Timberyard Social Housing | O'Donnell + Tuomey

This scheme repairs the local landscape by providing a new collective space, built around a former timber yard, making a residential enclave with a sense of place. The scheme works between the six storey scale proposed in general along the new Cork Street corridor and the smaller scale of the existing houses behind the site. The new buildings are in brick, with hardwood windows and screens to terraces and roof gardens. The windows are offset from each other in the walls to work with the complexity of the residential accommodation within, and to emphasise the continuity of the brick surface. The walls are modulated with recessed porches and terraces and projecting bay windows to give a depth and complexity to the building’s edge and an interface between the private world of the house and the neighbourhood. The development proposes to provide scale, identity and a piece of living city, which connects new development in the area to the historic character of the Liberties. Dublin is a city of rhythmic houses built of brick. Tall, gaunt and scuffing syncopations on the sidewalk and against the sky, the Timberyard looks like a child’s drawing of the city. With its mysterious, deep openings, it is both familiar and strange, as the architect dreamt. It claims local allies, taking cues from an industrial brick tower across the road and, on its eastern edge, giving shelter to a Marian grotto that previously stood outside the site. The Madonna is a surprise but she contributes graciously to the short pedestrian passage that is her new home. Locals have taken to placing a vase of cut flowers at her feet. A backland site was opened up when the Coombe By Pass cut through the city pattern. The urban design requirement was for a new street frontage to heal the wounds caused by the road engineering operation.