A house in a garden - 81 Hollybrook Grove

This house is situated in a garden at the end of a short terrace of a 1940’s estate on the edge of Dublin city. The site is bounded to the south by a suburban hedge of hazel and privet, to the northwest by the blank wall of the original terrace and to the northeast by a high wall backing onto a public laneway. The ground floor layout is derived from the planning requirements for outdoor amenity space. To maximise the presence of the garden it takes advantage of the excellent privacy provided by the thick hedgerow. At the ground level all the supporting walls are located within an internal cross-shaped core, allowing a curtain of glass and timber folding doors to wrap the exterior of the house for direct connection and access to the garden. Internally a cross-shaped core divides the plan into 4 public rooms: a hall/library, kitchen, dining and living room. These are located according to proportion and orientation and step in section to accommodate ceiling heights of varying dimension and intimacy. A recessed ceilng track allows the rooms to be completely wrapped in woolen curtain like a medieval four poster bed. The core contains the service and plumbed elements of the plant, wash closet, kitchen appliances, fireplace as well as storage and the staircase. A continuous loop of circulation is along the perimeter. On fine days, the folding doors can slide back from their corners allowing the house to spread outside - reducing the house’s footprint to the structural core. The gardens are planted to provide a variety of flora, much edible, responding to light, shade, aspect and condition. A south facing terrace is located with a bench built into a new inhabited garden wall. The first floor is laid out with three bedrooms and a bathroom off a small central landing. The landing is lit from a tall roof light contained within an extruded chimneystack and lined in timber panelling up to door height. The landing is one door wide and two doors in length. From this space, panelled doors open into generously proportioned bedrooms side lit from large windows sitting on the skirting of the opposing walls. The ceilings are draped along the pitch of the roof, falling from 4.5m above the sweep of the doorway to 2m around the perimeter. These rooms are lined in through-coloured Valchromat MDFs with a marquetry Valchromat MDF floor. Radiators, sockets, MHVR grilles, sensors and switches are framed within these MDF elaborations. Externally, the house is treated in a manner similar but exaggerated to the immediate terrace housing. The masonry walls are finished in a pigmented off-white cementious render, deeply roughcast on the garden side and hand trowelled smooth on the laneway elevation and public faces. A heather coloured fibre cement roof is elaborated with expressed untreated copper crampions, copper guttering and tall standing seam hips. Copper downpipes are used to draw figures across blank parts of the façade reminiscent of a line drawing. Over time these elements will oxidise to a pale powder green. Where the house meets the laneway a simple gable is projected with the image of a doorway and window set in relief. This project is a contemporary translation of the ordinary suburban house. In their spirit the house is built economically using everyday materials and techniques easily sourced and knowledgeable for a local builder and tradesmen. These materials and techniques are amplified and exaggerated to become something at once familiar but different. We believe this house demonstrates that a rich architecture does not necessarily mean an expensive architecture. Researching the architecture of the Arts and Crafts movement we have realised that what has happened over the last century with the reversal of expenditure in construction works from material to labour costs means a highly crafted architecture is beyond the means of most everyday budgets due to the increased cost of labour and decreased access to affordable skilled makers. However taking inspiration from the arts side of this movement this house focuses on the traditional meaning of the applied arts and translates it into the contemporary setting - using design and assembly to enhance character and atmosphere where the construction and material costs would exclude. We call this approach 'richly economical'. Through detailed design resolution and ample allowance for construction tolerances we have used linings, skirting, plaster and paint to build in a design robustness allowing for a cheaper build onsite. Services and fittings are used decoratively as well as pragmatically to mitigate the minimal aesthetic which requires such accuracy and labour. Artists like Richard Wentworth, Fischli & Weiss and photographers, Lewis Baltz and Thomas Struth are heroes of the office. They show that how through simple manipulation and re-evaluation sometimes the ordinary can be transformed into the extraordinary. Taking this approach the practice enjoys seeking novel ways at looking at what some may consider the everyday and banal and through new juxtapositions, exaggeration, and subverted associations to seek to articulate playfulness and delight. With the rise of the modern movement in the C20th, functionalism and even minimalism became the norm. However this house take inspiration from the pre modern; a door can be much more than a door, and a wall much more than a means to enclose space. We reject the simplicity of the modernist extrusion of a plan and instead look at Alberti's understanding of the wall and its possibilities to generate atmosphere.