New York Times Visits John Barr's 'Studio in the Woods: A Place for Poetry'

As part of the New York Times's November Design special section, Eve M. Kahn visits John Barr's writing studio in Greenwich, Connecticut. Designed by architect Eric J. Smith and constructed by Nordic Custom Builders, it's officially called "The Studio in the Woods: A Place for Poetry." "Mr. Barr said he had hoped to build himself an isolated writing studio akin to Thoreau’s cabin ever since he was a teenage aspiring poet, growing up in a Chicago suburb," Kahn explains. "The studio, perched on a knoll a few hundred yards from the main house, is meant to resemble a ruined outbuilding — a springhouse or root cellar, perhaps — that has been rediscovered and repurposed." Reading on from there: 

The largest windowpane, which weighs 2,400 pounds and stretches 16 feet long, has views of a narrow streambed and a huge square-edged boulder that Mr. Smith described as “the writer’s rock, as opposed to writer’s block.”

The seemingly pristine terrain is populated with hawks, deer, coyotes, wild turkeys, fox, at least one bobcat and “chipmunks beyond number,” Mr. Barr said. But during construction, the site teemed with dozens of workers. Machinery and supplies arrived via a temporary roadway made from wooden planks, and the steel frame is engineered to withstand blows from trees felled in hurricanes.

No mortar is visible between stones, inside and out, as if they were simply stacked. Interior woodwork has no moldings and does not brush up against the stone. “Each material is able to be honest to itself,” Mr. Smith said.

He compared the design’s rhythmic grooves and recesses to punctuation marks and stanza breaks in poetry, where readers and writers can take breaths: “It’s that ability to stop and pause.”

Continue reading at the New York Times.