Frank Lloyd Wright builder fears bungalow blitz

Marc Coleman is afraid that a house to be built on a site next door to him in Greystones, Co Wicklow, will compromise the integrity of his Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home

IT IS incredible that there is Frank Lloyd Wright house in Greystones, Co Wicklow, but for owner Marc Coleman, the recently completed building is the realization of a 27-year dream. He first came across the American architect when Dr Edward McParland put Wright's Robie house in Chicago up on screen during a Trinity lecture.

"I was 18 and I was just amazed," says Coleman, sitting in his new home surrounded by books on Wright. "When I saw Robie I loved the sleekness of design, the low gables, the band windows and window walls, the eaves held up by mullions, the simple materials, the link with nature and the fact that the house was like a series of decks, giving it a ship-like quality."

And this new house, in a neighbourhood of detached houses near the sea, displays all that Wrightean horizontal sleekness with soaring overhangs that are perfect for keeping the rain off. But Coleman now feels that this work will be compromised by a proposed new bungalow on the site next door, which has received planning permission and is now awaiting a decision from An Bord Pleanála.

It will certainly offer an exercise in compare and contrast between two very different styles of architecture: one belongs to the horizontal plane that represented a new movement in the US and across the world in the first half of the last century; the other is of the dormer window, pitched roof bungalow style that has offered bliss to many across the land.

Coleman says that he is happy for people to build what they like, as long as it respects the land and buildings around it, but he feels that the proposed new house is too close to his and, being higher, will drown his home. "The scaling, massing and proximity will compromise the integrity of the Frank Lloyd Wright house."

Coleman's neighbour, Kieran O'Carroll, says that he doesn't wish to comment while awaiting the decision from An Bord Pleanála.

Coleman's house was originally designed in 1959 for the Wieland family in Maryland, which has the same amount of rainfall as the Irish east coast, despite its hotter summers and crueller winters. The site was almost identical, falling by 10ft from top to bottom, which is part of the reason why the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation gave Coleman the design. When he was ready to build the house, and knock down the 1970s bungalow he and his family had lived in for 17 years, he called the foundation and spoke to Thomas Casey who had worked with Wright.

Casey came to Greystones, paced the site with Coleman and returned to the foundation archives to find suitable designs. Irish architects Tom Creed and CMB Design Group worked on the project here while the build was managed by Coleman himself, who is a project manager.

"That was crucial: Wright would send an apprentice to live on site to make sure it was built how he intended."

The striking thing about this house, for anyone who has seen Wright originals, is how new all of the materials look. The interior stands testament to Wright's humanism, with its warm timbers, clever use of low and high ceilings to demarcate intimate and social spaces, and its link with nature.

The other striking aspect is the keen sense of proportion and measurement. All of the lights line up beautifully and the whole design is on a 4ft square grid. This may sound pedantic, but there are six bricks to every 4ft grid and bricks line up perfectly with the floor, offering just one example of the exact measurements throughout the house.

Such attention to detail creates a sense of everything being right with the world and of being in the hands of a competent architect who cares or, in the words of Coleman,"a genius". While many architects today pay that attention to detail, plenty of designers, developers and builders take a more cavalier, sure-it'll-do approach.

Coleman has taken great care in sourcing the right materials - the 30,000 bricks were made for this project, in Scotland, the three-ply redwood and Douglas Fir used internally, came from Germany and Canada, while the western red cedar roof timber and floor joists came from Finland - and Coleman has ensured the house's sustainability with copious natural insulation and a carbon neutral wood-chip heating system, something he feels that nature loving Wright would have embraced if he were alive today.

Despite being designed more than 50 years ago, Coleman says the design is "almost more current in our fast-paced lives. A lot of contemporary architecture is not about human beings, it can be cold, whereas this is very human and natural with its natural materials, integration of nature and mathematical integrity of space and proportion; it's no wonder that you feel well in Frank Lloyd Wright buildings."

The house has already come to the attention of architects. Pritzker prizewinner Glenn Murcutt paid a visit, as did architect Steve Barton of Fletcher Priest. "Another architect came last Saturday and was so inspired he later told me that he had redesigned a whole project he was doing on a grid system."

The man Coleman holds responsible for all this, Eddie McParland, also phoned to say that he wanted to bring students up to see the house.

"I'm really thrilled," says Coleman. "That's what I'm trying to do: build a Frank Lloyd Wright and leave something behind that people can come and learn from."