SHOCK AND AWE! When it comes to moving mountains in the interests of unique design, many Irish architects have fallen at the glen—put off by daunting planning regimes and the tricky site restrictions. Odos, the buccaneering young Dublin-based team of designers headed by Darrell O’Donoghue and Dave O’Shea, simply get the bulldozers out and get stuck in. Their latest extravaganza, a one-off home in the Enniskerry hills, is a marvel if only for the fact that they managed to get planning permission for something so different. To create the space for the design, the Odos crew had to dig down and into the steep hillside. Many architects would say, however, that persuading the planners at Wicklow county council to approve the project was an even more remarkable feat than moving the mountain. The council has long been regarded as Ireland’s toughest and most conservative where approval for new one-off homes is concerned. So tough are Wicklow planners that architects routinely buckle to their reputation, urging clients to propose less than radical home designs to begin with. The council has actively striven over the years to keep Dublin homebuilders out — even levying a highly controversial (and, many lawyers would say, unconstitutional) “locals-only” policy that tends to bar all but those born in the area from building one-off homes. Fellow architects may imagine the guys — and their on site architect for the project, Leigh Ann Heron — spent years slogging away, with the design being shuffled from drawing board to planner and back again. But like their last scheme — a double brace of futuristic three-storey returns on two adjoining period townhouses in Rathmines — the planners passed it almost straight away. “Although we believe we put our case well, we were as surprised as anyone when the permission came through,” says O’Shea. “The only demand they made was that we ‘turn’ the property slightly to align it with an existing house on the same road. Otherwise they listened to our case, accepted it, and gave our plans the go ahead.” Ironically, the planners’ demand to turn the home’s axis may have improved its overall impact. The excellent views that had been the reason for the former orientation would have been smothered out by the growth of the trees ahead of it in years to come. Now, instead of a box “eye” facing squarely to the front, it is the home’s flowing flank which parallels the road. O’Donoghue, the duo’s planning negotiator, says dealing with planning committees is “basic stuff”. “You go and look at the area’s development plan and fulfil what it asks. Too many designers make the mistake of assuming that no mention of contemporary architecture means it’s out of the question. We work on the basis that its absence suggests that, on the contrary, it can’t be ruled out,” he says. The client (who wishes to remain anonymous) bought the eagle’s nest plot, with a run-down single-storey cottage already sitting on it, a few years ago. He called in Odos and, like many of their clients, allowed them a very free reign. He wanted a contemporary family home (he has two children) with a difference — something that would maximise the site, the views and the environment, and allow room for home entertainment on a large scale. Beyond that it was up to them. It’s a signature of Odos that their homes bear little resemblance to each other: those Rathmines high-rise returns, which look like giant futuristic periscopes spying on the mountains; their floating home in Blackrock which appears to be hovering thanks to a jutting frontal apron; and their award-winning one-off at Thor Place, a dark and brooding corner box. Most of all, like the front patio apron of their Blackrock design, it’s an ancillary part of the hillside home that gives it most of its visual impact. In this case, it’s the top-lit ramp of entrance steps that lends this angular, contemporary, suspended building a compelling foot, or tongue, that appears to loll lazily to the ground. “That took us 20 days to get right,” says O’Shea. There’s also a playful gaggle of red brace legs underneath the building—to hold down the box projection rather than hold it up (“otherwise it vibrates like when you twang the projecting part of a ruler held flat on a table”). Another show-stopping aspect of this property is its vertical timber panels, running in different blues and greys of varyingwidth. From a distance, the effect is almost computergenerated, like a barcode. “We really wanted to add some colour to the place,” says O’Shea. “We thought this was a way of doing it that would offset the yellow lighting effects inside.” The duo had wanted to install a yellow panel in amongst the blues and greys, but felt it didn’t look quite right. They got around this by replacing the single yellow panels on two parts of the house, with a flat yellow lighting strip. At dusk and in the dark, these serve to create lit focal points for the eye. Other unique features include an open gas fire that seems to sit on the bare floor as if built by a caveman (with children in the house, it’s shielded by a transparent glass guard). There’s a massive skylight slot directly over the kitchen that gives the owners another shaft of celestial light over their hobs and appliances. The floors are polished concrete — its fine aggregate component gives it tiny sparkles. The house has three bedrooms (one ensuite), an in-built kitchen and a huge inter-linking reception/entertainment area. From the outside, you can see right through this area, into the back garden. This is the home’s private outdoor sanctuary, the upper-floor area meeting the hillside at ground level at the back. Below, tucked into the hillside, are the garage and utility rooms. The construction was not without its setbacks. Digging out the foundations, the Odos site crew, led by Heron, discovered a hidden river bed underneath the former property. This included three different soil types: pebbles, boulders and silty sand. In the worst of the seasons’s rains, water was still flowing through it. Heron’s need to restructure the design to support the house properly across this unexpected obstacle set plans back by almost a year. The challenges have certainly paid off, according to Heron. “Now we’ve handed over our baby, we’re sad to let it go,” she says. “We know it’s new and different and it’s been worth the effort.” O’Shea concludes: “To build this house cost exactly the same as if you were knocking down the old cottage to build a ‘regular’ home. People don’t seem to realise that you don’t have to be ‘minted’ to have something completely different.