Dwelling at Maytree - ODOS Architects

Architects: ODOS Architects
Location: Wicklow, Ireland
Construction: Oaklawn Construction
Constructed Area: 287 sqm
Design Year: 2006
Construction Year: 2007-2008
Photographs: Ros Kavanagh and ODOS architects

This house is in essence a simple bold sculptural form which sits at the foot of a steep escarpment in the Wicklow hills. It is a two storey house with vehicular and pedestrian access from the Bray Road. Accommodation is comprised of a two car garage, boiler room, wc and utility at ground floor level and open plan living, kitchen, dining areas with 3 bedrooms (master en suite), study and family bathroom at first floor level.

This house replaces a derelict 1940’s single storey cottage (with associated out houses) which previously existed on the site.

The building is entered on foot at first floor level via a long stepped processional route to the front of the building. The façade to this stepped approach has been purposely left blank to focus the entrant to the point of entry whilst also weighting the propped cantilever appropriately. At entry level a hallway guides you to the open plan living kitchen and dining areas. These areas are contained within a propped cantilevered volume, which hovers above the landscape below. A forest of red columns has been inserted below the cantilever, which conceptually grow out of the hillside. These columns ‘guard’ a pedestrian route, which leads you under the cantilever to the rear garden and living room deck at first floor level. Along this route one truly experiences the sheerness of the escarpment above.

Internally the hallway at main entry level has been conceived as an “internal street” the dimensions of which widen to the more public aspects of the plan and diminish along the points of entry to private bedrooms and bathrooms. A study at main entry level offers a taste of the internal experience prior to entry.

The roofscape is peppered with rooflights in an attempt to engage the user with the steep escarpment to the rear of the house. This affords the occupant vertical views of sky and foliage from the most private spaces within the house.

Information taken from ArchDaily.

Beacon Condos Video

I used this video as part of the presentation to the Provo City Design Review Committee. It begins to give a sense of the scope of the development and the way in which it fits into the neighborhood context.

Metzgerstuble Bar and Cafe - DI Bernardo Bader

Taken from Contemporist
DI Bernardo Bader

Artist Residence

I was recently commissioned to do an addition of a home in the Sugar House area of Salt Lake City. The owner is an artist and furniture designer whose work focuses on exposing the generally hidden character of materials, as well as displaying construction details as part of the overall aesthetic. His picture frame series has been particularly of interest to me and subsequently became the general inspiration for the design.

I began by looking at the home as a type of picture frame which displays and "frames" the performance of everyday life. The frames also became areas of transparency between interior and exterior space. As to be expected the frames are used for viewing in and viewing out, but also used as areas of occupation and activity. Thus posing the question, "What does it mean to inhabit the frame?" Each fenestration directly relates to these ideas, but in different ways; allowing for a range of spatial experiences throughout.

fyi - the upper volume has been changed to corten steel panels.

CN Castle - Comoco Architects

Architects: Comoco
Location: Castelo Novo, Fundão, Portugal
Project Team: Luís Miguel Correia, Nelson Mota, Susana Constantino with Vanda Maldonado
Client: Fundão Municipality
Engineering: Direcção-Geral dos Edifícios e Monumentos Nacionais (DGEMN)
Building Contractor: General Contractor: STAP – Reparação, Consolidação e Modificação de Estruturas, S.A.
Landscape: Serrasqueiro e Filhos, lda
Project Area: 3,650 sqm
Project Year: 2003-2008
Photographs: FG+SG – Fernando Guerra, Sergio Guerra

The project’s brief requested the conservation and valorization of Castelo Novo’s Castle and surroundings. Moreover, it suggested also the creation of a space where people and visitors could enjoy it as a place of permanence. To answer these demands, the design solution created a “body” without a rigid boundary, organic, working independently of the existing structures but using them as a support. The construction was designed as a continuous abstract object, non-identifiable with a unique and specific purpose.

The object changes with the characteristics of the site. While in the church’s square it acts as a volume defining the limits, in the interior of the Castle’s walls, its shape is transformed into a pavement layer with ramps and stairs creating a pedestrian pathway which is suspended from the ground by metallic structure. This solution allows the visitors to admire the archeological findings without damaging them. The pathway finishes in the castle’s Main Tower where a “steel box” was inserted in its interior containing a multimedia room. This box allows also the creation of a platform where visitors can enjoy a panoramic view of the landscape. All the construction was made using lightweight metal structures which can allow a clear distinction of the new object from the existing structures and, at the same time, the reversibility of the operation.











information and images from ArchDaily

Ballymahon Farmhouse - ODOS Architects

Status : Complete
Area : 450 sqm
Design : ODOS architects, 2007
Completion : March 2009
Publications : Sunday Times HOME

Project Info:
Refurbishment and extension to a farmhouse and stable complex in Longford.

Eco File:
Traditional Portland Cement was replaced with environmentally friendly Eco-CEM and the house boasts a renewable energy source in it's high-efficiency wood pellet boiler which supplies the underfloor heating.

information provided from ODOS's website









ODOS Architects

LACMA - Renzo Piano, Bart Prince and Others

February 2010