ODOS Architects created a challenging structure between artisan homes, on a corner site in Dublin 7, writes Emma Cullinan

The first thing that strikes you about the exterior of Grainne Foy and Ken Bulter's new house in north inner city Dublin is that it is essentially a brown wall.

The building closes the view at the end of a long street and from afar it resembles a low-rise industrial building, tucked in among single-storey cottages.

Close up, it's obviously more carefully considered, with its slatted timber end - mimicking a garage door - and its neat opaque glass window beside the front door at the other end of the house.

The external shape is taut and sharp and, if anything, borrows from the outline of the flats in the complex behind the house. But its spirit is lighter.

There's a bit of an architectural history lesson to be had on this plot: traditional cottages flank the new building whose outline is similar to the Haus am Horn made for the Bauhaus school's first major exhibition in 1923. This pared structure took its part in breaking the mould of previous house types.

Then behind the cottages and "brown wall" is the type of housing estate that such Modern architecture is said to be responsible for.

The brief to ODOS Architects was for a house that was secure, private and bright. And partners David O'Shea and Darrell O'Donoghue certainly responded literally.

Many urban houses have a "defensible space" in front of them, marking the gap between public and private ownership. These include front steps, railed-off areas, porches, front gardens and walkways on larger schemes.

Yet in many Irish neighbourhoods, front doors and windows are right on the pavement. In the car-free past this sometimes worked well, with communities chatting and playing on the street. Now the response to pavement frontages is net curtains and front rooms kept "for best" while inhabitants retreat to the rear of the house.

When Ken and Grainne lived in the cottage next door to their new home they found it odd to have people walking right past them when they were in the front room - so they are content with their unpunctured brown wall that turns its back on the street. While they are happy to engage with their neighbours personally, they didn't want to face everyone cutting through the area, past their house on the corner.

The irony is that blank walls incite curiosity. Children's literature is littered with walls with magical worlds beyond: from Oscar Wilde's Selfish Giant to The Secret Garden by F H Burnett and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis.

Come to think of it, the facade of this house does resemble an Italian designer wardrobe, and behind it is a magical kingdom shot with dancing light.

Local children suspect this as they often knock on the front door and ask what's behind the wall and one woman even followed Grainne in, thinking it was the new community centre that they had been promised.

Had she been allowed in she would have discovered a light-infused home on multi levels. This house turns out to be like those defensive individuals who have soft hearts hidden within.

Beyond the front door is the two-storey part of the house: with the lower level dug out, keeping the building below the surrounding rooflines. To the left is a large sittingroom/kitchen at ground level.

Ahead of the front door, steps descend into a "den" that houses comfortable chairs, the music machine and television. Beyond this is a bedroom whose windows, at head height, give you a worm's-eye view of the gravelled garden to the rear.

Windows in this house don't come in conventional shapes - instead they are at feet level or comprise floor-to-ceiling slits, slashes in the roof, or complete walls. Nor do they only sit on external walls and roofs; they punctuate internal walls and ceilings too.

From the submerged livingroom you visually connect - through a glass partition - to the corridor leading to the livingroom. Except that the notion of corridors has been perforated: while there is light at the end of internal tunnels, there is all light along them too.

The downstairs corridor has door-free openings into two rooms; there's that view through the "den" wall into the corridor above; a view out to the rear garden through a tall opening; and another view through to bedroom stairs, this time through orange glass, adding colour into the light show.

"We wanted to create visual connections beyond the space you're in," says architect David O'Shea.

This is a feature of ODOS' work: they've also created visual journeys out through various openings in a house they designed in Blackrock, Co Dublin.

Although that, conversely, addresses the neighbourhood with generous windows.

The introduction of light and unexpected views has become an important feature of Irish architecture recently but it is valuable to be reminded why.

"The light gets you up in the morning with a smile on your face," says Ken. "Until you live somewhere like this you just don't realise how a building affects your mood."

While it may help him out of bed, he's also discovered the delights of staying put and looking up through the roof light above his pillow at the underbellies of birds, the passing clouds, the moon and occasional airplane.

Warming to his theme, David points out that this visual connection with outer space, from internal space, is infinite.

In the livingroom/kitchen, the visual connections beyond the internal space extend to the rear of courtyards to the south and west.

Little interferes with such links, as the walls to the courtyard are effectively glass, while that to the street is solid. The other wall is lined with a glossy white kitchen, created by Alan Gallagher.

This interlocks with cupboards in the bedroom and en suite on the other side of the wall. The house is a game of two halves - the two-storey part and single-storey room - which slip past each other at this central wall. Practically, this enables a central plumbing core.

A teenager's bedroom looks out across the top of the kitchen roof through a slit to the south and up through a roof light.

"This building teaches kids something new," says David. "The kaleidoscopic light coming into this bedroom means that he experiences light in a new way."

Ask a child to draw a house and it will have a pitched roof, a garden in front and smoke coming out of the chimney.

David is keen for the next generation to have a wider view of what a home could be and is happy that the local children keep asking what the building is. "They don't read it as a house." He's also happy that his clients have embraced the new. As Ken says: "The surrounding cottages are 100 years old, why copy them?"

"Without clients like these we'd just be sitting in an office dreaming about what could be done," says David.

He admits he was apprehensive about his brown-walled exterior. When the hoarding was taken down after the build, he visited the site on a rainy evening. Standing across the road he saw two 10-year-old girls walk by. "That's f++king deadly," said one to the other. David was thrilled: "That, for me, epitomised what it should be about. They were not highly culturally literate and they were being introduced to architecture they hadn't seen before. For them to stop on a rainy night and say that means the building has succeeded."