Boston Society of Architects awards highest honor to Land’s Sake

Land’s Sake Farm is home to goats, chickens and high honors from the Boston Society of Architects.

The organization on March 5 awarded the Harleston Parker Medal to the architecture firm Payette for its work on Land’s Sake Farm. The farmstand, animal barn and other buildings were all part of a seven-year project taken up pro bono by the firm. Payette president Kevin Sullivan, the principal on the project, took on the project after his wife, Kristina Lukas, a member of the farm’s board, asked for assistance.

“Going to the farm was very much part of our experience of joining the Weston community … I have a very nostalgic relationship between the farm and our family,” Sullivan said. “It was a wonderful way to get to know the community when we first moved here.”

Sullivan said he and his team focused on creating a relationship between visitors and the landscape. He added the team did not want the buildings to interrupt visitors’ experience of the outdoors. They veered away from the typical New England barn because they felt the style wasn’t inviting.

“We wanted to open it up and be about bringing the community together,” he said.

The Harleston Parker Medal is awarded annually to work built in the past 10 years that is deemed the most beautiful in the Greater Boston area. Land’s Sake was up against the Roslindale branch of the Boston Public Library, the Frances Appleton pedestrian bridge in Boston and Tozzer Anthropology building at Harvard University.

Land’s Sake Executive Director Pam Hess said she is grateful to the team for creating a space that makes customers feel welcome year round.

“Their ability to speak about and envision what could be is very different from how we think as farmers and educators, very functionally,” she said. “They were able to bring beauty and function together.”

The judges awarded the project the medal because the buildings bring community and architecture together in a lively and intentional way, according to comments on the Boston Society of Architects’ website.

“Its use of traditional building methods combined with contemporary engineering creates a sense of continuity with the past while supporting present-day needs,” the jury wrote. “Attention to materiality, texture, and sensory experience, from the smells and light of the barn to the flow of spaces, heightens the impact of the project.”

Sullivan drives by the award-winning project every day on his way to work. For him, the farm has become his favorite in a career defined by large, institutional buildings.

“As I look back on my career, it is surprising to me that this little farmstand and barn are really one of my favorite projects,” he said. “That was unexpected.”