Saint Helen’s Terrace

This project will extend house which faces Dublin’s Grand Canal. The house is one part of an historic terrace of  two-storey houses with generous ceiling height but restricted floor areas and small rear gardens. The rear garden here is particularly dark: North facing, overshadowed by mature trees, and surrounded by a clutter of extended structures on neighbouring sites.

Our client wished to extend at both ground and first floor level, which also improving the access to natural light into the centre of the ground floor. A pre-existing rear extension provided some useful space, but also severely blocked the entry of natural light into the existing kitchen.

Our proposal removes the existing extension roof while preserving its side walls for reuse as much as possible. A new rear extension takes the same simple rectangular form over two floor levels. At ground floor the existing generous ceiling height is maintained, and high level windows allow natural light to penetrate as deeply as possible into the original house. At first floor level, a small existing bedroom becomes a rooflit bathroom and wardrobe, and a relatively spacious new bedroom is added.

The rear elevation is a simple one, composed of generous horizontal strips of window between horizontal strips of cement board cladding. The bricks removed from the existing rear extension will be repurposed to provide rear paving. A section of rear laneway, long since occupied by neighbours on each side, will be occupied as a space for bin and bike storage. The existing garden walls of characterful historic brick will be carefully protected and retained

The compact site, particularly in terms of the limited private open space available to the rear, made this a challenging project from the point of view of planning permission, so a detailed package of drawings indicating site limitations and describing the design strategy were submitted as part of the application for planning permission.

Status: This project recently received planning permission