But this may be about to change thanks to the stylish home of David and Lois McDowell. The Dublin-born architect has carried out a renovation with a difference, breathing life into some run-down utilitarian buildings in the grounds of his parents’ home.
The bold transformation, in an old farm yard at Wheatfield House, involved joining together two former stable blocks to create a smart L-shaped house, with a new steel-and-glass construction.
The property was commended in the housing category of last year’s prestigious Opus awards for architecture in Ireland.
The striking design owes no little thanks to the influence of two giants of modern architecture, Norman Foster, the man who changed our idea of airports for ever when he designed Stansted in Essex, and Nicholas Grimshaw, best known in this country for the Eden Project in Cornwall in the UK.
But this couple’s dream home is no ham-fisted homage to a couple of architecture celebs. McDowell actually worked in both Foster’s and Grimshaw’s practices in the UK through the 1990s, and he cites them as his main influences. Echoes of the pair’s work ring through his north Co Dublin home.
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“They both inform the work I do, as does the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, who does a lot of work on residential projects,” he says. While working with Grimshaw’s team, McDowell led the team that designed the Rolls-Royce manufacturing plant at Chiswick. Lois also worked at Foster’s practice, but in the media department. The couple also spent time living in Hong Kong while working for the firm.
Having built a career and reputation for more than a decade in London, he desperately wanted to return to raise his family in Ireland. His parents’ home in Malahide presented an ideal opportunity to build the dream, having land attached with a stableyard that already included a property.
While still living in London, he would go home from the office and spend evenings working on plans for the conversion. The couple had met while studying for degrees at Edinburgh Art College and, with a background in architecture herself, Lois was able to have an input into the most important decisions.
“David was almost doing two jobs,” says Lois. “He would be working at Grimshaw’s all day and then he would come home and work on our house all night. His attention to detail is meticulous and he knows exactly what he wants, right down to the light switches and the doorhandles.”
Plans in hand and children in tow, the McDowells came back to Ireland, renting a house in Malahide while they set about the transformation of David’s childhood playground to the place where he would settle down with his own family.
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The stable courtyard had fallen into a state of dereliction, but was nonetheless a listed structure, so there was no guarantee of getting planning permision. The yard consisted of three buildings of various heights facing into a cobbled courtyard, with a stone wall on the fourth side.
“It made practical sense to re-use the existing buildings,” says McDowell. “There was already a dwelling on the site, an old farmworkers’ cottage, so the precedent for a home was already there. We suggested that we were simply going to move the dwelling in the stable courtyard. And the whole planning process went remarkably smoothly.
“As for the design, we were open-minded. We had no preconceived ideas. The old buildings were long and narrow and they dictated what we could do.”
Construction took nine months to complete and McDowell reckons the project cost about €200 per sq ft, which works out at about €600,000 for a net 3,000 sq ft of floorspace. Not bad, he reckons, when compared with having to buy a house, either new or second-hand, in Malahide.
McDowell was fussy about the materials. He recycled where possible from the site and sourced secondhand items where necessary.
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The oak flooring indoors and the cobbles for the courtyard were both sourced from Ballyalton House Architectural Reclamation in Co Down, Northern Ireland.
“Detail is all important, from the sanitary ware to the kitchen, to the taps,” he says. “Everything you have to touch. We picked specific products that we knew we wanted throughout. Most of the furniture was pre-bought, with a specific place for it in mind.”
The former horses’ accommodation, which dated from the early part of the 19th century, was not exactly structurally stable. “Some of the buildings had no real foundations. The original builders had just dug down a bit and put in a few stones, so we had to underpin a lot of the walls.”
Although the McDowells couldn’t be on site all the time to check the progress, David’s brother who lives in the main house is an engineer and monitored much of the work.
McDowell is proud of how the two blocks were joined up. “The opaque glass here lets the light flood in but it isn’t direct sunlight, which is good for the furniture and the timber floor,” he says. On the outside of this, there are red cedar louvres and exposed galvanised steelwork.
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On the end of one of the legs of the house, a cedar-clad steel box was added in which the living room and the master bedroom are now located.
One side of the box is completely glazed and because it is west-facing, the living room gets the light in the evenings and the bedroom is not too bright in the mornings. This part of the structure is framed by red cedar louvres to control the sunlight and protect the glazing.
The couple had to have the frames specially imported from Norway as there wasn’t a manufacturer here who could make them big enough. They also had to get the panes in two halves as large enough sheets could not be obtained in Ireland and any breakage of imported glass in transit would have delayed the project.
There are two floors in the south block. On the ground floor is a large open-plan living space incorporating a sitting area, dining area and kitchen. The stairwell separates this from a lightwell, at the core of the house, which can be used for formal dining and acts as a sort of hallway.
Off this is the “posh room”, as well as the single-storey west wing of the house, which contains a children’s playroom, two guest bedrooms, a bathroom and an office, with a narrow corridor down one side. Floor-to-ceiling windows have replaced the original stable doors.
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The upstairs contains three bedrooms and a family bathroom, as well as the master bedroom with an en-suite. To add interest, there is a balcony overlooking the lightwell.
The girls Cara and Jemma have discovered since they moved in last September that the best way to get around inside the house is by bicycle.
Now that it is finished, the couple have resisted the temptation to fill the property up with furniture, keeping the space and walls as minimal as possible. Most of their interior accessories have come from Ikea, Tecno, Poliform, Cassina and even Marks & Spencer.
The overall impression left by the house is one of urban-meets-rural. The view from the ultra-modern kitchen through the long rectangular window over the sink, for example, is an agricultural one.
Malahide village is about five minutes by car from the McDowells’ home. Lois McDowell says: “We also have a pony on loan and a couple of fields, so the girls are loving it, and they have their playroom as well.”
The couple profess to being happy with the results of their efforts, despite the odd lightswitch having ended up in the wrong place and Lois feeling they picked the wrong colour tiles in one of the bathrooms.
The grown-up McDowells’ favourite room is the “posh room” — the main living room — which they find ideal for watching the sunset from its deck, or from the inside in bad weather.
McDowell is now an associate director at the Dublin-based firm Horgan Keoghan Ryan architects. Currently he is working on the extension and refurbishment of the Shelbourne hotel, as well as a large residential and commercial project in Smithfield.
Wheatfield Stables may never again produce any race horses, but what odds on McDowell’s creation heading the field in an awards competition in the near future? Watch this stylish and uncluttered space.