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The
Sunday Times
October 2004
Star Treatment For A Little Semi
Dara Flynn looks at some of the buildings that won gongs
and commendations at this year’s Opus awards —
the equivalent of Oscars for Irish architects and Builders
When the owners of a 1930s semi-D on Griffith Avenue in Dublin
opted for a revamp, they didn’t realise just how far
the “decoration” would go. They asked for a rear
extension, the most humdrum of domestic structural jobs, and
at the very most, expected their new annexe to top up the
value of their home.
Instead, their house won a top award at the architectural
equivalent of the Oscars, the Opus awards. The newest chunk
of their semi-D, once known as “the hole in the house”
and later simply as “the new extension”, is now
loftily entitled “Northern Exposure”.
The 1,100-sq-ft extension, lined up against an array of master
designs at Tuesday night’s Opus awards, picked up a
cast bronze sculpture in the under-€500,000 category.
The judging panel, headed by the Office of Public Works’s
Ciaran O’Connor, cast its critical eye over shortlisted
entries with three basic criteria in mind: the difficulty
of the project, the architectural qualities of the building
and how well built it was. For the first time, judges were
keen to stress the importance of the role played by the construction
industry, and were as interested in the quality of workmanship
and material as they were in aesthetics; hence the awards
’ new name: Opus architecture and construction awards.
This year’s winners (the semi-D extension apart) are
more the stuff of coffee table magazines than some of the
previous year’s champs, whose “everyday”
focus raised hopes that architectural design might be softening
its six-digit image and that regular homeowners could live
in something bold and clever, too. Accolades two years ago
went to a rural one-off bungalow in Co Clare, an extension
to a semi in Milltown, Dublin, and a renovated old forge in
Co Laois.
In 2003, prizes went to the Helix at Dublin City University,
urban projects for Clarion Quay in the Docklands, the GMIT
learning resource centre in Galway and a steel and glass-clad
converted stable in Malahide. This year, we have a mews house
in Dublin 4, a late-Victorian terrace in Dublin 2 and the
extension in Dublin 9 — the northside’s poshest
postcode. But the percentage of homeowners daring to employ
an “orkitect” appears to be in single digits.
There were 152 entries for the awards this year. One day was
spent devising a shortlist and another refining it before
the finalist’s sites were visited. This year’s
panel included the architect Noel Dowley, Roger Dunwoody,
formerly of contractors Dunwoody & Dobson, Eugene Cleary
of Cleary Doyle and Pearse Sutton of O’Connor Sutton
Cronin, consulting engineers.
The “Northern Exposure” project, according to
its devisers, Box Architecture,
was achieved “by the placement of three built forms
creating six distinct spaces” to manipulate light and
provide functionality for a family home.
“The problem was building the extension on the north
side of the house, so we had to get direct sunlight into the
new part of the building, which meant extending it as far
north as possible,” says Box Architecture’s David
Dwyer.
“There are three boxes: one toilet block, one kitchen/utility
block and a bedroom block suspended between these. The spaces
in between are enclosed with glass, making two internal courtyards.
The doors are moveable space-making elements, which make the
outside and the inside one space,” he says.
Dwyer believes it was the way the extension sought and utilised
light that brought home this year’s gong. “It
was driven by the need to get light into it,” says the
architect. Box Architecture has won an Opus award every year
since the prize’s inauguration, and all but one of those
awards was made for an extension.
The judging panel deemed the extension “full of imagination,
spatial fluency and light” in a 1930s house that might
otherwise have been the bane of both the architects’
and builders’ lives.
The second award-winner in the under-€500,000 category
was the very Merchant Ivory-sounding “House at the End
of a Terrace” — a late Victorian refurbishment
in Dublin 2. The challenge (or opportunity) here, was the
fact that the house, being at the end of a terrace, was triangular,
with no real “end” at all. Robin Madel, the architect,
had a free rein, given that the house was unprotected, set
in a non-conservation area and “had little of merit
internally”, essentially leaving him room to start again.
A cubic white box was constructed “to provide an end
for the terrace”, which steps out of the building line
and contrasts with the existing red-brick finish. A glass
structure links the box with the rest of the house, enclosing
the last open corner of the terrace. Internally, the house
was transformed into a generous family home that matched the
clients’ brief. The judges were pleased, since apparently
the house had been “ignoring” the grand canal
for years; now it has been completely reorientated to face
it. “Amsterdam comes to Dublin!” says the cheery
assessor’s report. Well, so long as they keep the noise
down.
A “commended” mention in the same category went
to a mews house on a small site at the corner of Eglin Road
and Raglan Lane in Dublin 4. The brief here was to provide
a three-bedroom family house with off-street car parking in
a tiny site on a special area of conservation. The architects,
P & A Lavin, aimed to maximise daylight by placing the
main living space on the first floor of the house, with a
balcony. The three bedrooms, two bathrooms, garage and entrance
court were relegated to ground level, with a “compact”
private L-shaped courtyard to the rear.
According to the judges, the mews house is a winner because
it is “contemporary in design and a welcome addition
to the streetscape”. A Wicklow granite façade,
with sloping steel and zinc roof and timber sheeting, adorns
the exterior.
Finally, a public-sector building, a type that often does
well at these affairs, took home an award in the housing category.
Balgaddy A, at Clondalkin, Co Dublin, is a medium-density
social housing scheme with 25 dwellings per acre, and the
first phase of a large-scale programme of works in north Clondalkin.
The architects, Howley Harrington, were briefed to design
a “robust, low-maintenance environment, promoting the
safety and security of the residents”. They were also
told to stick to a contemporary aesthetic in their designs.
The end result is a three-storey, south-facing crescent, terminating
in a taller building at either side, creating a book-end
effect. Eternit cladding panels in primary colours on the
top level vertical surfaces added a splash of interest. The
judges were particularly impressed by “the sweep of
the crescent” and the attention to detail, which are
factors too seldom found in social housing projects.
Commended in the same category were Design Strategies’
Shrewsbury Lawn apartments in Cabinteely, Dublin — this
was one of the more dramatic designs on this year’s
shortlist. Consisting of seven apartments on a corner site,
three inter-connected blocks provide three two-bedroom apartments
on both the ground and first floors, while a third floor —
over part of these blocks — forms a penthouse. The individual
blocks were “stepped”, in keeping with the existing
curve of the site, and the most striking feature on the exterior
is the blank, sweeping curved corner that overhangs the entrance.
Cedar balconies off the living rooms have been fixed to the
face of the structure, and the facade was finished with white-rendered
walls to the top and vertical cedar sheeting at ground level.
The Opus awards extend not only to private residential and
public-sector housing, but also to commercial buildings. In
the past, however, awards for such buildings have been few,
presumably since awarding a shopping centre for its architectural
brilliance is about as sexy as bestowing an Oscar on an infomercial
actor.
This year, though, the Roches Stores building on Henry Street,
Dublin, picked up a gong in the over-€5m category for
its “transformation of the ugly duckling into a sleek
swan”, according to the judges’ report.
All of the winning Opus projects will be on display at the
Plan Expo exhibition, to be held at the RDS from November
4 to 6.
www.box.ie
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