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S uzanne Blank Redstone and her husband, Peter Redstone, have lived on the same Devon farm, nestled in a tree-fringed valley a mile from the sea, for 50 years. The couple’s current home was once their cowshed, a simple, functional structure that they built in 1979 to shelter their herd of Jerseys over winter. Today, it’s an architectural statement, albeit a very livable one.

It was longlisted for the Royal Institute of British Architects’ house of the year in 2023 and bagged a prestigious Manser medal , too, while a photograph of the property was selected for this year’s Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition, which runs in London until 18 August. The Redstones worked on the project with David Kohn Architects, which converted this and several other buildings on the farm, including the former farmhouse, into new homes for similarly community-minded people – many of them creatives – along with their young families. The lofty central space is artist Suzanne’s studio.



It has a wall of glass looking on to a leafy veranda, and new dividing walls in a suitably agricultural, locally made concrete block. Wrapped around the studio are the kitchen-dining-living room, library, Peter’s office, a guest suite and the couple’s bedroom suite. There are two more bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, but it was important that all the essentials were on one level.

“To future-proof it, we made the ground floor wheelchair accessible,” says Suzanne. Similarly, the douglas fir .

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