Howth House

A straightforward three part plan and sectional organisation grew out of the site conditions. The house was designed from the inside out, or from the sense of being within the site looking out, and each development in the form was designed from first principles. A long wall is aligned between two trees which fix diagonally opposite corners of the plot, the body of the house turns to focus on the island, the walls bend to cup the space that flows between them.

The house is extended like a telescope, it is designed as a device for directing light through from the south and views out to the north, but its scale is determined by everyday domestic routines. Dimensions are set out from the fixed points of fireplace and kitchen, with the dining table as the centre of gravity around which the plan revolves.

The long walls are load bearing, there are no columns or cross walls, the space flows on. Transparency is maintained along the length of the house and the structure takes its lateral stability from concrete floor slabs. Concrete ceilings are boardmarked in correspondence with the floorboard pattern of the rooms. Timber floors turn up at their edges to make partitions and balustrades, avoiding any secondary detail of railings or skirtings. Spiralled inside their wooden boxes, the sky lit shower rooms are tiled all over in glass mosaics. External brickwork is smeared over in grey-pigmented limewash and internal wall surfaces are selectively painted to emphasise the effect of light and dark on the character of the house. Earth based colours saturate one face of each longitudinal wall with cross cuts providing contrasting highlights in the linear structure.