My favourite room: ‘House in a garden’ where all the structural elements are in the core of the house and the perimeter is a timber and glass screen

Naoise Ó Conchubhair and Sarah Fynes spent three years looking for their ideal home and are still pinching themselves that they managed to find this architectural gem in Dublin 3

Designers Naoise Ó Conchubhair and Sarah Fynes in the kitchen/dining room of their stunning home in Clontarf, the design of which has won many awards for architect David Leech. On a site that appeared to be unsuitable for a house, Leech proved that a house would work with clever spatial planning. Photo: Tony Gavin

Mary O'Sullivan

These days when people are describing why they built on a glass box extension to their homes, the usual reason is that they wanted to bring the garden more into the house, and it’s a logical reason; if we can’t have great light all year round, the sight of greenery and colourful planting will go a long way towards lifting the spirits.

When designing 81 Hollybrook Grove, Clontarf, architect David Leech went a step further. He designed what he calls “the house in a garden”, and it is just that. The shape of the house entirely depended on the site and the planning requirements. It was built on a tiny plot and David designed it in such a way that two of the glass walls of the kitchen and dining room concertina pull back completely and disappear as if never there, and so the little garden appears to be as much part of the house as the concrete structure of the room itself.