Winning Portobello extension combines sleekness and humanity

The architects who won an AAI award for remodelling a city cottage to give it views and light tell Emma Cullinanhow they did it

REMODELLING and extending a single-storey cottage in Portobello, Dublin 8, won A2 Architects - run by Peter Carroll and Caomhan Murphy - one of the AAI's top awards. It is a protected structure and so all new additions crouch behind the late 1800s Victorian façade: all that is left of the original, internally, is the hallway and front room: the deep new extension takes its lead from that square sittingroom.

The architects listened to their client - which has resulted in a person-friendly house - and also to their own hearts, so there are borrowings from the house in St Mary's Lane, Ballsbridge, that Robin Walker designed in 1964, which the architects have admired since their student days; internal courtyards, exposed concrete and ply are just some of the references.

Another installation from their past - following trips over the years to Le Corbusier buildings - are the earthy but bold red and green paint colours mixed up by Corb in 1931. That colour scheme is shot through with black, in the form of slate and powder-coated aluminium window surrounds.

When the owner moved here in the 1980s the original two-bedroom house with an outdoor loo had been turned into a one-bed with en suite and the front room had had a door knocked through its rear into a kitchen.

The owner employed a technician, told him how he wanted it to change, went for planning and was refused. Five years later he decided to employ an architect to help him translate his wishes into a suitable design and get planning.

He admires A2 Architects' professionalism and patience, which was displayed while he requested more and more modification. He now admits: "Once I realised that I was being naïve regarding the costs associated with my lofty plans, I chose the design that fully met my brief - this was in fact the innovative design A2 had first presented."

After that he let them at it, although it "was not a carte blanche as I was kept in the loop at all times". Having lived in the house for 10 years the owner knew what worked and what didn't. The brief included a list of all the sunny spots both inside and out - for basking purposes; a desire for certain views through the building, into the sky and across Dublin's rooftops; and a professed love for the almost perfect square of the characterful front sittingroom. "I felt that this square proportion should hold through the complete design," says Peter Carroll, who took the client's wishes, along with his and Caomhan's, and hauled them into a logical clean-lined, somewhat functional form that stems from Modernism: yet this building is not the sterile structure which that might suggest because it has been softened by the use of raw materials and those brave colours.

It also has human touches such as the slate slab at the top of the few steps that lead down from the front hall, which would work nicely as a seat or a place to chuck post, and the continuation of the concrete kitchen counter (made in-situ by Unicrete) through the rear glass wall where it becomes a generous seat that absorbs evening sun.

Places on which to flop encourage human interaction with buildings and make them more comfortable while areas such as the cedar deck reached via the upstairs bathroom appeals to some innate fondness for air-drying after being in water.

Steering clear of a single white, glass box, the architects have managed to squeeze in two floors at the rear after finding that the existing floor at the back of the house was suspended. So now, after you pass the period piece at the front of the house, you can head straight down to the garden, past a larch-ply covered service wall to the left (containing a shower room, washing machines, hot press and so on) and, on the right, a studio/bedroom and then a glass surrounded courtyard.

Past this is the kitchen/dining area looking out to the garden, but there are also views back; through the courtyard into the study; through the hall towards the front of the house and up through a clerestory which sits above the glazed sliding doors beside the courtyard. "With buildings on smaller plots every single dimension matters," says Carroll, "if we hadn't lifted that courtyard wall by 600mm those views wouldn't be possible."

That extra 60cm also means that you can look down through the courtyard and diningroom into the garden, from the bedroom on the first floor. This is reached by turning right at the end of the front hall, again pushing the extension out of the simple box format.

So the overall design has been geometrically planned, and framed within two new party walls that allowed the architect to ignore the messy shared walls and varying roof structures that are inherited by such mid-terrace schemes. But within this sleek package come materials such as ply, exposed concrete ceilings, slate and strong colours: the side walls are green and certain structural elements within are red. So despite the clean lines - such as handle-free kitchen units - there is texture here. Such materials have an honesty about them, says Carroll, and they are also easy to keep. While the ply and concrete may seem to contrast widely the architects point to the link between the ply and the concrete's formwork.

Any architect worth their exalt will bring natural light into a building nowadays and that has been done through holes into the roof stitched by baffles down through which light falls, and that internal courtyard and large windows. One neighbour - locked out of his own home while the build was on site - came in here and sat with the architect. "The light, the light," said Louis le Brocquy appreciatively as he contemplated the work on this house.