Thirty-five units for an approved housing body are arranged in two residential blocks; a six-storey block that reinstates a strong street edge, and a mews block that defers to the scale of the existing houses at the rear of the site. The blocks are separated by a shared, landscaped courtyard and accessed from the street by an open-air passage. Used by all residents, it allows a glimpse into the inner life of the courtyard to passers-by.
The project is ordered into a number of layers that mediate between the private dwellings and the more public street and courtyard, through screens of balconies and terraces. Each dwelling facilitates access to balconies through both living and bedrooms.
Architects' Statement:
FKL architects is committed to contemporary design with a focus on the application of abstract ideas to built form.
Each project is approached from first principles by responding to the specifics of site and program and formulating a singular concept that informs all aspects of the design. This individual concept is firmly rooted in the pragmatics of the project. We seek to condense ideas to their essentials, from the building form to the detail of junctions between materials with all decisions re-affirming and complementing the primary concept. The form and language of each project grows out of this approach leading to a diversity in the work, within a framework given by enduring interests; in space, atmosphere, assemblage, pattern, hierarchy, texture and materiality.
FKL have lectured and have been exhibited nationally and internationally and have received a number of national awards and have been nominated for the Mies Van der Rohe European Architecture Award. FKL curated conceived and designed the Irish entry for the Venice Biennale 2006, SubUrban to SuperRural, comprising theoretical projects by nine architects on the issue of sprawl. FKL were part of the inaugural Lisbon Architecture Triennale with d-void, in 2007. In 2009 FKL initiated the Shadowland project examining how architects can look at solutions to Ghost states
General Info