The clients’ brief was to create a new ‘home’ at the end of the garden of their large Victorian house near the centre of Dublin. The new home would be accessed from the rear lane on which other ‘mews’ type residential had been built.

The challenge was to provide, within a smaller envelope, the scale and elegance of our clients’ former home without resorting to a miniature version of the original. The three-storey section (basement and two upper floors), the elegant central roof-lit stairs and provision of abundant natural light to almost every room achieved a contemporary solution to the challenge of the project. The new home developed and improved the ‘mews’ typology by creating elegance in vertical circulation, abundance of natural light, additional accommodation (playroom, spa room, large utility room and significant storage) over and above the generous living accommodation which is often lacking in ‘mews’ house solutions.