Home

Inside the dragon's den in Dublin 14

14.09.11

 . The domicile is at the edge of Harlech Downs, a Privet Persistence-esque small estate and the last place you would want to go to hide out from the real world.

The house is littered with race- and fairy-tale elements: an underground passageway that takes you from the vital house to the front gates; a secret garden designed in the in the neighbourhood; a crucible used by glass artist Killian Schurman to scrape by the glass panels and light-box fixtures that adorn every flat.

There isn’t a straight line in sight. Curved doors and rooms are laid out in an structured fashion so that it’s easy to lose yourself internal.

And that is the idea. The vendors wanted to take their kids on an extraordinarily big adventure and they delivered on that promise in spades. There is like nothing it on the Irish vend.

The owners have Welsh connections, which goes some way to explaining the dragon convention writ large on the entrance gates and whose behind pops up as a motif throughout the property, from the roof of the summer sporting house, a Hansel and Gretel-style confection at the end of the garden to the Jack and the Beanstalk-like tree ornament on the staircase ironmongery. A second ceramic tree climbs up the separator. Both “grow” all the way up through the house, towards the skylight in the roof.

Source: Irish Times