This rural home and studio is the result of the ultimate renovation challenge for the owners who had spent their whole life together either renovating or building new homes to live in. Named Summerwind for the steady breeze blowing across the Paris Plains, the building started out in 1967 as a public elementary school. Today the building has been converted to a home and studio by its new owners. This was achieved through the strategic use of limited partitioning and simple space planning. As an institutional building, it was built sturdy with masonry walls, precast concrete roof, Douglas Fir glulam frame and terrazzo floors. These "bones" of the building were left as-is and there was no attempt to resurface or domesticate the spaces. Instead, they were refurbished, creating a modern loft-like atmosphere. The large windows and wide hallways create the sense of unconfined space one associates with galleries and lofts. The modern forms used to partition the space channel freely within the existing masonry walls. Today the atmosphere of the old school is gone, a new modern use established and a building otherwise unused for its original purpose lives on.