Site rooted in the past gets a 21st century compliment
YOU don’t have to be stuck in the past, even when you buy a site for a house which is rooted in the past.
Architect John Wiggins was commissioned to come up with a design for a family home on a rural site near Midleton in East Cork, which had the tremendous asset of maturity.
The site included mature boundaries and some out-buildings, but the existing house was of little or no merit and merely seeking to tweak or extend it would have hopelessly limited options.
What he managed to slot into the site instead is a striking example of some the best of contemporary architecture, using modern materials as well as some aspects of traditional construction, to provide a house which is wholly geared to its young family of occupants.
The house, called Woodfield, at Slowhill near Midleton, is featured in a new publication due out before Christmas, in conjunction with the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland. Called Build Your Own House and Home and produced by the publishers of House and Home interiors magazine with RIAI input, it features some 11 architect-designed Irish homes, as well as numerous factual articles aimed at those hoping to build their own homes to a high design standard.
What John Wiggins managed to achieve in this 3,000 sq ft house is a wholly usable, incredibly bright and airy home, full of dramatic but not overwhelming double height spaces, that is warm and energy efficient.
There’s a balcony off the master bedroom, which gives shelter to a patio area off a dining area beyond the kitchen. Another balcony runs across the front of the house, giving shelter over the front door, opening up views towards East Ferry and making a design statement in its own right, while off the main living room is an enclosed patio, with high plastered walls and a curious, stone-built obelisk water feature- all things you won’t get in your standard book of homes plans and which lift this place well out of the ordinary.
The acre and a half site is set 200 yards off a country road and the house is only glimpsed from the road, with a mossy stone-walled and tree-lined avenue the first clue of its existence. The house is south facing, of traditional build (done by direct labour), but with an industrial style Kingspan steel-clad roof, sloping in a low (three degree) mono pitch from left to right of the structure.
The front facade combines render, stone facing and cedar cladding, a sort of architectural fashion of the day but also giving it a warm and domestic feel.
There are not a lot of rooms inside (hands up everyone who uses every room in their own house fully and equally) and the clear emphasis and brief was on quality and interconnecting spaces, where even space-wasting corridors are kept to a minimum.
The main living room is 20’ from floor to ceiling, with a dramatic red-breasted fireplace as a centrepiece, with a cantilevered wood mantle in place. Sliding doors from this room open to almost meditative and sheltered patio, with that upstanding stone water feature.
The hallway is also double height, a real place of welcome and the modernist stainless steel railed and maple stairwell is ringed by a balcony with cut-out sections in the upper walls which transform it into a real gallery - shades of the National Gallery’s new millennium wing in Dublin.
From one balcony viewpoint, three similarly sized window line up from inside through to a free-standing wall outside to engage and satisfy the eye: it underlines how a house can be enhanced for very little cost, once a trained and professional eye is applied to its design.
Apart from well-conceived spaces and lots of glazing, the architect-designed house is kept bright once the sun goes down by considerable attention to lighting, with an array of wall lights, spotlights, and recessed lighting and at night the interplay of shadows is fascinating.
Colours of rooms are grouped and change subtly from one space to the next, while strong patches of bold colour are used sparingly for effect.
Architect John Wiggins, who works with Bertie Pope and Associates, works mostly in the commercial design sector, but has picked up a number of select residential commissions and went to a lot of effort to slot this house into an existing site, enhanced by old stone buildings front and rear which may be integrated more fully into the overall design as the new owners find their feet.
He envisages a flowing, organic-shaped feature in the front graveled courtyard to contrast with the quite rigid geometric form of the house itself, while behind a safe play area for the two young boys who are lucky enough to live here may be coming on stream by the spring.
Woodfield, just a room deep on average, is a bright and shining example of how to work sensitively with a rural site, of how to fashion a house that respects its setting, has aspects of the vernacular - but isn’t a slave to the past or simply repeats formulaic house plans that have threatened to colonise the countryside with repetitive dross.
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