• Louise Cotter
  

• Clancy Moore
  

• 
  Winter 2013
  Volume 30. No. 4

Architecture
Architecture
Clancy Moore
Louise Cotter
Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland

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Slievebawnogue is set on a wooded ridge overlooking the Glenasmole Valley in County Dublin. This is not a wild landscape but one continuously modified and tended by people. The river Dodder flows through the valley and in the 19th century this was dammed and two reservoirs as well as a series of weirs were made to supply water to the people of Rathmines and Rathgar. Stone for the project was quarried locally on the slopes of Slievebawnogue and subsequently the abandoned quarry was left to be colonized by trees and scrub. The encroaching suburbanization of Dublin’s green belt has been halted in this area by a rigorous planning regime and the cost of houses has all but excluded local families from the market. The architects’ clients, an extended family of two sisters and a brother looked to their own lands for a place on which to build. The site itself is eked out of the old quarry; its level floor allowed a rare opportunity to build in this protected landscape. The building footprint was prescribed and defined by its distance from an adjacent stream and the shadow cast by the quarry wall, while a tower was probably out of the question in planning terms. The building had also to be raised spanning across the mouth of the quarry to retain access. These strict parameters and the strong context that defined the building form in three dimensions precluded a conventional response; a rigorous structural solution was required for what was to be effectively an inhabited bridge. The orthodox expressions of front and back, roof and ground were irrelevant here; a more fundamental investigation of form and tectonic expression was called for.