A single-storey extension inspired by Elizabethan long galleries helped to open up the social spaces in Rathdown, a Thomas Stringer-built, 1930s, semi-detached red-brick in Dublin 6, and create strong connections with the garden. It also secured a third consecutive win for the Dublin-based Scullion Architects in the Living: House — Adaptation category at this year’s Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) awards.
Declan Scullion, the director of the practice, says that the ambition for the project was to complement and live up to the quality of the original house, as well as improving various connections.
“It’s very well-built housing stock with attractive details, little flourishes around windows and doors, and good-quality materials,” he says. “The issue was the quality of life for a modern family. The houses, while wonderfully well built, don’t offer social spaces around kitchens and dining in a way that has become much more a part of how we live in family homes.
The kitchen and dining area
JOHAN DEHLIN
“We wanted to build something that made strong social connections for the family, positive connections with the garden and complemented the detail, colour and appearance of homes of that era. Without being pastiche.”
The result is the long and narrow gallery-style addition with a wall of glazing on the garden side that runs the breadth of the back of the house, linking to rooms at the front and comprising a new kitchen/dining room and, three steps up, a living area. A utility room off the kitchen can be accessed from the front and back gardens. A tall lightbox over the kitchen pulls light into this northeast-facing space throughout the day.
The pared-back materials used include porcelain flooring that continues out to the garden, timber cabinetry and slatted panelling.
On the outside the glazing is framed with thin metalwork in dark green. “It’s like a Wimbledon green and has associations with 1930s architecture. I wanted it to read as something delicate that harmonised with how conservatories were built on the back of houses of that era,” Scullion says.
The living area in Rathdown is three steps up from the dining area
JOHAN DEHLIN
“It’s not a replica of a 1930s conservatory but it’s picking up on the atmosphere of it, which was these light traceries draped on to the back of a solid brick home,” he says. “That’s what we were trying to give the house. We wanted to give it a space that felt different from the static traditional rooms.”
The RIAI award for Rathdown follows wins in the same category for Charleville, a reimagined artisan cottage in North Strand, in 2023, and last year for Scullion’s own home, Apple Tree Terrace, a Victorian mid-terrace red-brick in Ranelagh.
The most recent award was the most surprising, he says. “I wasn’t sure there was a winner in it, so I was delighted when Rathdown won. I put two entries in this year and one of them got nowhere. You could have a different group of people judging and you might get a different result. So I don’t take it too seriously.”
Accolades such as these have, however, had a serious impact on the practice, which Scullion set up in 2016, after graduating in 2001 and working for some years in London for David Chipperfield — who was awarded the Pritzker Architecture prize in 2023 — and for McCullough Mulvin Architects back in Dublin.
Declan and Anna Scullion, owners of Apple Tree Terrace
BRYAN MEADE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
“It has improved our ability to convince clients we can do a good job for them. Clients are looking for reassurance of the quality of the work you’re going to deliver. There’s a big leap of faith on their part. They’re about to ask you to create something for an awful lot of money. We have got better at picking up work, not solely because of this, of course — it’s a combination of things — but it has contributed.”
Clients are also more trustful of the process. “People have more faith in you. Not always, but it has become easier to convince people to do the unexpected.”
In terms of what clients typically want from their projects, Scullion says most are looking for an improvement in their family life. “Connection to the garden is one of the things, but also a well-planned, well-organised home where the mundane functions of life are taken care of and where the spaces to socialise and hang out are comfortable and places you want to spend time in. People are consistently finding that their home has a deficit in some way, usually to do with the quality of family life.
“The design solutions should be seen as ways of sustaining good family life — a bright room, a room connected to the garden, one that’s acoustically comfortable. A house that’s easy to look after. These are all things that make family life better.”
Apple Tree Terrace won an RIAI award last year
JOHAN DEHLIN
On the flipside are checklists of requirements that are “supplementary signifiers of success” rather than aligning with what’s actually needed. “Because a neighbour, a friend or a relative has had their entire house decked out in integrated audiovisual systems or has a boot room, a utility and a pantry, some people think they need it too. As opposed to asking, what does my family need and what would be adequate?”
Part of his role, he says, is to challenge what people say they want. “I often say to clients, you must be very careful about me giving you exactly what you want. If I blindly just serve you what you’ve asked me for without interrogating, challenging you, without reframing the question, I think you’re going to be fundamentally disappointed with the service you’ll get. Now, as the practice has become more established, people are willing to hear you out when you challenge them.”
Budget is almost always a big consideration. “We always sweat the plan down, make it compact, make it efficient, make it enough to do the function. Where there’s opportunity for generosity we give it, but in the spaces we’re only in for a few hours a day we try to make them compact. You’ve got to be efficient, and you’ve got to be compact because of the market we’re in.”
Charleville, a reimagined artisan cottage in North Strand, was Scullion’s winning project in 2023
FIONN MCCANN
The scale of the projects is increasing as the practice becomes more established and, going forward, Scullion says he’d love to do more public sector projects and has always wanted to work on a theatre. “That’s probably the most exciting challenge I can think of. And housing — large-scale housing. I would like to put what we’ve learnt on individual houses to work on a larger scale.
“My intention with housing is always that the quality of the lived experience in the house is the best it can be. The means by which you can do it on social housing or multiunit housing has to be strategic. You’ll have to do a couple of really good simple moves in order to improve the quality of what otherwise would be developer-led, ordinary, bland housing. I’d be very interested in seeing how efficient could we be with what we would bring to multiunit housing.”