Jigsaw

The design for this extension to a Victorian house in Dublin was driven by material choice and the client’s will for limpid, calm spaces.

Board marked concrete was poured to form a textured tube, its materiality delineated by huge circular rooflights which mark the passage of light throughout the day on walls and floor. Yet this weighty rectangle skates across the original return of the house, trapping a small courtyard behind and generating a tension between the expected gravitas of the concrete and its expression to the garden as a thin-walled, horizontal form, floating and calm above the terrace.

Inside, a splayed ramp tethers the new garden space to the ground floor of the house. Glazed walls to the courtyard space offer views of a mature Japanese maple in the gravel courtyard. Board marked concrete walls and ceiling are finished in a light, translucent wash. A side wall of black American walnut forms bookshelves and encloses a stove at one end, which can be enclosed to form an intimate study for winter evenings by pivoting a large black walnut door. A sedum roof with thyme was planted on the new structure, linking to views of the garden beyond from the main reception rooms.