Keen biker takes a real shine to metal house

An aluminium-coated city house with a flush facade by Odos Architects  seems to evoke its motorbike-loving client, writes Emma Cullinan

JUST NORTH of Smithfield, near Dublin city centre, there are sweet streets of pastel-painted 1950s homes in the style that eschewed ornament-free Modernism.

On one such street, where houses wear the typical adornments of porches and gingerbread-house style barge boards, there is a silver home that is so flush and free of twiddly bits that, set beside its pitched roof neighbour, it seems as if someone took the façade off it and left an undercoat.

That is just what the client wanted and - despite the home's understatement - the design brings bravery in its materials: it is coated in anodised aluminium.

"I wanted something very modern and I like the idea of having new and old side by side," says the owner. Having spoken to a few architect practices, he eventually commissioned Odos.

"They were the only people who really understood what I wanted and I liked the work they had done but I felt I had to give other people a chance and some of the designs were absolutely incredible. One architect came up with a Swiss cottage. I don't know where they got that idea from because the brief was fairly tight."

That chalet was probably an attempt to set the new building in context with the rest of the terrace but in the case of the metal abode, the context comes from its scale.

It is three storeys high, with its second storey ending at the eaves of its neighbour and the third storey apexing at the roof line of the pitch next door. Yet, while the first two storeys are very much 'there', the third storey is a sort of pencil sketch comprising a set-back livingroom with terrace in front protected by a row of thin metal columns.

The set-back was a planning requirement although the planners were very supportive of the overall design, says Darrell O'Donoghue of Odos.

The client sees the aluminium walls as relating to grey walls in the surrounding area (including the house beside it) but the links come much closer to home: he is a motorbike fanatic and all those metal panels on the front and back of the house, with sections that swing open, speak of vehicle bodywork.

This could herald a whole new style of architecture that fits the owner - how about a leather or furry facade for a horse-owning client or a timber elevation for nature lovers (oh, wait, that's been done).

The interior is designed around the needs of the owner's motor and push bikes with an already oily open-plan room on the ground floor in which to store, dismantle and rebuild velocipedes.

The second floor is for bedrooms and the upper floor of the house has an open-plan kitchen and dining area. All of the floors are in an order specified by the client who realises that if you want light and privacy in the city, it's best to earmark the top floor for living in.

The interior is laid out simply to make the most of the thin site. Circulation has been maximised with the accommodation stacked one area above the other all 'hanging off' the staircase which sits on the south side of the the house and shoots straight up in one steep line from the front door, creating an essentially triple-height space which is generously top-lit with roof lights.

There is an irony in having the motorbikes behind the ground-floor wall because in many contemporary city houses, where planners have insisted on ground floor garages to create off-street parking, there are actually, ahem, bedrooms hiding behind garage doors. In this case, the reverse is true - where many would have wanted a bedroom, this client called for garage space.

A wood-burning stove on the top floor also shows that - while this house has a restrained shell - within it is very much a human space with it smoky and oily elements adding a rough touch.

Such irreverence to an overall uniformity is shown in the variance in batches of aluminium. On the front of the house, one panel is in a slightly different colour to the rest.

"Such variations in the different batches are part and parcel of the material," says O'Donoghue talking of the honesty of using the fabric in such a way, although in the overall build the architects kept to a tight enough palette of materials.

The architects chose the metal because it wouldn't require repainting or much maintenance, and for its pliability (although there are concerns about the oil-thirsty energy used to make aluminium).

The aluminium at the rear of the house looks shinier than that on the front, although that could be to do with the eastern light. It is not just the dancing light that animates this elevation but also the fact that more flaps tend to be opened in this private space - such as that in the kitchen on the top floor and the one in the main bedroom and its en suite.

The shape of the back wall is also more lively than the front, with the main elevation following the building line of the rest of the terrace, while the ground floor is recessed to comply with planning conditions for a certain amount of outdoor space. This provides a welcome overhang, under which you can experience the Irish outdoors without getting wet.

The aluminium was formed by a local steel works, who also made the baffled terrace screen which is slanted so that you can't see into it from one side while it offers a sliced view in from the other. The terrace glows through the screen at night.

While Daniel Libeskind and Frank Gehry's complex titanium structures are pricey, this simpler metal abode was carried out on a tight enough budget and was a fairly standard build, of mainly blockwork, steel joists and curtain walling.

"All of the materials are exactly the same as those used on an average suburban semi-D," says O'Donoghue. The 3mm sheets of aluminium were bonded onto various elements, including ply and a standard garage door.

There is a current trend for trying out new cladding materials, and matching the substance to the client's hobby is certainly an interesting method of selection.