Client
Private
Category
Residential
Year
2022
Much of our work is concerned with considering housing for old age, recently developed through an Arts Council funded project entitled Reimagining Elderhood, using community co-design at the neighbourhood and home scale to explore this theme. However, here in this project, we had the opportunity to design a new space in which to grow old, nestled in woodland planted by the owners 35 years ago, in the garden of their former home.
This house in a rural part of Ireland has been carefully designed to create a tranquil environment in which a couple can enjoy their retirement, growing old with independence and dignity. Internal spaces flow into one another, and out to the natural surroundings, immersing inhabitants in surrounding flora and fauna, bats and birdlife, and views, over newly formed ponds, to distant Lough Neagh.
The external appearance of the house, with its timber frame construction fully clad in cedar shingles that are gracefully weathering to grey, blends in with its wooded surrounds, almost as if it has always been there. Two vernacular forms, one for living, one for sleeping, sit at an angle to one another, connected by a glazed entrance link. There is an inherent softness to the house’s natural materials, neutral tones and rounded and non-rectilinear edges. Concrete floors tie the spaces together, while carefully-placed windows frame views.
Both house and furniture are designed to facilitate its owners’ interests in gardening, growing, reading, crafting and hospitality. Yet none of the design is attention-seeking: the house offers a quiet, calm backdrop that lets the landscape outside and the lives lived within be the main events.
This project was shortlisted in the RSUA Design Awards, 2024.
