Commendation for Best Mixed-Use Development
HOUSE CALLS
St Anne's, Northbrook Road, Dublin 6, Ireland
This recently completed development of 471 houses, apartments and other buildings in a leafy suburb of Dublin is built on the former farmland of St Anne's Convent, the mother house of the Irish Sisters of Charity. The Victorian convent buildings and chapel were altered and extended to provide additional accommodation, and the late-Georgian Milltown House was renovated and converted into offices by and for O'Mahony Pike Architects, who have won awards and commendations for various phases of this development in recent years.
Most of the development consists of new apartments and townhouses in beautifully landscaped grounds, but the final phase of 28 new homes also included the restoration of a terrace of four houses that was part of the adjoining St Anne's Hospital, which closed in the mid-1990s and has now been converted into offices.
The restoration and conversion of each of the four late-Victorian terraced houses into two self-contained duplex apartments involved the removal of extensive partitioning and the replacement of all its original features at the back, where there is now an open atrium providing access to a modern pavilion building housing one-and two-bedroom apartments overlooking a central landscaped garden.
There is also a new terrace of eight contemporary mews houses, built kin brick with copper roofs. These have a deep plan, with their rooms arranged around a central double-height courtyard and the living areas on the first floor. Given the attractive and secure nature of courtyard houses both here and in this year's award-winning building for the best house of one or two storeys (see pages 75-78), one wonders why more homebuilders do not appreciate their advantages. Could it be that estate agents are pessimistic about their saleability? The 28 houses and apartments in this final phase at St Anne's sold at prices from 450,000 to 500,000 Euros - or from £298,000 to £332,000 in our steadily depreciating non-Euro currency.
Homebuilder: PARK DEVELOPMENTS LIMITED
The Gallops, 1 Glencairn Road, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland
Tel 00 353 1 295 8917
Fax 00 353 1 295 8920
Contact: Michael Cotter, Managing Director.
Email: eryan@parkdevelopments.ie
Architects: O'MAHONY PIKE ARCHITECTS
Milltown House, Mount St Anne's, Milltown, Dublin 6, Ireland
Tel 00 353 1 202 7400
Fax 00 353 1 283 0822
Website: www.omp.ie
Contact: David Smith, Project Architect.
Email: admin@omp.ie
Landscape Architects: BRADY SHIPMAN MARTIN
26 Temple Road, Dartry, Dublin 6, Ireland
Tel 00 353 1 497 9651
Fax 00 353 1 496 6651
Contact: Heidi Van Kotze, Landscape Architect.
Email: mail@bsmconsult.ie