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Jorgensen Farms is a historic, 100-acre working organic farm and event venue located in Plain Township in Central Ohio. Efforts to expand and improve their buildings and grounds focused on the addition of a ceremony building and bridal suites and the restoration of the historic barn. The site planning was based on a strategy of expansion and connection: the disbursement of an intentional assembly of buildings and uses and their relinking through a prescribed processional path. The new structures, the Ceremony Building and Bridal Suites, are located in a flanking position to the Flower Garden, a distance from the existing Historic Barn.
A processional walkway threads through the structures and their outdoor spaces, leading guests through a specific sequence of spaces, from pre-ceremony to post-reception. This experience engages the natural environment between the venues, including the flower garden and the planting fields, in order to emphasize a sense of place and the immediacy of the agriculture. The farm itself produces much of the food and flowers for the events on site and recycles much of the waste, creating a sustainable, semi-closed circle of production and consumption. Produce is also supplied to area restaurants and food kitchens.
At the far side of the Flower Garden, the Ceremony Building presents a non-hierarchical façade with a layered geometry of heavy timber columns, creating a screen for the ceremony space to modulate light and views. The processional walkway leads to an outdoor covered terrace to collect guests before entering the pre-function lobby. The building has a simple configuration: a service bar accommodating the lobby, restrooms, kitchen, and storage and an expansive, open ceremony space with birchwood wall panels, polished concrete floors, and spanned by a series of hybrid wood and steel inverted king post trusses. The roof slopes diagonally up to the northwest towards the stage area with a view terminating on the living green wall. The structure and interior materials were chosen as references to simple, traditional steel and wood farm implements. Details and lighting are minimalist and play a supporting role to the form and structure.
The processional walkway continues to the bridal suites, splitting a pair of simple, Shou Sugi Ban clad structures, shifted in plan, and joined by a single gable roof. The interiors accommodate hotel suite functions with a lounge area, kitchen, dressing area and bathroom. Each suite features a private outdoor patio and are both separated and joined across the central walkway.
The oldest structure on the farm, The Historic Barn was updated and reconfigured to provide expanded service functions and was reclad with new wood siding, a metal roof, with a new clerestory added over the reception space (the original horse barn arena). The processional walkway through the site continues here from the barn’s north entry, through the reception space and pre-function space and terminating at the outdoor courtyard created between the barn and a new storage structure with seating, an outdoor fireplace and a bar courtyard. The original heavy timber structure in the pre-function space and the wood trusses in the reception space were preserved.
Jorgensen Farms received an Honor Award at the 2023 AIA Columbus Architecture Awards. The architect for this project was JBAD. Other collaborative partners include SMBH, American Structurepoint, Roger D. Fields Assoc., GCI, Sullivan Builders, and McCullough’s Landscape & Nursery. This tour is sponsored by the AIA Columbus Committee on Design (CoD).
July 24, 2024
4:30-6 PM
Earn 1.5 LU|HSW
AIA Members, Allied Members, and Sponsors: $15
Associate Members and Students: $10
Non-Members: $30
