A mews is a narrow street or lane that originally provided access to the stables and carriage houses of the well-to-do residential areas of cities. Over time, many of those former stables have been converted into homes, known as mews houses. Today’s small house is a newly built mews house, placed in the backyard of a large semi-detached Victorian home in Dublin, Ireland.

As the neighboring mews houses were built in a wide variety of styles, Boyd Cody Architects felt free to design the Alma Lane house as a simple, sculptural cube sitting in the walled garden. However they did clad the structure in brick to match the neighboring homes. The solid form of the cube is broken by a scattering of large windows, their openings set off from the rough brick by frames of smooth anodized aluminum.

The entrance to the 110 m² (1,184 ft²) house opens to a wide hall. A large master suite, a good-sized second bedroom and a shared bathroom are on this level. At the end of the hall is the stairway leading up to the living area. The client requested a reverse floor plan, with the social spaces on the upper level, so as to have good all-day light and to take advantage of views over the garden wall.

A large combination living room and dining room takes up half the upper floor. The other half consists the kitchen in one corner, the stair hall in the middle, and a semi-outdoor patio space in the opposite corner. The tiled patio is separated from the rest of the house by glass walls and has a glass roof that slides open. All four spaces are connected by doorways, inviting circulation throughout the living space.

Enjoy the photos! The comments are open if you have anything you’d like to say!

Photographs by Paul Tierney, courtesy of Boyd Cody Architects. Via ArchDaily.

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