Project Horseshoe Farm is a community-based non-profit and life-enhancement organization located in Greensboro, Alabama. Since its founding in 2007, Horseshoe Farm has grown to become a multifaceted leadership development and service organization. Currently, the organization runs an innovative network of support programs for adults and teens at their headquarters, which is the newly renovated historic “Old Greensboro Hotel” building. Project Horseshoe Farm approached Rural Studio to help design and build a courtyard space for the building.
The Horseshoe Courtyard is defined by having minimal interventions with the nearly 200-year-old brick building, and touching the ground lightly with a series of vegetated screens. These galvanized metal screens are made up of a series of double frame panels on which Confederate Jasmine and Carolina Jessamine twine around.
The screens are used to delineate the overall courtyard and give more flexibility to the space by limiting the square footage that vegetation takes up on the ground surface. On the South or active end of the site, the screens are high to provide shade and interact with the walkway along the east façade of the building. While on the North or calm end, the screens are lower, to allow light into the space in the winter and for the canopy of the trees to extend past the shorter screens. The trees not only provide shade in the hot summer months, but also transform the calm space by lowering the scale and making a “ceiling” with its canopy. Adjacent to the active space there is also porch where participants sit and observe everyday activities. The porch also doubles as a stage on days where there are special events in the courtyard.
