on the people, whereas farm buildings are of the people. A truth can be found in the farmstead, where utility is king and people lived a life entirely of survival. Maintaining the spirit of these buildings and their place in the landscape is an important part of preserving both the history and the character of the countryside.
 

Everything loses something in transition; perhaps the real test of good reuse is an object gained more than it lost; if it adds to the story instead of rewriting or erasing it. The spirit of a place is ephemeral; you cannot freeze it in time. Even if you keep a building exactly the same, the world will change around it; despite our best efforts, context and landscapes will change. It must therefore be remembered that when you touch a place, a building or a landscape, you can never fully maintain its spirit, but if you maintain a relationship between the two, the memory of the place will remain alive. Farm buildings and rural landscapes must be adapted for modernity if they are to survive, and a new use means a new life – you can only hope, in the process of change, to give to it as much life as you take, and perhaps, if all goes well, you will give even more than you took.