This year’s Open House running on closed circuit
Can you really hold Open House with Covid-19 locking us all out of the houses? Yes, you can, discovers Celine Naughton
When the people behind Dublin’s annual Open House weekend started planning this year’s event back in January, they had no idea that they’d be straight back to the drawing board within months.
As it became increasingly clear that Covid-related restrictions would require a radical rethink, they set about drafting new ways to bring Ireland’s biggest celebration of architecture to the nation in an entirely new format.
Having witnessed music festivals, concerts, sporting and other events cancelled due to the pandemic, the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF) was all the more determined that its show would go on. But with a programme that traditionally includes guided tours of landmark buildings and open viewings of residential properties, the association had to reinvent this year’s 15th anniversary event in keeping with the times.
“There was no question that we wouldn’t do it — we just had to find ways to do it differently,” says IAF director Nathalie Weadick.
“Instead of physical tours of iconic buildings, we commissioned ten short documentaries, each five minutes long. Called ‘Site Specific,’ the series kicks off online this evening from 6pm, looking at a variety of buildings across the city, from play parks and social housing to places of worship and even a library not yet built.”
One of the most popular highlights of the annual event is ‘Open View’, a day when a select group of house-owners throw open their architect-designed doors to the public. Even in the rain, this opportunity typically attracts a flurry of nosy neighbours and genuine core of architecture enthusiasts alike to queue up for a snoop around inside.
But this year, property nuts don’t even have to leave their sofas to look around the latest swish homes designed by 15 of Ireland’s brightest, award-winning architects, as virtual viewings are available online from today, many with voiceover dissertations from the creators to guide you through.
“Our new online tours and documentaries have given Open House Dublin a much wider reach than ever,” says IAF’s Nathalie Weadick. “We wouldn’t have these tools had we not been forced to find different ways of keeping this flagship event going during lockdown restrictions.”
Set on both sides of the city, two of the homes included in the virtual tours share a striking resemblance in one key regard — they use a lot of exposed brick inside and out. After decades that have seen whiter shades of pale dominate the world of interior décor, bold brickwork may not be to everybody’s taste, but the architects involved stand by their choice.
On the northside, Ryan Kennihan was tasked with insulating, renovating and extending a classic two-up, two-down terraced cottage in the Shandon district of Phibsboro. His clients were a couple of first-time buyers who wanted to transform it into a modern three-bed home in which they could raise their growing family. According to Ryan, the house had barely been touched since it was first built over 100 years ago.
“The design was based in the decorative brickwork found throughout this neighbourhood,” he says. “In the rear extension, walls are in soft brick and ceiling beams exposed to add to the feeling of the room being hand-crafted.
“The use of brick was important, considering the building’s history and place. There is a shared view among many architects today, which is about pushing away from the flashiness of this digital-driven age, and putting the focus on connection between a house and its environment.”
The main challenge, he says, was to retain the period features to the front and connect the garden to the rear extension, while finding a way to bring light into the middle room, originally the back room.
“We created a light well that runs from the rear pitch of the original house down into the middle living room — it’s like a tube of light from above — and added a number of roof lights elsewhere,” he says.
Across the Liffey in the southside suburb of Blackrock, husband-and-wife architects Lee and Damien Culligan built their family home on a site with an old coach house to the rear of Prince Edward Terrace. Last year they moved in with their two children.
They renovated the 1840s period coach house, which is now their office/studio, around which they built a new home, using a similar style and colour of brick to harmonise with the original — again, with much of this brickwork laid bare inside. “To us, the exposed brick feels cosy and warm, and it’s durable,” says Damien. “We won’t need to paint the walls in ten years. The floors downstairs are polished concrete, an ideal surface for our underfloor heating. Upstairs we used maple flooring and lined the walls with timber.”
The couple’s favourite space is the living room. “This is where we gather and enjoy family time together,” says Lee. “The extra height ceilings and clerestory windows — the row of windows above the sliding doors to the garden — give the room a sense of drama as you enter it.”
It’s not the first time the Culligans opened their doors to the public. As part of Open House 2013 people wandered through their then home in Harty Place, Dublin 8, a Tardis-like property that looked small from the outside, but led into a big extension at the back.
While there will be no footfall through their house this year, they’re happy to share it with viewers online.
“We enjoy sharing our work projects with people,” says Lee. “It’s a showcase of what we can do as architects.”