Leading light: Boreenmanna Road home joins Loïc Dehaye's growing Cork portfolio

These then are the key elements informing his contemporary modernist house designs, beautifully showcased in a recent “Loic” house on nearby Boreenmanna Road.

The couple that commissioned it had been on the lookout for a site in the general Ballinlough/Ballintemple/Blackrock area for a while and were delighted when a “For Sale” sign appeared around 2017 on a patch of land across the road from GAA grounds Páirc Uí Rinn.

They entered the bidding process with auctioneer Tim Sullivan but dropped out when their limit was reached.

As luck would have it, competing buyers pulled out and Mr Sullivan let them know.

The couple went for it and bought the 0.142 acre (0.06 hectares) site in 2018. “There was a semi-detached bungalow there which had previously been rented out. “When we bought it, the bungalow had been unoccupied for a while and the site was very overgrown, but it came with full planning permission for a detached home and permission also to demolish the existing house,” the couple say.

The house for which planning was in place wasn’t exactly what they wanted so they hired Loïc. A friend had engaged him to design their passive home and the couple wanted to use a similar approach.

On Loïc’s advice, they submitted a new planning application for a detached home based on a design he created. His design envisaged moving the house deeper into the site — which is south-facing — and by pushing it back, they would get the benefit of more light.

The architect had a good starting point to work from — very high walls surround the land, obscuring it from view so it meant the main garden area could be out front, protected from rubbernecking pedestrians and enjoying the best aspect. “Since it was private, we could have the garden at the front. There’s a tall wall at the back, so the best light was out front too,” Loïc says.

“That’s why we tucked the house into the back of the site, to free up the front and make the most of the south-facing aspect. We used as much of the width of the site as we could while leaving room to the rear for a west-facing courtyard.”

After they’d demolished the single-storey dwelling to free up the site, the couple hired Ovens builder John O’Connor to build their new home in early 2020.

The original permission had been for a two-storey, flat-roof house, and they stuck with this while changing the front building line at ground floor level.

Loïc explains that while the first permission had single and two-storey elements projecting forward of the established front building line, his design pushed the ground floor level deeper into the site. “The large expanses of south-facing glazing at ground floor are recessed back 800mm to reduce the possibility of the living spaces overheating,” the architect says.

“The new design gives more space to the enclosed and private south-facing garden to the front by locating secondary rooms at ground floor to the rear of the site.

“Additionally, cars are kept as near to the site entrance as possible to free up more patio and garden space to the front of the house.

Inside the recessed floor-to-ceiling glazing, with massive double doors that slide open to the front garden, is the main kitchen/dining/living space. A huge, bright open-plan room, it includes contrasting dark and light kitchen units and island from Classic Kitchens in Carrigaline.

Particularly striking is the concrete floor, which continues throughout most of the ground floor, lightened in colour following a request from the woman of the house, and expertly done by Martin Cremin of Millstreet-based polished concrete floor specialists Cutsue Ltd.

More glazing to the rear of this main living space lets light in from behind and there’s a door from the kitchen area to the rear limestone courtyard, a nice, sheltered space for BBQs, enclosed inside a towering old stone wall. A rear playroom overlooks this space and there are patio doors from it to the courtyard, where there’s even enough room to play table tennis.

There are lots of clever storage solutions at this Boreenmanna Road home, not least behind the bespoke oak panelling that runs along one wall of the main living space, done by Wayne Gardner, John O’Connor’s carpenter. The panelling continues into the hallway, from where there’s a door (operated by magnet rather than a handle) into the “grown-ups’ room”, a large living room with a feature electric fireplace and more floor-to-ceiling glazing (all glass is triple-glazed, from 20/20 Glazing, Cork).

It overlooks the limestone patio out front, which runs more or less the width of the house.

The more functional rooms are to the rear, including a large utility with a WC. A separate guest WC is quite the luxury piece and includes an unusual black loo.

AT THE end of the hallway, a concrete staircase with lots of understairs storage leads up past a fabulous window. Set high into the wall and continuing into the roof, you can see the clouds scudding past, creating a great visual connection with the sky, Loïc says.

A large roof lantern funnels light down into the hallway, where the ceiling height reaches 5.7m over the entrance door. Elsewhere in the house, ceiling heights are 2.7m downstairs and 2.4m upstairs.

Bedrooms are all upstairs, and a star turn is the balcony off the main bedroom, recessed in the elevation as a shield from the elements and fitted with a seat.

“A quiet retreat or simply a place to watch a match in Páirc Uí Rinn,” says Loïc.

Functionality, simplicity and elegance are Loïc’s guiding principles, as well as passive home design. His Boreenmanna Road clients, fans of TV programme Grand Designs, were keen on a passive home approach and the house is built to very high levels of insulation and airtightness “well in excess of building regulation requirements”, the architect says. “Additionally, there are large expanses of triple-glazed south-facing windows, which allow for passive solar gain, while the first-floor overhang reduces the risk of overheating,” says Loïc.

This is aided too by an openable roof light in the circulation and stairs to create a passive stack ventilation, the architect says.

The house has mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), which means reduced heat demand, and increased levels of comfort and energy saving. The flat roof can hold more than 20 PV panels.

The couple say that the heat recovery system “cuts down on heating costs but is also useful for filtering pollen and pollution from the air”, which is particularly handy as they live beside a busy road. “It removes moist air too, so clothes dry a lot quicker,” they add.

Their new home is fitted with a smart home system, which helps to control the temperature as blinds or skylights

can be opened or closed centrally. The ambient temperature is 19C. The couple say that the heat pump is only in use between October and March and that the house is producing surplus electricity — which they can use to charge electric cars.

THE level of detail that went into meeting the clients’ needs is as obvious externally as it is internally. It’s an eye-catching home, a combination of dark zinc cladding (VMZinc Anthra-Zinc which is a preweathered black zinc) Staffordshire blue brick and Irish larch cladding (also by Wayne Gardner), which is untreated so will naturally weather to develop a silver colour over time.

There’s a lovely harmony between the materials, inside and out. Loïc particularly likes the combination of polished concrete, light oak panelling, black-finish kitchen, Dekton stone worktop and contemporary furniture in the main living space.

He likes also the privacy of the expertly-planted walled front garden with its large patio (landscaping is by Ann Hamilton Garden Design) and the curve of the limestone cobbled drive and of the larch-cladded, grass-roof shed inside the front gate, which blends so well with its surroundings as to be almost unnoticeable.

The curves soften the approach to the house and contrast nicely with the architect’s geometrical modernist style. “That corner of the site, next to the entrance, was an ideal location for a shed, where it wasn’t possible to park cars. The curve and timber cladding soften that corner. The shed is visible from the house, so needed to look well and not too intrusive,” the architect says.

Loïc’s satisfied clients say what they like most about the house — which meets all of their practical needs — is its brightness. “We love that there’s so much light everywhere and that there’s such a strong connection between the inside and the outside of the house,” they say. This tallies with Loïc’s favourite element of the property, the transparency through the ground floor, so you can see that lovely rear stone wall from the front patio.

The house, held up by some covid-related delays, was completed at the end of April 2022 and it’s proving to be a fabulous family home, in a very convenient cityside location.

For Loïc, the work goes on. Another of his homes was recently completed in Belmont Park, Ballinlough, while work is currently underway on a “Loïc” extension on Ballinlough Road.

After almost 20 years in the business in Cork, his work is identifiable around the city and its environs and has stretched east to Waterford and west into Kerry. What’s not to Loïc?

• Builder: John O’Connor (Ovens)
• Carpenter: Wayne Gardner
• Kitchen: Classic Kitchens,
• Carrigaline
• Lighting: Eibhlish Scannell at Lightplan, Cork
• Built-in fire unit: Denis O’Connor at Munster Bespoke Fires
• Concrete flooring: Martin Cremin at Cutsue Ltd
• Windows: 20/20 Glazing
• Oak flooring: O’Flynn’s Flooring, Douglas
• Landscaping: Anne Hamilton Garden Design