Inside an Old Belgian Stable, a Piece of Furniture Takes You Upstairs
Weathered brick and a tiled roof give this Belgian stable few clues about the office inside, where reaching a desk beneath the rafters means walking up a piece of furniture built from stacked timber.
Designed by Studio Farris Architects, the conversion places a freestanding wooden structure within the former stable’s open volume. Its projecting beams hold books, form stair treads, and support a workspace above a meeting area.
Understanding that arrangement takes more than one view, because the shelves conceal parts of the staircase and the upper platform hides what happens beneath it. Each side reveals another use for wood that first appears to be an oversized stack of beams.
Restored brickwork conceals the change inside
Small windows, brick walls, and the pitched roof retain the building’s agricultural character. Located in West Flanders, the former stable covers 100 square meters, with a restored façade and new openings that bring daylight into the office.
Through the large glazed opening, a white meeting table and sections of timber offer the first glimpse of the conversion. The desks remain above that sightline, leaving the exterior view to reveal part of the project without explaining its arrangement.
Studio Farris fitted a new interior shell within the original volume, following the roof’s shape and leaving a tall space around the central furniture.
Thick timber becomes storage through the gaps between beams
Books occupy openings between wooden lengths stacked at different depths, while exposed beam ends show grain and cracks across their broad faces. Some sections project into the room; others stop short, creating ledges and recesses without a grid of matching shelves.
Viewed from this side, the structure reads as storage with an unusual amount of wood around it. Books provide a sense of scale, making the beams look larger than the shelf compartments they create.
The reason for that scale comes into view around the corner, where the stack begins to rise in steps.
Walking around the bookshelf reveals the route upstairs
Broad timber treads extend from the structure and climb toward the upper workspace, with books still visible along the side. The stairs belong to the same arrangement as the shelves, so there is no separate staircase to explain how the office connects to the floor below.
Instead of adding a conventional extra floor, Studio Farris introduced this furniture structure at the center of the plan. Its stepped profile combines access and storage within one footprint, leaving space to move around it.
Wide views reveal the climb from floor to platform, while close views show how the beam ends overlap beside the steps. What looked like an irregular stack now has a route through it.
Beneath the platform, timber defines a place to meet
White chairs surround a round table beneath the elevated office, where wooden joists create a lower ceiling within the stable’s tall interior. Shelves border the meeting space, giving it an edge while keeping it open to the room.
A large window faces the rural landscape, placing the table beside an outward view rather than enclosing it beneath the platform. The timber accommodates work above and meetings below, with the staircase and bookshelves connecting those uses.
Upstairs, the furniture becomes the office floor
Two desks sit beneath the pitched roof, with skylights bringing daylight to the upper workspace. From here, much of the shelving and staircase disappears below the platform, and the timber reads as the base of the office rather than an object standing within it.
The roof remains open above the desks, preserving a view across the stable’s original volume. Returning downstairs reverses that impression, revealing the thick beams, storage gaps, and stair treads that made the workspace possible.
Would you combine your staircase, bookshelves, and workspace in one structure, or keep them separate?
Completed in January 2016, Stable in West Flanders was photographed by Koen Van Damme.