Name Barbara O'Callaghan. Address Clonskeagh, Dublin 14. Dwelling Converted library. Here since 2004
"I live in Seán MacBride's library in Clonskeagh. My husband, Maurice, bought the library a few years ago, when it was in a fairly poor state. He got the architect Derek Tynan to build a very modern wing. So it's a very modern structure adjoining a period piece. There's a glazed conservatory connecting the new wing and the library to the old main house. We left the library virtually untouched; we didn't want to disturb it. We kept most of the bookshelves, and got new bookshelves to exactly match the original ones.
"The room has all of its carved beams and so on intact. There are cellars underneath for storing apple and things. It's a very special place. The new wing is in theory three rooms, but the room that we use in the add-on is a studio room; it's got no interior walls, a curved ceiling, all very open. I was brought up in Kilkenny, so I grew up with a lot of space.
"I moved from there to London, where I studied interior design, and for years I lived in tiny little places there. Now I have somewhere near the space I grew up with - although the site is being developed, with blocks of flats going up in the front garden and the rear garden. It's a shame, because Seán MacBride is a very important part of Irish history, and I've learned more about the man since living in the house. I've been a member of Amnesty International for years, so to live in the library of one of its founders is a privilege.
"The rest of the house has been carved up into apartments. We wouldn't know all the neighbours in the building - some are students in UCD, some are businesspeople - but we'd have a rapport with them.
"I'm a garden designer. I work on a gardening programme at
St John of God Hospital in Stillorgan, and so we work on a bit of the garden space. Generally it's a communal garden, but we have a bit of a herbaceous garden, too.
"Recently we've been focusing our efforts on a house in Co Kildare, near Kilmeague. Maurice bought the land years ago, and coincidentally my grandparents are from that area. They are all buried there. We've built a traditional Irish longhouse in the modern idiom, if you will. We spend weekends there. It's on five acres of land, so we have been doing a lot of work, conserving the bogland there and landscaping it. The place is covered with purple flowers at the moment. I can just go out and pick a salad from the garden. It's very peaceful, compared with the city."