Cool in the Country

With the right team in place, these homeowners have created a unique family home nestled in the Wexford countryside.

- BARBARA EGAN/REPORTAGE

Sitting on an elevated site over the rolling countryside of Wexford is an unusual building that causes the passer-by to do a double-take. A traditional farmyard, with a barrel vaulted barn and lower out-buildings around a courtyard, like thousands of others; except it’s not. The barrel roof is polished zinc instead of the usual red or green-painted steel, and the south-facing end is a wall of glass. ‘The house was designed to blend with the traditional rural vernacular of the area, and to fit into the surrounding landscape,’ explains Philip Doyle of MDP and Partners, lead architect on the project. Doyle’s design groups three blocks around a central courtyard which faces south, downhill towards the panoramic vista. ‘The site is high and quite exposed, the grouping of the blocks provided a sheltered central outdoor ‘room’, which the clients loved,’ he says.

The barrel-vaulted block is the element with the living, dining and kitchen areas; double-height with a glazed end wall and large sliding doors out into the courtyard, it is awash with light. At the internal end is a small mezzanine study space with glass balustrades accessed by a hidden staircase. The glazed window at the end is huge and a structural engineer was needed to calculate spans and loading; the elevation is exposed to significant wind load from the elevated position above a sweeping landscape. The second block is the backbone of the project, which the clients saw as based on a traditional country house entrance hall; the rest of the house is symmetrical about the front door. This is also a double-height space with a striking curved staircase, it serves as a circulation area and is the link between the living and the bedroom block to the east side of the courtyard.