My Favourite Room
A stunning holiday home by the lake
Something we all love to look at is the ‘Take Five’ section in the property supplements; as most people know, it consists of an Irish house and four of a similar price abroad.
The Irish house featured is usually pretty basic, while the four foreign properties are either sprawling haciendas or chic chateaux. These days, most people like to look, and maybe salivate, but back in the mid-to-late 2000s, we were actually buying — apartments in Turkey, villas in Spain, bungalows in Barbados.
David Campion, managing director of architectural company Argo Development Studio, decided to buy, too, in those heady times, but he opted for something closer to home — a dilapidated schoolhouse in Leitrim.
Interestingly, he and his wife and family now have a pad in Barbados — it’s where David started his company, and where many of his building projects are based. It’s their permanent home — while their little bolthole ‘abroad’ is that very schoolhouse on Lough Allen.
The schoolhouse still looks like a schoolhouse on the exterior, but inside, it’s a sleek, ultra-modern family home, designed by David himself to the highest of standards.
There was always a likelihood that David would end up working on houses — his father was a building contractor — but actually doing house design was a different matter. “I was the second eldest of seven and we spent a lot of weekends being pulled out of bed to help on site, mixing plaster, and lifting blocks,” the genial 40-something recalls. “It gave myself and the brothers a good appreciation of construction, starting at the bottom, and seeing where you might fit into that in the future.”
For David at that stage, it was purely a way of making some pocket money. Then he had a bit of an epiphany. “One day, I was with my father on a site in Dalkey, and he started explaining the vision the architect had, using the drawings,” he says. “I didn’t get to see that site again for most of the summer, and then, when I got
“It was a bit hurtful. Half the class laughed, they didn’t take me seriously, they knew me as a bit of a dosser”
there again, the house had evolved from those drawings. That’s when it clicked with me that that’s something I’d be very interested in — creating designs that contractors then turn into reality.”
The problem for David, who hails from Beaumont, was he had not been the most studious of kids, and when he mentioned in a career guidance class that he was thinking of becoming an architect, the reaction to his announcement was somewhat sceptical. “It was a bit hurtful,” he recalls. “Half the class laughed. They didn’t take me seriously; they knew me as a bit of a dosser.”
However, he was very fortunate in the teacher he had — a man by the name of Brendan O Laoire. “Afterwards, he said, ‘Campion, stay back’,” David says.
The teacher asked David if he was serious, and went on to tell him that his brother, an architect, ran a firm called Murray O Laoire, one of the top firms in the country. The teacher arranged two weeks’ work experience at Murray O Laoire for him, and from there on, David developed a relationship with the firm.
“Seeing a concept from start to finish got me very excited. From that stage, I knew it was definitely the career for me,” he says.
He decided to do architectural
technology; the course in Bolton Street was a diploma, whereas in Limerick it was a degree, so he studied in Limerick. He kept the link with Murray O Laoire, and worked with them in the summers, including one summer when he worked on a project for them in Russia.
After college, David headed for San Francisco, where he got a job with a firm of engineers, earthquake-proofing blocks of apartments — “as you do in an earthquake zone,” David notes. “It was a different kind of experience, understanding about forces like earthquakes and hurricanes — an experience that would come in handy in the Caribbean later on.”
After three years, David returned home and joined Murray O Laoire on a full-time basis in their Dublin office. “Sean O Laoire was very inspirational; he was a great mentor, and
“She was with her friend, I hit her with a soccer ball and that’s how we got introduced”
he had time for everybody,” he says.
David spent the best part of 10 years with the firm, and during that time, he and his wife, Edel, got married, 15 years after they first met, when they were 15. “She was with her friend, I hit her with a soccer ball, and that’s how we got introduced,” David laughs.
In 2010, an opportunity came up in the office to go and work on a big project in St Vincent and the Grenadines, an island nation located in the southern Caribbean near Barbados. “They felt it made sense to locate someone from the Dublin office there, and to also set up an office there to look for more business. I told Edel I was going to apply to go. She was shocked,” David recalls — they did, after all, have three small children, so it was quite the upheaval. He adds, “But I said, ‘What’s the worst that can happen? We go off for a year and have an adventure’.”
David got the job, and he and Edel and their three kids — Killian (now 18), Ethan (now 11) and Lily (now nine) — set off for Barbados, leaving a snowy Ireland on January 4, and arriving in 30-degree heat.
Unfortunately, things could go wrong, and, quite soon, they did. David knew the company, like a lot of architectural firms, had been struggling, but he never thought it would close. But close it did. It was a shock to David, but he took control of the situation. Or at least pretended to. “The rug was pulled from under me, but I knew Edel is a panicker, so I told her I already had a plan B,” he says.
They decided to stay in Barbados, as they liked the easy lifestyle. David worked freelance for some years, then he set up a design studio for a developer, lining up 40 professionals — architects, quantity surveyors, and engineers. “It was a good dress rehearsal for running my own company,” he says. “I thought, ‘If I can do it for someone else, I can do it for myself ’.”
In 2013, David was offered a job in Kuala Lumpur, but to accept would mean the family would have to pack their bags. “We were not ready to leave,” he says. “The kids had integrated. It’s a very easy way of living; the beach is walking distance; it’s like a village, everyone knows everyone.”
As he says himself, he was at a crossroads. He was thinking of starting his own company, but was a bit unsure. Then his parents came to visit. “There’s no better way to decide your future than on one of the swim-up barstools in the Accra Hotel,” David says with a laugh. “I told my dad what I was thinking, and his support was the final nod I needed to go at it full-on.”
David started his firm, Argo Development Studio, in 2013 in Barbados, and followed that with a Dublin office in 2017. There are 20 staff employed between the two. They specalise in a design and construction process called building information modelling (BIM) which allows them to design, cost and construct buildings in a 3D environment, which David says reduces waste and costs.
He feels they also have an advantage over other architectural practices in that they can offer 13-hour working days by having teams in Dublin and Barbados.
“When a project is time-sensitive, the Barbados team can take over from the Dublin office and continue working”
“When a project is time-sensitive, the Barbados team can take over from the Dublin office and continue working. Simple initiatives help to make a difference,” David explains.
The company, he says, is going well, and they have worked on many top projects in the Caribbean, including the Secret Bay hotel, recently voted Best Luxury Hotel by Harper’s Bazaar. They also have ongoing projects in Dublin. These include providing BIM consultancy services for Dublin Airport offices.
Given the heavy workload, it’s no wonder David enjoys a break away in his Leitrim holiday home with his four kids; the youngest, Sam, was born in Barbados.
Leitrim was an unusual choice for David and Edel, as both their families are dyed-in-the-wool Dubs — David’s parents came from Gardiner Street, while Edel’s family were from Sean McDermott Street. “Even though we were city centre, Dad used to take us to Bettystown to give us the country air. Edel and I wanted that for our kids too, a simple rural setting,” David says. “So we decided to look for a house within a two-hour radius of Dublin. We shortlisted six, and after I saw this, I said to Edel, ‘Call off the search’. This, for me, was crying out to be rescued; a piece of local history falling into ruin.”
The schoolhouse was 100 years old and had been abandoned as a school in the 1970s. Fortunately, the building had lots of good features, such as a very high roof, and even though it was originally only one floor, David was able to raise the ceiling in one part of the building, and he built a mezzanine to house the bedrooms.
A steel staircase links the ground floor and the mezzanine. They preserved what they could — for example, the original mantelpieces. Much is new, unavoidably, but David chose to use materials sympathetic to the age of the house, such as the panelling throughout.
He designed it as a passive house. The windows are triple-glazed. All the water required for the house comes from recycled rainwater — they have two massive tanks underground that hold all the water, including for the hot tub on the deck. They have solar panels, German wood-burning stoves, and they source their logs locally.
But it’s not just a practical home, it’s also cosy and elegant and full of light — the kind of house a teenage boy might have dreamed of when he first thought of designing houses.