In Caherdaniel, Co Kerry, villagers were distinctly unimpressed when they saw architect Simon Walker’s modernist house going up, and it soon became known as the cowshed. They weren’t too far wrong: Walker had based its form on the shape of a barn. In April, however, the property was featured in a six-page spread in Vogue magazine. The cowshed, it seemed, would have to be reassessed.
Built for Thomas Dane, a London art gallery owner, the house was singled out by the glossy fashion bible for its exemplary modern design and glorious setting.
Dane says Vogue is the only fashion magazine that’s accepted reading in the art world.
“In my business, even for the artists, the one magazine they allow through on all levels is Vogue,” he says. “I got so many people from England, America and Ireland who had seen the feature and loved the house.”
Walker, 44, grew up with architecture — his father was the late Robin Walker of the pioneering Irish firm, Scott Tallon Walker — but he came to the profession late in life. “When I left school I got involved in building and qualified as a joiner in France in the early 1980s,” he says. “So I had a long absence and then returned to study in University College Dublin and I’ve been here ever since, really, teaching.”
Walker is relaxed about the impact Vogue’s stamp of approval may have on his career. Although he doesn’t work from a large architectural office, he already has a busy practice with another project on the table for west Cork. This summer he completed two builds in Dublin 6 — a mews house near Palmerstown Park, and an extension on Moyne Road.
Walker met Dane in 1997, when the gallery owner came to Dublin looking for an Irish architect. Although Dane is a Londoner, he has Irish grandparents on both sides of the family and was born in Holywood, Co Down. As a child, he spent his summer holidays in Caherdaniel and had always dreamt of building a modern home there.
“I wanted to make a statement about architecture in Ireland,” says Dane. “I wanted a good, modernist house with an understanding of how the vernacular has moved on, and was also in keeping with the landscape. I wanted to use an Irish architect from the beginning, so I looked at a few different works by different people.”
Although Walker had not built much at that point, Dane was impressed with Bothar Bui, a house Walker’s father had designed for the family on the Beara Peninsula. “Simon hadn’t done that much, but I had seen pictures of his father’s house,” says Dane. “In the same way, Simon inherently understood those issues I was concerned about, especially building in keeping with the landscape.”
Robin Walker had found Bothar Bui’s secluded site, which was accessible by sea only, in the late 1960s. There were three buildings already in situ — a cottage and two outhouses in ruins. Walker restored the buildings and designed three more modern structures.
“So what you have is a house made of six buildings,” says Simon Walker. “You have to go outside from the kitchen to the toilet and so on, but that’s just they way you live. It’s on a steep slope, with native oak trees and views of Macgillycuddy Reeks.
“The buildings are very simple, plaster block with a wall of glazing which look out on spectacular views. The placement follows the contour of the site, (the buildings) wind down (the slope).”
Walker takes great pride in his father’s work and adopts a watchdog role. In May, one of the four houses built by Robin Walker, 58 Heytesbury Lane, was scheduled for redevelopment and his son lodged an appeal. “It’s a single-storey mews house in Ballsbridge which makes it vulnerable to development,” he says. “They are now old enough to need renovation, so there’s this issue of whether to conserve them or knock them down. It’s a fantastic legacy.
To have somebody who practised with such clarity and conviction and who transmitted that enthusiasm to his children, it’s wonderful.”
Like Bothar Bui, Walker’s house for Dane also had to work with an awkward setting. Built into a slope in the valley above Caherdaniel village, construction began in 2000 and wasn’t finally completed until last year.
“Thomas took a chance not only on me, but on the whole site,” says Walker. “It’s not a normal, buildable site. It’s steeply sloping, there are rocky outcrops and there’s a bog at the bottom of the site.
“It’s also so far removed. It’s difficult to get materials and tradesmen. The builders were 40 miles (64km) away — they had to travel two-and-a-half hours to get there and another two-and-a-half to get back in the evening.”
There were also planning delays, which dragged on for a year. In the end, the local authority made one big stipulation. “I think they were exercised about my idea for a metallic roof,” says Walker. “I wanted something that would disappear against the sky, which is usually pearly grey. But it was a step too far so they stated we had to use slate or tile. Slate is a completely different idiom, it has nothing to do with this architecture. But tiles. . .I thought, if you want tiles, I’ll show you tiles.”
Walker asked building-materials firm Roadstone to make him concrete tiles with no dye: combined with a stone chimney, the grey roof blends into the landscape. While the local vernacular is more commonly white plaster cottages set against the hillside, Walker’s house is practically invisible.
“There’s a scale to that (white plaster) and you can’t apply it willy-nilly to bigger structures,” he says. “This is a substantial building — about 2,500 sq ft. Yet you’re not aware of it from the road. When you come in the gate, you have to look for it. Looking up from Caherdaniel, the only thing you’ll see is when the sun is setting and is reflected in the windows. It’s a gold nugget glinting in the hillside.”
For the shape of the house, Walker was inspired by farm buildings, feeling that they were perfectly suited to the comforts of modern living.
“Agricultural buildings look very well in the landscape,” he says. “So I was trying to reinterpret that vernacular and open up the possibility of living in loft-like spaces in that environment.”
Daisy Garnett, who wrote the article about Walker’s house for Vogue, had visited Caherdaniel as Dane’s guest and took some pictures. The combination of Dane’s art background and the unusual setting meant the house met Vogue’s criteria for a glamorous aesthetic.
“It’s unusual to see a modern house in rural Ireland, or England, for that matter,” says Garnett, whose mother is Polly Devlin, the writer from Co Tyrone.
“Simon really solved the problem of making a modern house look as if it wasn’t contrived. It looks as though it’s always been there. From the road it looks like a rock, and the landscape is full of those standing rocks. When you see it, you just feel, of course it must look like this — it’s so natural. Inside, it’s a brilliant house to live in. You feel like you’re outside and you can watch the weather. Some houses you could be anywhere. But in this you’re in Kerry, you’re in its landscape and you’re in that weather so unique to Kerry.”
Despite the media attention, Dane is determined to blend it into the background. “I’m consciously trying to grow vegetation and plant trees to try and obscure it,” he says. “I felt very strongly about the tendency for houses to be built in Ireland and just stuck there. They used to plant trees to shelter and protect the buildings, but they don’t seem to do that any more. I didn’t want to impose myself like that.
“At a time when Ireland is so wealthy, the excuses for building those eyesores are gone. It’s the most beautiful landscape in the world and it should be protected from that.
“When the house was originally going up people called it the cowshed — I think they were appalled by what was going on. Now, I think it has been accepted. It has disappeared into the landscape.”
