Going underground in the Liberties

A pair of concrete boxes buried behind a churchyard wall are the most radically unconventional semi-ds in Dublin. Environment Editor Frank MacDonald reports.

What do you get when an architect buries a pair of concrete boxes behind a churchyard wall in the Liberties, with no windows as such and no doors you can open either? The answer is the most radically unconventional "semi-ds" in Dublin.

Whoever buys them will even get an archaeological drawing each of the Norman layer from which the site was excavated to the rear of St Nicholas of Myra's church on Francis Street, a place dear to the heart and lateral-thinking mind of Tom de Paor, the architect.

John Dillon Street never saw anything like this. Old and new residents of this gentrifying area of artisan houses might have anticipated something similar to be built on the site, but Jay Bourke is no ordinary developer and Tom de Paor is no ordinary architect.

A Dublin calp stone wall has two recessed cedar-clad porches in it, each flanked by a dark mirror glazing.

Above the wall, from the opposite side of the street, you can see tufts of marram grass marking the roof gardens of the curiously addressed 0 and -1 John Dillon Street.

The front door slides open and you enter on a half-landing. Above is the main living space with a split kitchen, the working area under a rooflight extending the full width of the house, and the rest (a sort of bar) beyond a sliding screen in the Carrara marble-floored livingroom.

All of the enclosing walls are fair-faced concrete, cast on site. A tropical hardwood dining table is suspended from the ceiling under another rooflight.

A glass wall beyond it frames the small courtyard garden, open to the sky and planted with Japanese maple, ferns and Virginia creeper.

Steel stairs lead up to the roof terrace, bizarrely floored in Carrara too, where future residents could dine out al fresco - admittedly in full view of the apartment blocks on Patrick Street and the parish priest's house, but also the church's stained glass windows.

Down below, the buried lower floor is at a depth where human remains were found and then sent to the National Museum.

De Paor lies down on one of the double beds, each set on a hardwood podium, and solemnly declares that they are aligned in the same direction as the bodies.

Both bedrooms have glass walls, facing each other across a rectangular gap where there's a Connemara marble Jacuzzi, also open to the sky. De Paor points to the curtain rails, which suggest that the bedrooms would have more privacy than might appear at first sight.

On its other side, the master bedroom has a sunken Connemara marble bath and a "telephone shower" that drains through the slatted hardwood floor. There's a separate toilet and washbasin with a high-level window, the one behind the mirror glazing on the street.

Wardrobes on the end wall of each bedroom could be used for storing clothes or as console units for audio-visuals. There's oodles of storage space along a corridor on the bedroom level and also under the podium of each bed, all faced in the same striped hardwood.

All of the tropical timber, incidentally, was salvaged by stripping out packing cases on ships from South America.

Both houses have gas-fired central heating, by far the most efficient, and electrical wiring is concealed; it's even difficult to see where the switches are located. "They're effectively a pair of 'two-up, two-downs' gone haywire", de Paor chuckles.

"These are also Grade 1 listed buildings because they're within the church grounds." Some of the external planting (silver birch, cherry and mountain ash) is actually on church property.

Identical in layout and size (approximately 120sq m, 1,291sq ft), the twin houses may be half-buried, but they are more than a cut above the general dross of urban infill that has erupted in and around Francis Street in recent years.

No wonder, as they cost "more than a million" to build. The site was also very expensive when Jay Bourke bought it five years ago and put up the money to realise Tom de Paor's quirky vision. The plan now is to sell one by auction and the other afterwards.

Asked what the houses might sell for, de Paor - who is in for a cut of the proceeds - shrugs and says: "As they say, it should wipe its face".

St Nicholas of Myra, by the way, is the patron saint of property owners. Or is it developers?