We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic to creativity. When we get home, home is still the same, but something in our minds has changed, and that changes everything.
Glass Ribbon is a minimal house located in Dublin, Ireland, designed by Scullion Architects. A well-built semi-detached house, typical of the suburbs of Dublin, dates from the 1930s. Through the years, the house had suffered from poor alterations and additions though many of its fine but modest details of the period survived. Aside from its well-proportioned rooms, the house’s best asset was a triangular south facing garden adjacent to its largely blank side gable.
In extending and re-planning the house, the design proposals continue the tradition of axially related rooms in an enfilade arrangement. The generously sized entrance hall is reinstated as a paneled reception-room so that there are no corridors, one moves through the home from room-to-room. An undulating ribbon-of-glass is draped along the southern gable wall, which is opened up to redirect the axial room relationships towards the garden.