Stanford University has been affectionately known as “The Farm” ever since it was established by founders Leland and Jane Stanford on their Palo Alto stock farm. The Stanfords’ founding grant decreed that “a farm for instruction in agriculture” should forever be maintained on university lands. After nearly 20 years of student and faculty advocacy and planning, the O’Donahue Family Stanford Educational Farm was established on six acres near the university’s historic Red Barn. The Huffington Barn and Welch Family Kitchen complete our work at the Farm, a living laboratory where students, faculty, and the surrounding community can test new ideas about the social and environmental aspects of farming and urban agriculture.
Our design centrally organized farm structures amongst six acres of field crops and orchards, frame open gathering space, and create a promenade through the fields that lead to it. Central to the design is the Huffington Barn, a large and iconic structure that combines the desired programs of barn, classrooms, office space, and open demonstration pavilion. Two greenhouses and a lath house act as accessory structures to the barn, embodying a purely functional design. This new working farm will supply Stanford dining halls with over 15,000 pounds of produce each year, and cultivate a new generation of experts versed in both the principles and practices of sustainable farming.
