Firm： BRENNAN | FURLONG Architects & Urban Planners

Type： Residential › Private House

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2023

SIZE： 1000 sqft - 3000 sqft

BUDGET： Undisclosed

The project involved the construction of a new dwelling high on a sloping site on Howth Head, on the north side of Dublin Bay. Howth Head has been the site of human settlement for thousands of years – a 4,500-year-old portal tomb known locally as Aideen’s Grave is located 1km west of the site while a 2,000 year-old promontory fort lies 1km to the south. Howth Head is the setting for the opening pages of The Gingerman by JP Donleavy and the closing pages of Ulysses by James Joyce.

From the site one can look north all along the eastern coastline of Ireland – from Howth Harbour and Ireland’s Eye in the foreground, to Lambay Island and Rockabill Lighthouse in the middle ground and finally to the Mourne Mountains 100km to the north in County Down.

The house is conceived as 3 interlocking volumes. The first of these - a rendered plinth with shuttered concrete buttresses - houses the bedrooms and buries itself into the hill. Beside this the second volume - a tower wrapped in local stone brought from a quarry less than 500 metres from the site - rises from the hill, which houses a home office at lower level and living room at upper level. Its’ form evokes the traditional medieval Irish Tower House, 2 of which still exist in Howth; Corr Castle which dates from the 1400’s and the Tower House of Howth Castle, built in the mid-1600’s. Above the plinth and abutting the tower, the third volume, a curving timber-lined Piano Nobile floats above the hill, and houses the kitchen / living / dining area.

These three volumes wrap around carefully located external spaces designed for different uses at different times of the day – a front terrace for coffee, a sheltered courtyard adjacent to the main bedroom for breakfast, and an upper terrace extending out from the living area into the garden for larger social gatherings.