tough white cloaks the Cistercian monks wear at the
monastery” (he is referring to the solemn Nový Dvůr
monastery in the Czech Republic that he refurbished
in 2004). He points at the bare window on the oppo-
site wall. “That’s how I proposed the covering should
be. But I have to say, the drapes are very cozy. I rely on
her taste and her knowledge as well.”
The skeleton of the house, however, is all Pawson,
and it bears the consistent hallmarks of his style. For
one thing, it is long—very long. Pawson built a gal-
lery to connect two side-by-side buildings, making it
half a football field from one end to the other.
“Well, I like continuation—things just going on,
I suppose, and I like that form. There are two kitch-
ens, one at either end, because it’s so long. Of course,
Catherine says to me, ‘There’s no butter.’ It’s in the
other fridge. We do our steps here for exercise. I got
up to 8,000.” She wanders by. “Steps, Catherine?”
The rooms all have the stringent simplicity
Pawson favors, punctuated by a few pieces that rarely
raise their voice above a whisper. In the guesthouse,
he’s placed Hans Wegner’s famous Wishbone chairs
around his own narrow dining table. The chairs show
up in more than a few of Pawson’s projects. “He’s the
man, and that’s his best chair. He said he designed
125 to get to this one.”
Still, in Pawson’s universe, even the noblest furni-
ture is not meant to be showcased. It is a handmaiden
to the room that holds it. Standing near the dining
table in the guest salon is an elegant draftsman’s fil-
ing cabinet by the 20th-century Swedish designer
Poul Kjaerholm. It was a gift from a client, but Pawson
says it will have to go, even if he can’t put his finger
on exactly why. “It’s beautiful, and it would be use-
ful, but it’s a bit awkward in this space. I’m not of that
school where, if you have something really beautiful,
you want to make it work no matter what.”
The word monastic gets tossed around a lot to
describe the rigors of Pawson’s style, but that isn’t
really it at all, and certainly not at Home Farm. This
is not about mortification of the flesh through design.
The elm wood he uses all around Home Farm (includ-
ing a kind of shrine-like shower you could live in) is
profoundly soothing, and the pinkish-white plaster
on the walls feels miles away from a monk’s cell.
There’s no art on the walls of Home Farm. It gets
in the way. “I’m happier without it,” says Pawson. “Of
course, I go to galleries and I look at art all the time,
but I find it difficult here. If you put something on the
wall, the whole room, spatially, feels different. Your
eye stops. It’s too intense.”
Pawson has a new book, Anatomy of Minimum,
coming out next month from Phaidon that focuses on
some of his recent projects, including Home Farm. The
HOT ZONE
“It’s sophisticated ar-
chitectural simplicity,”
says Pawson of his work.
“This isn’t a religious
thing, and it isn’t as
simple as you can go.
You can go a lot simpler
than this.” A Jøtul F 118
wood stove.120