It’s still hip to be square in Ireland. For the umpteenth time, block-like facades and rectangular glass-and-timber designs have come out as winners in the Opus Architecture and Construction Awards.
But the awards also threw up one or two vaguely “house-shaped” projects. For example, a former bog-standard 1950s family home in Termonfeckin, Co Louth, was highly commended in the under-€750,000 category.
Originally a dreary yellow-rendered family home, it was transformed without losing its original “context” in the landscape by McGarry NiEanaigh, an architect.
“Termonfeckin is an Arcadian village,” says Siobhan NiEanaigh, the project’s architect. “It has a large number of huge trees and a low density of houses set back off the road behind low stone walls. There was a habitable house on the site and the owner wanted a five-bedroom family home, but one that would fit into the landscape and enhance the village.”
The winning design, built by SFH Construction Ltd, included more living space and the re-arrangement of the windows, in order to maximise its orientation.
In its comments, the judging panel said “it has been so transformed by its new extension as to be a contemporary home of quality and presence beyond the confines of the original building.
Natural materials are used with care and precision, and the landscape of the site respected and enhanced by all new additions”.
The addition of balconies was an attempt “to capture the joy of the trees”, according to the architect, while long rectangular windows let in extra light to what would have originally have been quite a dark house.
Though not a complete new-build, a number of these also figured in the final shake-up. The winner of one of two Opus Housing awards was a pocket development of three homes on Church Lane, in Rathmines, Dublin 6, carried out by joint architects Cloonan O’Donnell and Carew Kelly. Nos 5, 6 and 7 are built on the site of a former garage and, unlike many similar back-lane mews developments, these are designed to be family homes. They have playrooms and kitchens on the ground floor with separate living areas upstairs, and include an outdoor fireplace. The judges said they were taken by surprise on their site visit, commenting: “A 45ft- wide garage site now supports three family homes whose deep plan has been creatively manipulated on a cross- section to a variety of appropriate and light-filled spaces.
“What appears on plan to be pragmatic and workaday is found on a site visit to be an insightful interrogation of workaday realities and urban renewal. The quality of the workmanship from brickwork to plaster to joinery is good.”
Elsewhere, a one-off by a local who had a site, 13A Thor Place, in Stoneybatter, Dubin 7, was also built from scratch on an awkward patch in one of the capital’s oldest working-class enclaves. A bold reinterpretation of the traditional Dublin artisan’s dwelling, it appears from the street to be little more than a curving brown wall with one window.
But although it doesn’t look like any of its neighbours, it does match them for scale — in some ways, it is even more modest. It is on three levels, with three bedrooms and two outside courtyards. ODOS was the winning architect firm in this case. They didn’t include a trophy cabinet in the design but perhaps they should have. It had already picked up a gong at the Architectural Association of Ireland awards this year.
The refurbishment of a two-storey house with a three-storey return at Morehampton Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4, picked up an award for what judges described as “the creation of a dialogue of contrasts of line, proportion and light to the benefit of old and new”. The architect was Bone O’Donnell and the builder was Robert Doyle Construction Ltd. The bright, spacious glass-walled kitchen/living area is a subtle interpretation of the now-ubiquitous flat-roofed glass box, including the use of opaque glass for privacy.
Deeper into the southside, the judging panel found themselves intoxicated by Southern Comfort, a house extension/ refurbishment at 3 Killiney View, in Glasthule, Co Dublin. Tacked on to a 1950s semi, close to the Dart line, were a number of badly-built extensions.
Box transformed these into the light-filled angular space it is now, with the help of builder Britz Construction Management. The L-shaped single- storey extension has a two-storey concrete box at one corner, which is rendered white on the outside.
At nearby Summerhill Parade in Glenageary, the architect firm DTA picked up an award along with Mick Deevy Construction for a large extension to a period villa-style house at Sandycove. The timber-clad kitchen/dining extension has large aluminium-framed glass doors that open out onto a terrace.
The casual observer could be forgiven for getting the impression that the seven-year-old Opus Architecture and Construction Awards may have more credibility than most to the claim of “cream of architecture honours”.
For anyone thinking of embarking on a building project, whether it be an extension, a refurbishment or a self-build from scratch, there are a number of reasons why waiting for the results of “Opus day” might be a good starting point. For one, the awards — which had 150 entrants this year — are given out not just for the merit of the designs, but also for the quality of construction.
As the organisers put it, the idea is “to acknowledge the symbiotic relationship between architecture and design”. Put simply, this means that anyone casting a glance over this year’s winners is more likely to be looking at projects which had a degree of harmony in their execution and a satisfactory result for the money-spending client.
The judging panel included architects and construction experts, and they made visits to each of the short-listed projects to inspect the success of the design and the standards of construction. Ciaran O’Connor, the chairman of the judging panel said: “Our visits looked for the essential meat and marrow of the project.
“We looked at the difficulty of a particular problem to be solved, the architectural quality of the proposed solution and how well the build quality had been executed. We sought buildings that would be embellished by use, not embarrassed by it.”
Though building a potential award-winning house usually proves an expensive route to getting yourself a home, anecdotal evidence suggests such properties have strong resale potential — something that is becoming increasingly important in a difficult sellers’ market. For example, despite the fact that auctions have been on their knees in recent months, architectural one-offs such as these have held their own on the market. Only weeks ago, an Opus winner from last year, 10 Richmond Place in Rathmines, Dublin 6, sold for well in excess of its AMV of €1.1m — not bad for a two-bedroom town house.
