RIAI Public Choice Award – Ryan W. Kennihan Architects

Every day this week we are highlighting the best residential nominees for this year's Irish Architect Awards in the RIAI People's Choice Awards. Today we are back to Dublin 6 with another concrete extension to a period terrace but this time the use of timber completely transforms the interiors...

6010

Harold’s Cross Road Extension

Ryan W. Kennihan Architects

Ryan W. Kennihan Architects do great work. This extension has the makings of a award winner. They say it best in their own words from their project summary:

The existing terraced house appears from the road as a modest single storey over basement dwelling, yet the rear garden drops five metres below street level, making the house a full three stories high.

 

Ryan W Kennihan
The slatted timber beams are narrower than you would usually see and it really defines this space amidst all the concrete and brick. Source: architecturalawards.ie

The gardens of the entire terrace extend over 90 metres, at first following plot lines before dissolving into an urban wilderness. As one journeys from street to garden, at first the city and then the period rooms are left behind to descend into an isolated world of garden rooms.

Simple laid concrete and painted brick which wouldn’t amount to much from the outside… Source: architecturalawards.ie

The addition to the house was conceived as one of a series of these garden rooms extending from the stair. One moves from a refined world of cornices and sash windows, to an overgrown woodland world of shrubs and foxes and the addition sits in the middle of the progression. First the kitchen, then the patio, then the flower garden followed by the vegetable garden, orchard, greenhouse and wood beyond. Viewed from above, the extension’s sedum and wildflower roof blends it into the pervasive greenery. From below its stacked concrete and timber structure simply roofs the garden walls allowing an open relationship to the spaces extending outwards from the house.

But inside the timber parquet flooring and matching slatted ceiling beams perform a beautiful combination in a light-filled space. Source: architecturalawards.ie

A nice feature and one they have used before in a stunning double-width terrace in Sandymount in 2011 to great acclaim. It goes to show a great design item doesn’t need to be exclusive to multi-million euro houses.

Same grey concrete and white brick is exposed on the inside but never cold. Source: architecturalawards.ie
And flooded with light and wildlife from the ‘urban wilderness’ beyond… Source: architecturalawards.ie

Vote for your favourite Architecture Award

Vote for your favourite for this year’s RIAI Public Choice Award at the Irish Architecture Awards 2014 – go to www.architectureawards.ie to cast your vote or check out all the other residential nominees here…

Irish Architecture Awards 2014