House 1 + House 2 / TAKA
© Alice Clancy
Architects: TAKA
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Project year: 2009
Photographs: Alice Clancy
These two new homes house two generations of the same family (A renovated Victorian House for the parents sharing a rear garden with a new Mews house for one of the daughters). The now grown-up family had recently moved out of their long-term family home and wanted these new homes to maintain some sense of continuity with their former lives. Two intertwined themes run through both homes, those of memory and tectonic expression.
The memories of the family are used as a conscious architectural driver throughout both houses. Their social rituals are given tangible form within the design of the new houses. Typical domestic objects are distorted in material and scale to form a psychological landscape specific to the occupants.
site plan
The daughters recollection of the stairs in the old house being ‘another room’, finds built form in an enlarged landscape stairway offering spaces for pause. Her fond memories of the kitchen as a social space and sitting by the open fire distort the two new ‘hearths’ (one for cooking, one for fire) into non-orthogonal shapes suggesting uses yet open to appropriation. Finally the insistence of the ‘fire being the centre of the home’ is realized by the location of an industrial scaled chimney rising through the scheme at the centre of the plan, organizing the spaces throughout.
In the parent’s new home their anxiety about moving from the old house was addressed. Their weekly social ritual of the wider family gathering together for Sunday dinner was a focal point, in order to maintain the continuity of the family unit. In the new home the dining table is given priority of place and a ritual character. Cast in concrete in an altar-like form the dining table communicates its importance through its immovable materiality.
© Alice Clancy
As a further signifier of the special value of this space the expression of construction takes on a cultural role. In the wall behind the table custom-made glazed bricks are set. Named ‘Ruskin’ bricks (after Ruskin’s inspirational theories on construction in architecture); the bricklayer was given 100 identical bricks to lay in any combination he saw fit. Intended as both a marker of the process of construction and an explicit elevation of brickwork to the position of art, the result is a random graphic pattern that is not simply hung on the wall but part of the very construction that forms the building.
A similar interest in constructional expression is seen in the Mews house. The Mews house’s facades take their key from the Flemish-bond brickwork walls of the Victorian House, seeking a kind of ‘constructional context’ with its older brother. The unique bonds are the result of ‘separating’ the Flemish bond into two layers, and conceptually situating the home in the space between these two layers.
© Alice Clancy
The extrovert front façade receives the ‘projecting brick’ layer, which oscillates in appearance depending on natural light conditions. To the rear, the façade becomes a mesh of brickwork where those projecting bricks on the front leave their resultant holes in the rear wall, allowing ventilation to the rooms behind to be taken directly through this brick skin.
Throughout both homes, construction is expressed directly as the finished product imbuing these two new homes with a powerful, domestic character.
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- © Alice Clancy
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- site plan
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- ground floor plan
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- section 01
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- section 02
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- brick wall detail
I think I like it, it is simple in Design, but it has a great line, and I like the stairs and the living ceiling. But I don’t think is made for Ireland, looks more Janapees
Magnifica!
Very, very nice! very smooth, clean lines, beautiful stairs, warm atmosphere, indeed kind of japanese..
Bravo!
i have no words, an example of how tradition and creativity can be just one thing.Live in that place should be fantastic!
At once warm, elegant and stunning. A beautiful example of how good design is not always severely modern, but an interpretation of context.
Wow this project is GORGEOUS! It reminds me a bit of Alvar Aalto with the brick detailing and stuff. A+
I like how serene the woodwork and brick work are, just inspirational really.
Uma questão bastante interessante aqui colocada: que nacionalidade “tem” esta casa? Ela “é” irlandesa?
A very interesting question here proposed: what nationality does this house “have”? “Is” it irish?
I like this one so much, it seems to be full of stories, the color, the brick work and the way to gather sunshine. the last but not the least, the contrast of bright and dark is fabulous.
Very informative article the photos shown all the details inside and outside of the house. Really useful, thank you for your excellent article and keep up the good work.
Merci de nous montrer un tel projet, disons, appaisant, d’un charme discret, qui donne envie qu’on le découvre…Il peut aussi inspirer ceux qui réflechissent sur les réinterprétations des façades traditionnelles de Tozeur.
3:25 PM Mar 12th
very tactile brick house in Ireland: http://bit.ly/cpvrmJ
11:37 AM Mar 24th
RT @bricktrimble: very tactile brick house in Ireland: http://bit.ly/cpvrmJ
11:27 PM Oct 18th
교사로서의 잘못은 있지만 개인신상공개는 더 큰 문제인것 같아요RT @202712: 여러분들 생각은 어떻습니까?<br>제자와 성관계 맺은 30대 여교사, 신상 털려…우려의 목소리 http://j.mp/c2xLJ