This year has seen a huge jump in entries to the Institute of Designers in Ireland (IDI) awards, says president Mark O'Riain, himself a former winner. The awards cover a range of design disciplines including residential interior design.
Entries are up by a third in this the Year of Irish Design which means there are plenty of fresh ideas to view at the exhibition of those shortlisted which runs at the Teeling Whiskey Distillery, Dublin 8, until November 28th.
The organisers of the awards, in its 43rd year, invites independent experts from each field to shortlist a selection. Simon Keane-Cowell from architecture and design site Architonic, who formerly worked with the British Design Council and Dublin design agency Red Dog, helped pick the trio shortlisted for the 2015 residential interiors category, which comprises: Róisín Lafferty of Kingston Lafferty Design whose work featured at last month's Ideal Homes Show; architect Paul Keating of Cork practice JE Keating and Associates who has created a name for himself in contemporary one-off houses; and interior designer Gillian Sherrard, who is originally from Derry and, having worked with Metropolis Design in South Africa, is now based in Dublin.
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The IDI Awards winners will be announced next Thursday, November 26th (idi-design.ie).
Turning a house on its head
Gillian Sherrard turned her Victorian house in Sandycove upside down to open it up and flood light in. The house originally had no windows on its south elevation. The challenge was altering its Victorian shell and making it habitable for modern life by introducing a lot of light, Sherrard explains. She did this by placing the bedrooms downstairs and putting the living rooms upstairs where they could interconnect and open out.
A dramatic double-height entrance hall sets the atmosphere for the house. “By carving out a double-height central space I had to lose a room in the original part of the house upstairs but the number of rooms in the overall house has been rebalanced and it now has the same number of bedrooms as it had when I started out,” Sherrard says. They’re now just better appointed.
The main living rooms are at the top of the airy open-tread powdered-coated steel staircase. She demolished the back return and put the kitchen upstairs with doors leading directly to the upper garden, a split-level south-facing space that her green-fingered husband created. There is a breakfast room with a large window seat – a great place to have brunch at the weekends, says Sherrard.
A limited number of materials have been used throughout. Reclaimed pitch-pine boards floor the kitchen. A tongue-and-groove painted counter-side is topped with Carrara marble countertops. The same marble is in the bathrooms.
The back wall is in Dolphin’s Barn brick with galvanised steel doors leading out to the garden. The inverted flat roof has exposed joists to add texture. From some of the kitchen’s many windows Joyce ’s tower and Michael Scott’s house are visible in the distance.
Sherrard who worked with Metropolis in Cape Town, mainly doing shops for fashion designer Jenni Button, is influenced by Parisian interiors and used panelling by Alan Keane to create “an architectural rhythm and a cosy warm feeling in the house to create a contemporary, harmonious and homely balance”.
She gets much of her inspiration from HomeExchange, a house-swapping agency that she has used many times to stay in incredible spaces, where she says you can see and feel what works.
[ sherrarddesign.comOpens in new window ]
Work in progress in Cork
Architect Paul Keating’s own home in Kinsale, originally a sorry-looking 1980s’ bungalow albeit one with beautiful views, was one of three properties he submitted.
He devised a two-phase refurbishment – to double the size of the house to 222sq m (2,400 sq ft) – that allowed his wife, their two kids and him to live in the old house as the extension was being constructed. He created a separate entrance for the builders to use to minimise the disruption.
The new part of the house includes a verandah where the family can eat outdoors while staying dry and take in the elevated sea views that include Kinsale’s Charles Fort and Roche’s Point.
When the build was completed the last thing to do was knock one dividing wall through to the completed extension beyond.
Being an architect he keeps tweaking the design to improve it. The house still isn’t finished, he insists, but he’s now getting round to installing a decent kitchen by Kube and replacing the flooring in the original part of the house with a twist on classic French parquet – in a grey distressed finish that looks thoroughly modern.
[ Keatingarchitects.ieOpens in new window ]
Free-flowing in Ballsbridge
Róisín Lafferty of Kingston Lafferty Design was asked to reimagine a house with an adjoining granny flat as a free-flowing family home. The clients had two young children and a burgeoning art collection that they also wanted to showcase.
“Their house had beautiful mature trees to the rear so the idea was to open up the back to lighten the house,” she explains.
Sliding doors (what she calls pocket doors, that slide from view into the walls) helped achieve this and cladding walls added extra texture to its look and feel.
An arched doorway from the kitchen to the playroom, for example, has been framed in encaustic tiles while the floor in the dining room climbs up the partition half wall to better frame that space, as Róisín puts it.
A heavy panelled living room, by Moore & O’Gorman Joinery, creates a room for grown-ups that feels a bit like a gentleman’s club and includes a secret bar built into the woodwork. Its glossy walls feature a specially mixed marine blue by Dulux.
The overall effect is polished and mature but the kids have been catered for also with sunny yellow space with lots of drawers for storage and a reading nook.
The granny flat became a main suite comprising a dressing room and a hotel-finish bathroom.
“The house also features a lot of warm brass lighting and a huge amount of mirroring to reflect the garden,” Lafferty says.
