RIAI | Irish Architecture Awards

Citation

Dublin (under €300,000)

A deep understanding of the nature of space, of the subtle divisions of private and public, combined with skilled handling of plan form and its possibilities turned a difficult linear site into a home to be coveted.

Architects Comment
The site is located on Percy Lane, a narrow mews lane off Percy Place: a leafy canal-side terrace in the south inner city. In contrast with Percy Place, the laneway is gritty and informal in character: lined with sheds, stores and a few new houses.

The Client chose the site, as it is located at the bottom of her mother’s garden and would allow for more regular contact to take place through the garden between the two houses. The programme called for sleeping accommodation for parents, their two sons and an occasional guest, in addition to living/dining and kitchen spaces.

The client wished the master bedroom to be considered as a retreat and private space. As part of the local planning requirement, one off-street parking space was to be provided.

The aspiration for the project was to liberate or transform the cramped and introverted nature of the site by maximising the long dimension of the plot and developing strips of accommodation along the length of the site. As the site is small (measuring 6.5m x 20.0m) the strategy adopted builds the entire site, with external spaces carved from the solid mass of building creating a series of internal and external rooms. This in turn is reflected in the construction of the project: building the perimeter of the site in solid masonry construction, and infilling the interior with timber and glass screens.

The house was conceived as two elements slipping past and flowing into each other in order to create two diagonally located courtyards. Structurally, this is developed along the centre line of the site where large spans are achieved by using a laminated timber beam spilt and anchored by a concrete stair-well embedded deep in the plan, allowing the interior spaces to flow to the exterior. The house responds to this in section and plan with a hierarchical spilt along this centre line, which becomes a physical and structural generator.

The scale of the spaces on both levels shift across this centre line creating three levels in the house. On the ground floor, a fluid space is created of living, dining, study and kitchen where the floor to ceiling height changes from 3.0m in the living/dining/study to 2.4m in the kitchen alcove. On the upper level, this places the master bedroom suite – the most private part of the house – on a spilt level, at a remove from the general first floor.

The external appearance of the house was designed to reflect the particular character of the lane. Second-hand bricks were used to correspond with a disused shed across the street and the large timber entrance door or screen evokes similar entrances along the lane to garages and stores. Part of the screen slides to facilitate vehicular entry. The front courtyard – paved in granite slabs – becomes the entrance hall overlooked by the sons’ bedrooms (stacked one on top of the other) and the beginning of the elongated living room. External rooms are paved or planted according to their location and function: the front courtyard is paved with recycled granite slabs from a discarded pavement and the rear courtyard is partly decked and planted with bamboo. The roof garden is planted with a variety of sedum’s and alpines to create a visual carpet.

Client Comment
We have lived here since last summer and have experienced the house in all the seasons and are still overwhelmed by the way the house fits us so well as family and couple.

Some people think we were brave to go for such a very modern design, maybe we were but we didn’t know it and so were able to really enjoy watching it develop from tiny models to drawings and plans to reality. Early on Chris and I decided on the advice of a very good friend to enjoy the process and not to focus on the end product. We didn’t sell our old house until the new one was almost finished and so avoided the stress of being homeless. But even so I wasn’t prepared for how beautiful it would be or how much I would love it because of the light, the way the living areas encourage people to relate to each other room. At Christmas we had 18 people to dinner and it worked out really well. The house seemed to expand to cope.

You certainly would win an award from us as very satisfied and happy clients – everyday we like it more and more. We still look out the bedroom window at the terrace and roof garden and cannot believe our luck to live in such a lovely home. I cannot imagine anyone not enjoying the process of working with an architect to realise the dream of having a new home designed specially for them and hope you know how much we appreciated all you did for us.

C & E Hanlon.