BACK TO THE FUTURE
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In a quiet Dublin street made up of red-brick period properties, two town house extensions with eye-catching design stand out from the crowd. Developers take note, suggests Mark Keenan. Backlane Dublin 6, a vast maze of passages and a scattergun of assorted mews dwellings, dumped grass cuttings and giant alley cats, is to architecture what Mad Max 2 is to precision automotive design. It’s a completely different story at the front, where the tall, uniform Victorians and Edwardians push their best faces forward. Steam-pressed red and brown brick lines make for the softly spoken streetscapes that keep property prices high and the pavements pulsating with the Bugaboo-bouncing bottle blondes with nothing to do but mingle and spend. In the back gardens of these houses, however, it’s building bedlam, where six generations of Dublin’s bodgiest builders have hacked, pried and piled on at random to the back ends of some of the city’s most elegant homes, leaving in their wake a higgledy-piggledy collage of slap-ups, knock-ups and stick-ups over three and four floors. This world is filled with pebble dash, plank panels, rain puddles on flat roofs, gerrymandered windows, oxidised aluminium, DayGlo uPVC, calloused cast iron, twisted chimneys, the bristles of defunct television aerials and webs of washing lines and telephone wires. Backlaneland is the world of the Coronation Street cat, the cat burglar (it was Martin Cahill’s nocturnal highway) and sly dumpers of old carpet rolls. But at Castlewood Avenue loom two precision-cut, identikit monoliths. They resemble twin giant periscopes drawn up over four floors and topped by viewfinder windows, which eerily scope the D6 rooftops and the Dublin mountains beyond. If these things turned up in a Kubrick movie, there’d be apes dancing around them. It is the future of the multi-storey utility annexe as envisioned by David O’Shea and Darrell O’Donoghue — also known as Odos Architects and creators of some of Dublin’s most exciting residential buildings these past three years. When Kieran McNamara, a developer, bought two adjoining doublefronted Victorian houses in Castlewood Avenue in Rathmines, he had his work cut out for him. A previous owner had partially stripped out one of the properties. Both had been in multiple units and were in very poor condition. He says: “At the back, the annexes were terminally damaged at their base and had to be pulled down, which raised the question of what we could build in their place. I had appointed John Casey, a forward-looking engineer, to the scheme and it was John who suggested we should contact Odos. “Straight away I could see they were both imaginative and efficient operators. They came back with a design within three weeks and when I saw the drafts, I said, ‘Jesus Christ! We have to build this’.” Looking more like they came from the designers of the stealth bomber than a scamp bodger, these annexes are likely to raise eyebrows and hackles. They should also create a new awareness among renovators and planners about the problem of renovating that most vital portion of big period homes, and probably the most neglected. O’Shea says: “Go around the back of the buildings in this area and you’ll see some awful stuff. Most of these period homes were built with annexes, which over the years were altered, replaced or added to without any consideration for the integrity of the buildings they are attached to. “The worst of it happened in the 20th century, when so many of these homes were turned into flats. That meant loads more bathrooms and kitchens were needed on all floors. In most cases, they simply patched on a crude multi-storey extension to house them.” In a period building, the original annexe usually facilitated the rise of the central stairwell, providing bathrooms and small bedrooms for servants on alternative turns. While they accommodated secondary rooms, they were nonetheless vital as the main traffic route through the house. Originally these annexes would also have served to help light the houses with their windows. But in the Odos annexes, a degree of optical illusion comes into play. They both appear to jut out at an angle far steeper and higher than the original roofline. In fact, they exactly mirror the angle and rise of the 1860 roof. Similarly, at the bottom, the annexes rise upwards and outwards from their parent buildings at the same angle, leaving both annexes suspended in the air. The upcuts, which sweep out from the base of the buildings to first-floor level, are one of the most original aspects of the design. They rise parallel to the roofline above. McNamara, the client, is keen to point out that this element isn’t just for the sake of being flash He says: “It’s only when you get in and actually use the ground-level kitchen and dining area that you discover just how vital that upcut at the lower level is. Not only does it bring plenty of light into what in the past was a very dark area, and makes that space so much more attractive to use, but it also creates a whole new outside patio space for entertainment and relaxation. “Similarly, when you’re up in the toproom studies with their huge picture windows, you realise what great working spaces they really are.” Planners usually take some convincing for a design departure like this, particularly for protected period buildings. Odos argued their case brick by brick, using the surrounding architecture to justify their new extensions. O’Shea says: “We started with what we already had — the existing angles on the original roof, which we repeated to a half measure above and below. We used the footprint of the original annexe, and the grey, matt-coloured skins come from the existing grey roof tiles. We achieved the effect by using identically covered fibre cement panels.” Inside, the twin annexes contain only storage cupboards, a bathroom and a top side study. But the lighting effect on the entire houses becomes obvious immediately when you enter through the original Victorian front doors into the old halls, with their ceiling stucco work and finely turned staircases. Unlike many similar homes of this era, the sunlight floods down from the back from the first-floor bathrooms, accommodated in the mid-section of the new annexes, and from the giant “periscope” window above and the accompaniment of top skylights, which sit behind them. O’Shea adds: “Bathrooms traditionally have small windows, but here we had the chance to put in the biggest possible. Because we used smoked glass, there are no modesty issues whatsoever.” The bathrooms are full of light, which, when the door is open, bounces out down the stairwell of the original home. At entrance level out back, Odos has installed a concrete “bridge”, which leads out and down to the rear garden then wraps back in around itself, providing a link in to the kitchen/diner floor below through an unbroken path of concrete. The concrete, with a heavy gravel content, has been ground, polishing it and the stones flat. The effect is a marble- like gloss flecked with semi-precious stones. Casey brought the house into the modern eco-friendly era by installing geothermal heating. A borehole runs down behind each home into the ground to a depth of 500ft. An electric pump uses the earth’s natural heat, magnifies it and channels it into the home’s underfloor heating at a fraction of the cost of regular oil or gas central heating. The houses were ambitious refurbishment jobs for McNamara, who specialises in renovating period properties. He now has them on the market. The two 1860s-built homes are unusual in that they were constructed as double-fronted semi-detached abodes. There are two adjoining sets of reception rooms on either side of the entrance hall in each home. Similarly there are bedrooms on the upper floors on either side of the stairwell. McNamara says: “With this much inner space, the annexes are vital as a functionary path through, but also for natural lighting to make these modern usable homes again. They make such a difference that we’ve had 40 or 50 parties through here in the last few weeks.” At more than 3,000-sq-ft apiece, both properties are for sale through Savills HOK and ERA Alva Gunne at °Ë3.25m each. O’Shea hopes their work will help other developers and renovators to think outside the box when it comes to multi-storey annexes for Dublin’s period homes. “With all the mews buildings going on these days, the back lanes are becoming as much a focus for new architecture as anywhere else,” he says. “And we hope we’ve shown that annexe reconstruction offers as much an opportunity for unique and functional design as anything else. These period homes are unique; they deserve to be treated as well out back as they do in front.” O’Donoghue adds: “We hope that they also stand as two new buildings to be considered in their own right, as well as making a decent new connection between the past and the present.”
In a quiet Dublin street made up of red-brick period properties, two town house extensions with eye-catching design stand out from the crowd. Developers take note, suggests Mark Keenan. Backlane Dublin 6, a vast maze of passages and a scattergun of assorted mews dwellings, dumped grass cuttings and giant alley cats, is to architecture what Mad Max 2 is to precision automotive design. It’s a completely different story at the front, where the tall, uniform Victorians and Edwardians push their best faces forward. Steam-pressed red and brown brick lines make for the softly spoken streetscapes that keep property prices high and the pavements pulsating with the Bugaboo-bouncing bottle blondes with nothing to do but mingle and spend. In the back gardens of these houses, however, it’s building bedlam, where six generations of Dublin’s bodgiest builders have hacked, pried and piled on at random to the back ends of some of the city’s most elegant homes, leaving in their wake a higgledy-piggledy collage of slap-ups, knock-ups and stick-ups over three and four floors. This world is filled with pebble dash, plank panels, rain puddles on flat roofs, gerrymandered windows, oxidised aluminium, DayGlo uPVC, calloused cast iron, twisted chimneys, the bristles of defunct television aerials and webs of washing lines and telephone wires. Backlaneland is the world of the Coronation Street cat, the cat burglar (it was Martin Cahill’s nocturnal highway) and sly dumpers of old carpet rolls. But at Castlewood Avenue loom two precision-cut, identikit monoliths. They resemble twin giant periscopes drawn up over four floors and topped by viewfinder windows, which eerily scope the D6 rooftops and the Dublin mountains beyond. If these things turned up in a Kubrick movie, there’d be apes dancing around them. It is the future of the multi-storey utility annexe as envisioned by David O’Shea and Darrell O’Donoghue — also known as Odos Architects and creators of some of Dublin’s most exciting residential buildings these past three years. When Kieran McNamara, a developer, bought two adjoining doublefronted Victorian houses in Castlewood Avenue in Rathmines, he had his work cut out for him. A previous owner had partially stripped out one of the properties. Both had been in multiple units and were in very poor condition. He says: “At the back, the annexes were terminally damaged at their base and had to be pulled down, which raised the question of what we could build in their place. I had appointed John Casey, a forward-looking engineer, to the scheme and it was John who suggested we should contact Odos. “Straight away I could see they were both imaginative and efficient operators. They came back with a design within three weeks and when I saw the drafts, I said, ‘Jesus Christ! We have to build this’.” Looking more like they came from the designers of the stealth bomber than a scamp bodger, these annexes are likely to raise eyebrows and hackles. They should also create a new awareness among renovators and planners about the problem of renovating that most vital portion of big period homes, and probably the most neglected. O’Shea says: “Go around the back of the buildings in this area and you’ll see some awful stuff. Most of these period homes were built with annexes, which over the years were altered, replaced or added to without any consideration for the integrity of the buildings they are attached to. “The worst of it happened in the 20th century, when so many of these homes were turned into flats. That meant loads more bathrooms and kitchens were needed on all floors. In most cases, they simply patched on a crude multi-storey extension to house them.” In a period building, the original annexe usually facilitated the rise of the central stairwell, providing bathrooms and small bedrooms for servants on alternative turns. While they accommodated secondary rooms, they were nonetheless vital as the main traffic route through the house. Originally these annexes would also have served to help light the houses with their windows. But in the Odos annexes, a degree of optical illusion comes into play. They both appear to jut out at an angle far steeper and higher than the original roofline. In fact, they exactly mirror the angle and rise of the 1860 roof. Similarly, at the bottom, the annexes rise upwards and outwards from their parent buildings at the same angle, leaving both annexes suspended in the air. The upcuts, which sweep out from the base of the buildings to first-floor level, are one of the most original aspects of the design. They rise parallel to the roofline above. McNamara, the client, is keen to point out that this element isn’t just for the sake of being flash He says: “It’s only when you get in and actually use the ground-level kitchen and dining area that you discover just how vital that upcut at the lower level is. Not only does it bring plenty of light into what in the past was a very dark area, and makes that space so much more attractive to use, but it also creates a whole new outside patio space for entertainment and relaxation. “Similarly, when you’re up in the toproom studies with their huge picture windows, you realise what great working spaces they really are.” Planners usually take some convincing for a design departure like this, particularly for protected period buildings. Odos argued their case brick by brick, using the surrounding architecture to justify their new extensions. O’Shea says: “We started with what we already had — the existing angles on the original roof, which we repeated to a half measure above and below. We used the footprint of the original annexe, and the grey, matt-coloured skins come from the existing grey roof tiles. We achieved the effect by using identically covered fibre cement panels.” Inside, the twin annexes contain only storage cupboards, a bathroom and a top side study. But the lighting effect on the entire houses becomes obvious immediately when you enter through the original Victorian front doors into the old halls, with their ceiling stucco work and finely turned staircases. Unlike many similar homes of this era, the sunlight floods down from the back from the first-floor bathrooms, accommodated in the mid-section of the new annexes, and from the giant “periscope” window above and the accompaniment of top skylights, which sit behind them. O’Shea adds: “Bathrooms traditionally have small windows, but here we had the chance to put in the biggest possible. Because we used smoked glass, there are no modesty issues whatsoever.” The bathrooms are full of light, which, when the door is open, bounces out down the stairwell of the original home. At entrance level out back, Odos has installed a concrete “bridge”, which leads out and down to the rear garden then wraps back in around itself, providing a link in to the kitchen/diner floor below through an unbroken path of concrete. The concrete, with a heavy gravel content, has been ground, polishing it and the stones flat. The effect is a marble- like gloss flecked with semi-precious stones. Casey brought the house into the modern eco-friendly era by installing geothermal heating. A borehole runs down behind each home into the ground to a depth of 500ft. An electric pump uses the earth’s natural heat, magnifies it and channels it into the home’s underfloor heating at a fraction of the cost of regular oil or gas central heating. The houses were ambitious refurbishment jobs for McNamara, who specialises in renovating period properties. He now has them on the market. The two 1860s-built homes are unusual in that they were constructed as double-fronted semi-detached abodes. There are two adjoining sets of reception rooms on either side of the entrance hall in each home. Similarly there are bedrooms on the upper floors on either side of the stairwell. McNamara says: “With this much inner space, the annexes are vital as a functionary path through, but also for natural lighting to make these modern usable homes again. They make such a difference that we’ve had 40 or 50 parties through here in the last few weeks.” At more than 3,000-sq-ft apiece, both properties are for sale through Savills HOK and ERA Alva Gunne at °Ë3.25m each. O’Shea hopes their work will help other developers and renovators to think outside the box when it comes to multi-storey annexes for Dublin’s period homes. “With all the mews buildings going on these days, the back lanes are becoming as much a focus for new architecture as anywhere else,” he says. “And we hope we’ve shown that annexe reconstruction offers as much an opportunity for unique and functional design as anything else. These period homes are unique; they deserve to be treated as well out back as they do in front.” O’Donoghue adds: “We hope that they also stand as two new buildings to be considered in their own right, as well as making a decent new connection between the past and the present.”
