Better Barns: A Toolkit to Retrofit

Abstract

Dairy barn architecture in Southern Ontario is a prominent typology which serves as an infrastructural backbone to Canada’s food production system and the families who operate them. Although farm buildings are historically distinguished by their passive design and vernacular construction techniques, many current applications of barn design have appeared in the form of large independent structures which have significantly altered the way pre-existing and historic barns function in relation to traditional farmstead space planning and building utilization.

Although this model satisfies operational demand, it fails to address the potential adaptation of existing farm buildings or infrastructure which often become abandoned or demolished to keep up with agricultural expansion or policy change. This thesis examines the historic shifts within the dairy industry throughout the 20th century that led to specialized industrial farming as a reaction to the changing socioeconomic factors which challenged a shrinking population of farm families to keep up with increased demand for production and efficiency. Through the analysis of case studies, the mapping of dairy farm processes, and research of contemporary best practices in barn design and animal welfare in Ontario, this thesis proposes to develop a new set of barn adaptation strategies in the form of a design tool kit which allow existing dairy farmers without access to large upfront capital to re-use existing structures to meet evolving operational demand without the need for displacing, abandoning, or interrupting any of its critical real-time operations.

These intervention strategies will be articulated in the form of an accessible how-to style guidebook, with applied results presented in the form of three design proposals on a selected dairy farm site to illustrate how adaptive re-use strategies can be implemented to help family farms continue operating within three distinct business models. The goals of introducing better re-use strategies not only addresses the issue of embodied carbon and waste in current construction practices, but also incentivizes existing farming populations with access to aging buildings to continue operating into the future while keeping up with contemporary demands in environmental stewardship, animal welfare, and economic sustainability.