There's not much privacy in this house, where a huge window lets everyone see into the bathroom, and the children can peep at guests through slots and spyholes. But it works for this relaxed family, writes Emma Cullinan.
Architect Tom Mulligan now lives in the garden where he used to play as a child. He has built a house next to his old family home in Dublin, in keeping with the period style of the building next door, but that's where the similarities end.
When you open the front door you are confronted with a large hole; an open staircase descends to the floor below and rises up to skylights over the floor above. This is designed to make the home feel bigger.
The architect has sought to make a small house (with a "footprint" of 64-70 square metres, albeit three storeys) seem large by creating this three-metre-wide void, a massive hall that lets in plenty of light. A lot happens in this "hall": the steel and glass stairs, built by Longford Architectural Metalwork, are essentially a large piece of furniture that Mulligan's two children, and their friends, clamber all over, while the area at the base of the stairs serves as a dining room, off the kitchen.
The living spaces are large and flow into the hallway. They include the kitchen and dining area at the base of the stairs. The sittingroom is on the middle floor, while the three bedrooms on the top floor are small. "In a house this size, you can't afford to have spaces that are never used," says Mulligan. "Anyway, I don't like formal spaces."
There is one hideaway room, just off the kitchen, which is for parents in the evening and kids during the daytime, and comes complete with a wash room where people can clean up after playing sports. When the children older, this snug will be used as their study.
As well as the trick of making a small house seem big, there's the other illusion of a seemingly chic and expensive interior, which was actually achieved on a budget. The exterior and stairs gobbled up much of the quota, and savings were made elsewhere.
While the kitchen is from the top-end Siematic range, it was simply done to keep costs down. "We treated it as three items of furniture," says Mulligan, of NMA Architects, who designed Roches on Henry Street, Dublin. There's the island, on which the kids eat breakfast; the worktop facing the windows; and the cupboards on the wall next to this. The kitchen materials were also kept to a trio: timber, and white and stainless steel. Indented kick plates make it ergonomically satisfying as you're not forever whacking the bases of the units with your toes as you work.
As well as the huge openings between "rooms" there are also small apertures: from the front door you get a glimpse of part of the maple-floored sitting room through a slit window, and in the bedroom overlooking the front door, Mulligan has put in a small spyhole through which his son can see who's arriving. He says when he was a child he would always rush to see who had turned up to his parents' dinner parties. This is a truly bespoke and imaginative home.
On the brick party-wall, there is a large panel with lighting behind it that provides a beautiful effect at night, and on the wall opposite is the master bedroom's cantilevered en suite bathroom. Along with the skylights, and lighting panel, this protruding box is designed to add a dynamic to the space. It contains a shower with a solid glass screen, a composite basin from 2 Cool Design in Temple Bar, Dublin, and a Hansgrohe tap in the shape of the peace symbol. This room takes open-plan living to the extreme. The fact that people coming up the stairs can see inside the bathroom divides guests into those who think this a great idea and those who raise their eyebrows.
But this is the home of a wonderfully relaxed, innovative family who are able to live happily together in this open space. The kids and their friends often test Newton's theory by throwing objects up and down the void. It shows that beautiful, imaginative and stylish homes can be fun, too.