- "Black box collaboration"
Killowen Road E9
A collaboration in the true sense of the word. The clients were graphic and environmental brand designers (www.borndesign.com) and the resultant building was very much a product of the different design disciplines. The clients had the foresight to purchase the ugly house that nobody else wanted to buy. The property was built in the '70s on a former bomb site and in a very crude interpretation recreated the original Victorian townhouse. By extending upwards, downwards, to the front and rear we were able to almost double the existing footprint of space. The yellow brickwork to the existing property stood out in the street making it look like a 'bad tooth'. The client's ambition was stealth-like, wanting their new home to sit more comfortably in the streetscape. The somewhat unconventional approach was to apply a black dye to all the brickwork. The window openings were resized to reflect the rhythm of the existing windows, the glazed sections being the same size and proportion of the original sashes with a solid timber shutter section to the side providing the ventilation. The glazed screen to the rear opens out onto a small courtyard garden finished in a hand painted Moroccan tile. The lower ground floor level is over 15m deep stretching from the rooflight sitting in a raised well in the front garden to the sliding glazed screen to the rear. A long island unit over 5m long is the central focus of the space finished in a rivenedblack granite with ebony stained hardwood door facings with a polished concrete floor throughout.
Download feature article: 'All Change' from Guardian Weekend magazine, October 2011
Completion Apr 2009. Contract period 30 weeks. Close text
