Drawing a design from nature's blueprint

The surrounding trees - and the sun's path - helped to dictate the form of this house by McGarry Ní Éanaigh Architects, writes Emma Cullinan

We may snigger but, says architect Siobhán Ní Éanaigh, Termonfeckin is the greatest village name in Ireland. It's an Anglicisation of the softer seeming Tearmann Feichín. The Gaelic sports clubs take the name St Fechins but, did I hear her right, laughing as she tells me that the football team are called the Feckers?

All around these parts new housing is taking traditional villages and towns to greater circumferences, and long strips of development along coasts are bringing separate seaside conurbations together. The last time I was in Drogheda you could see the river as you drove into town but that's changed.

Termonfeckin, too, has its dormer-laden new homes sitting on high points but the village has retained a traditional feel largely aided by the softening effects of its mature trees and undulating ground. Nature has a great way of taking the edge off man-made structures especially if those constructions are built in a symbiotic relationship with land and weather.

Modernists recognised how much happier people would be if they connected with the environment - no doubt a reaction to war and industrialisation. "Modern architecture came into existence to help man feel at home in a new world," writes Christian Norberg-Schulz in his book Principles of Modern Architecture. "The new dwelling should satisfy the need for identification and thus be an expression of a renewed friendship between man and his environment."

It was the trees on the site that helped to dictate the design of this house by McGarry Ní Éanaigh Architects: both the clients and architects wanted that. A large ash tree to the north east proved very influential, in luring the house towards the east.

The ground floor of the building hunkers into a slope that runs away to the south.

Happily the southern elevation faces away from the road allowing for large windows with which to gather light and views. A west-facing living room - off the left of the hall - also embraces light with large windows. This room steps down half way along as if descending further into the depths of nature, or the soil at least. Lest the generally open-plan spaces on the ground floor dazzle resident teenagers, there's a cosy television room between the two main living areas.

As with many larger practices in Ireland, McGarry Ní Éanaigh rarely design single houses, instead concentrating on housing and schools. The Drogheda-based practice is well placed to build all of those schools that the east coast of Meath and Louth is lacking. They are just finishing one in Ratoath, Co Meath.

This house came about because a person they knew approached them. He had lived in a classic Georgian house in Drogheda for most of his life until he and his wife and family spotted a house in Termonfeckin: the main appeal being the land it was on.

The architects suggested knocking down the existing, habitable 1950s house but the clients were against that - so it has been swallowed into the core of a much larger, five-bed, five-bathroom new home running to 367sq m.

The cruciform hipped roof came off the existing structure and it was pulled into line with the long new pitched roof (the pitch being a planning requirement) running from east to west.

The cross shape of the old house is recalled by two mono-pitched roofs sliding out of the main roof, one becoming the main entrance porch to the front. Porches in Ireland don't normally come in this form: a stone wall with render overhang sliced by slatted iroko and a glass panel. The whole projection stands on a slender leg reminiscent of a Corbusian piloti. Funny how the existing 1950s house - built after the height of the Modernist era - looked to Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian layouts, while the new house take a Modernist spatial strategy (while paying attention to local tradition).

The client's life in a classical house had imprinted its symmetry on his psyche and he got his central fireplace in the kitchen/living space on the ground floor, but the architects persuaded him to go off centre - not least to follow the trees - in other parts of the house. Nature doesn't order her layouts - public park planters do that - and this house was designed to track the scenery.

The windows come in many shapes and placings to make the most of the surrounding environment: there are views out to those trees, plus a castle and two church spires. Every side of this house has windows and doors making the connection with the exterior not only visual but actual.

To the north - facing the road - the windows are high and small to allow for privacy. Walking along the upstairs corridor - which has bedrooms and en suite bathrooms off it - the windows are at head height allowing no-one to see in to your bed and bathroom outfits, or lack thereof. Exhibitionists and view seekers have a full-elevation-height window beside the front door. Yet the north side of the house doesn't look unfriendly from the exterior because the range of window sizes and white-rendered projections give it interest while the slatted iroko exudes warmth.

The main bedroom to the east has large windows and doors out onto a balcony which makes the owner feel as if he's in a tree house. There is also a short balcony running from this bedroom to its en suite, to the south (there's internal access to it too). The window here - as in other parts of the house - is an inverted L-shape allowing privacy when looking through the smaller part and a good view through the length of the L.

"We used a huge number of window types in this house," says Ní Éanaigh, "even though we narrowed them down."

The practice also kept to a materials palette: stone, iroko, steel, glass and render for the main structure with the addition of natural slate on the roof and zinc down pipes.

The chunky chimneys - with a light metal planes soaring over their tops - were designed by the architects. McGarry Ní Éanaigh have given their clients a truly bespoke house - there are those varying windows, the metal down pipes, the house-specific chimneys and other details: half way up the stairs there is a thin, short handrail sitting above a deep slit. This is framed in a stepped pattern that recalls Carlo Scarpa and Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

The stair wall falls just short of the ceiling, leaving a lengthy opening that offers views and natural light.

There are other joyful elements, such as circular routes between rooms on the ground floor and the balcony between bedroom and bathroom upstairs, not to mention the door into the west of the house, to the kitchen, so that cars can be parked and shopping unloaded right into the place where it's required.

The architects have really thought about this house and their clients' requirements; creating a varied yet unified composition spiced with playful ingredients.

It could have been a long, boring structure but there are contrasting elements that break the building down for interest while working together to create a simpatico entity.