The term croft refers to a small agricultural unit, usually an enclosed field, a tradition in which gardening plays an essential role. The Croft centers and celebrates manifold species through horticulture amid a sea of single-crop rotation fields, by transforming a pole-barn into a walled garden. The walls of the barn are cut to 6.5 feet, and a remnant of the gable roof provides respite from the winds that sweep across acres of fallow fields adjacent to the Des Plaines river in Illinois. While the challenge was to create a florific garden out of a storage shed, the design maintains the ethos of the site-wide adaptive reuse while establishing a strong connection to the heritage and vernacular of the farm.
