Built On Memory - A Couple Transforms An Old Pole Barn Into A Place That Celebrates Family And Country

As Adrian and Magdalena Luchini’s life took root in St. Louis—after a few years, it was clear that the couple was here to stay—it was important to Adrian to try to capture the life he had growing up in the Argentinian countryside. And what better place to do that than at Las Tres Marías, the couple’s second home, in Godfrey, Illinois? “I suppose that when I saw that I would never recuperate what I had in my childhood, I became more determined to reconstruct it—to give that kind of exposure to my children,” says Adrian. “To me, that is what a territory is all about, when you go to a place and feel like you’re a part of it.”

- Alexandra Vollman

Country Life

A rural retreat offers the Luchini family a place to mix antique finds with modern furniture.

At first glance, Adrian Luchini’s country house, on 40 acres in Godfrey, looks like nothing more than an outbuilding on a modern farm. But once you enter through the steel door, you find that the interior is anything but ordinary. Built over an old pole barn, the house, with its wood roof, balloon frame, and vinyl siding on plywood, is primitive in character but contemporary in construction.

“From the outside, it looks like a new building, but on the inside, it’s the old barn,” says Adrian, the Raymond E. Maritz Professor of Architecture at Washington University. “The reason for this was to protect the old structure, which I thought was quite beautiful and full of history.”