Keeping House
A small cottage on a hill on the west coast of Ireland, kept and refurbished as the living room of a new home, with bedrooms in a second volume and shared spaces beneath a planted roof between them.
The site is a hill at Liscannor on the west coast of Ireland, open to the Atlantic weather, with fields divided by dry-stone walls. A small house already stood there. A structural and fabric assessment established that the cottage could be retained, and the existing house became the project's starting point.
The design pairs two volumes. The original house is emptied and refurbished as the living space, keeping its white rendered stone walls, pitched roof and scale along the lane. A second volume stands behind it, clad in dark timber and slate, containing the bedrooms and services beneath a ridge that crosses the plan diagonally, echoing the cottage's pitch. Between them, a green-roofed link holds the kitchen, dining space and a terrace, its planted roof rising from the field so the join between old and new reads as landscape rather than building.
From the lane, the house presents a familiar profile of gable, render, slate, and the dark volume rises behind it. Dry-stone walls continue around the entrance court, framing a covered approach cut through the link. On the horizon the two roofs and the green between them create a low silhouette that belongs to the hill.
