House of the Week: First home built by leading architect — for first-time-buyer price of €295k

A stylish house on a challenging infill site at Cork's Wellington Road

The Mews, Wood's Place, Wellington Road 

Wellington Road, Cork city
€295,000
Size	85 sq m (915 sq ft)
Bedrooms	1
Bathrooms	1
BER	B

Most of us look at a peat briquette and think ‘fuel’ but because architects are especially good at thinking outside the box, they might envisage using the bog product to build, say, a temporary pavilion with all sorts of cultural, historical and philosophical references.

As a fledgling architect Tom de Paor used more than 1,700 briquettes to build just such an apparatus when representing Ireland in 2000 at the prestigious Venice Architectural Biennale.

His trip to Venice came three years after he designed The Mews, the house featured here — which should make for sparkling dinner party conversation/roof terrace chats when new owners move in. He subsequently went on to great things,
including being awarded an international fellowship in 2017 by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), just the third Irish architect to receive the distinction. RIBA described him as “the leading Irish architect of his generation” — as good a conversation starter as it gets.

So what did he do at The Mews, Wood’s Place, off York St, off Wellington Road, in Cork city centre?

He designed it in 1997 as his first domestic commission and in fairness, the micro-site infill space made it quite the challenge. In reality, the only way was up, and so he designed, in architect speak “a stack of interconnected double-cubed rooms” at the end of a Georgian terrace.

It went down very well in the design world and featured in a range of publications as Wallpaper House, as wallpaper was due to feature heavily in its interiors, but in the end, didn’t.

Given its pedigree, you would expect this house to be looked after (early work of leading Irish architect of his generation), but that was not the case.

Indeed when the current owners bought it five years ago, it was in a state of “shabby, chic” — “shabby” being the dominant gene. Thankfully, the buyer understood its significance — she’s an architect too — and under her stewardship, it’s been lovingly upgraded and firmly restored to an enviable level of “chic”.

“It was me who drove the purchase because of the de Paor association,” says Gillian O’Keeffe of GOK Studio Architects who bought the house with her partner in 2021.

“As both of us work in the city, it was just perfect. Everywhere is walkable. We are devastated to leave, but we have a newborn, so you just have to let these things go and move on.”

She moves on leaving the compact 85 sq m one-bed house, with accommodation over three levels, in a far superior state to when they bought it at a first-time buyer price of €169,000. Upgrades included a new roof and insulation, external acrylic render, triple glazed windows, automated external blinds, Cedral cladding and decking. Internally, the home has been completely transformed with new flooring, additional insulation and soundproofing, a redesigned kitchen and bathroom and bespoke joinery throughout.

Services have also been comprehensively upgraded with a full rewire and replumb, new lighting, vertical radiators, a new fire system and HVAC with mechanical ventilation. Upgrades have contributed to an improved energy rating, up from a ‘C’ to a ‘B’, meaning buyers can qualify for green mortgage rates.

Even with all of the work that’s been done, and given its pedigree and location, it’s still priced at an affordable level for those starting out — the guide is €295,000.

View this property on MyHome.ie

VERDICT: What young upwardly mobile professional wouldn’t love a quirky home like this one, just up behind MacCurtain St’s bustling Victorian Quarter, with a roof terrace for post-pub meet-ups, and a handy walk to the train station/city centre/bus station? Unique, contemporary, nicely-priced and with a stellar pedigree.