THE FRONT of this Dublin house looks a tad twee, with its rustic stone that is no doubt meant to recall the stables that would have traditionally been in the gardens of period houses: this home has been built on one such site.
There is no need to worry about being sensitive with architect Amanda Bone's feelings though because she is not that keen on the façade either. She has certainly designed a considered elevation but the materials, width and height were all dictated by planning requirements.
When Bone, of Bone O'Donnell Architects, was first approached to design a small house on this tight mews site, she knew just what was needed to make the most of it. There would be large windows to bring in as much natural light as possible and because the ground floor was small and dark, she would have the bedrooms down at this level and the living space on the brighter top floor which has good views of the canal. The house would be in a contemporary design to complement the period houses at the other end of the garden.
Yet when Bone went for planning permission she was asked to follow the precedent set by the houses that had recently been built beside her site. Like them, she too was to have bedrooms on the upper floor, she was to copy the small, vertically emphasised windows divided into four panes, she was to match the stone front, have hardwood windows, follow the footprints of the houses beside this and ape the roof pitch to the front.
"There were so many conditions but the client was really into trying to achieve something here so we went back to a sketch design," says Bone.
The resulting house has magically steered restrictive planning conditions that were working against Bone's design inclinations, into something she and her client are happy with.
This home stands testament to the client and architect's tenacity: a designer who was keen to make money and move on may have just settled for copying the precedents exactly but this project is the work of someone who cares about what they do and has spent the extra time achieving it.
Starting at the front, where she was to copy the stone of the house next door, she did just that but made some key changes. Eschewing the neighbour's cementing-style, here the pointing is recessed (a form chosen after much experimentation); the stones follow horizontal courses rather than being random like those nearby; the upper windows run in a band to the edge of the wall and the lower windows come back the other way; the windows are recessed and have sharp aluminium edges "rather than just being planted on and having a rough and ready granite look. I wanted to do something with the stone and not just have it as an infill between windows," she says.
There have been good precedents for such rustic stone mews houses with a contemporary twist in conservation areas, take architect Richard Murphy's series of mews houses in Edinburgh (for instance on Royal Terrace Mews and Circus Lane), although here the stone is a warm yellow.
Not keen on the pitched roof, Bone concealed it behind the stone. Doing as asked, she followed the pitch of the neighbour and, because her house is of a different depth, "it has led to a very strange pitch at the back".
Entry to the 90sq m (971.7sq ft) house is through a 'car port' and then a floor-to-ceiling front door. Such generous openings, that encourage the flow of natural light, are replicated throughout the house. A resin floor, poured by Renobuild, takes that daylight and makes it appear infinite as well as bouncing it back up into the rooms. The floor was originally meant to be in polished concrete but the machine that pours it wouldn't fit the small space. I prefer the resin, which is normally used on factory floors. It comes in many colours but here it mimics a concrete tone to match the patio, with which it lies flush.
The main, south-facing bedroom spills onto the outdoor space through a large wall made from solar-reducing glass that turns a privacy-protecting opaque when viewed sideways on (although the sun is also encouraged into the building through evacuated tube solar panels on the roof that are used to heat water).
Behind this bedroom is a small bathroom kitted out in sanitaryware designed by architect David Chipperfield for Ideal Standard and brick-shaped glazed white tiles that recall those in the French house designed by Eileen Grey (catchily titled E-1027), whose work this client admires.
To the front is a small bedroom whose windows are too high to see out of from the bed, another planning requirement.
Upstairs is open-plan to enable a large space on a small footprint and to bring in natural light from two sides. The space is subliminally divided: the low-level storage that runs beneath the fireplace in the sitting area finishes, across the other side of the room, at the point that the kitchen begins (which is also the exact mid-way point of the room). The island unit is designed to break up the room but lest it fragment the flow too much it is in the same iroko timber as the floor and windows.
In the original design, the upstairs, south-facing windows ran from the floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall, right across the back of the house, but no more. The requirement for small windows with a vertical emphasis has been addressed with a long, wide window - with strong vertical divides - that folds back completely to give a clear horizontal opening that dramatically addresses the world at large. This was made by McNally Joinery who work for many architects.
The planners wanted the upstairs windows to be milky white but relented once the windows were reduced in size.
The result is a small, simple, nicely detailed, light-filled house that is well-orientated and capitalises on canal views, in a design that carefully weaves its way around the call for smaller windows.
