Grattan Court East
In seeking to create a contemporary street within the historic Dublin City core, this development of 5 terraced 4 storey townhouses and 2 corner duplex apartments, takes its formal and tectonic cues from the townhouse typologies found within the adjoining historic urban set pieces of Mount Street Merrion Square and the Grand Canal quays.
Each terraced townhouse is defined by its elevated second floor living space, a contemporary ‘piano nobile’ if you will, while allowing the occupant to rise above the fray below which in turn is linked to an upper gallery and external court, providing vistas across the city beyond.
Two bedrooms of sleeping accommodation are provided at first floor level, with a home study or third bedroom provided at street level, along with a threshold, pedestrian entrance, vehicular off street parking and a small garden. Each house sits and engages on the street edge, yet provides a buffer and threshold to their occupants.
In using a material palette of traditional brick and elegant vertically oriented fenestration the terrace again takes cues from the historic townhouses adjoining.
The spaces as designed seek to be flexible and novel, adaptable to life long family occupancy within the central city core, harnessing all that the city has to offer in an architectural riposte to often banal flat plate apartment development.
The development is completed with a pair of stacked corner duplex units which again provide for a novel response to the inner urban corner with large external terraces and windows providing a dynamic presence over the new street, anchoring the development and creating a distinct sense of place, moment and calm.
