Smash hit

He worked on the original scheme for the Donnelly house and gallery on the Vico Road in Killiney, while Pawson was putting together his bestselling ode, Minimum, his book on all things minimal. Later, he worked on the design of Pawson’s house in Ladbroke Grove, west London.

Boyd is attracted to reduction, to creating “a feeling or mood of silent contemplation, where the eyes rest and the heart is still”. He traces it to a summer spent as a student in Madrid, working for Alberto Campo Baeza, a friend of Pawson’s.

“We’d talk architecture for two hours a week, just to improve his English,” says Boyd. “He’s the main influence on how I think. His genius is for correct proportion and skill in the making of things.”

Ballagh, too, was always attracted to the clean look of things. He works hard to make the brush strokes in his paintings disappear. “Robert would pick up about details,” says Boyd. “At this scale, the detail must be bang on. It’s all you have. If you lose control of that, the project is lost.”

The renovated house is “very minimal”, says Ballagh. “It started with the concept of a courtyard, a central courtyard — but that was hugely wasteful. Seeing courtyard houses when we lived in Spain and north Africa inspired us. There was never any ostentation about them, unlike the Irish Dallas-style mansions that are intended to exhibit wealth for all to see.

“Instead, on a normal street someone might leave a door open and, passing by, you would glimpse a magnificent courtyard. The oasis is on the inside. It turns the whole thing around,” he says. “It’s the Japanese way.”

He remembers from his student days that the same concept formed the basis of the Roman house. It was also a concept adopted by Dublin’s Georgian houses: plain brick on the outside, elaborate — delirious, even — plaster ceilings within.

Boyd says the trick he performed with Cody and their project architect, James Corbett, was to make something expansive inside a shell that was tight and small. “The proportion of the houses was lovely, so we just followed the logic of what was there, cleansing the space to redefine it.”

The old bones of the three two-storey houses — which occupy about half the depth of the plot — were retained, while the extensions at the back were done away with. Two new glassy rooms complete a U-shaped arrangement around a tall courtyard behind the middle house.

The planning is straightforward. Number 3 houses the entrance hall — a fabulous wooden box, lined in yellow plywood — staircase, bathrooms and utility room. Behind it is a good-sized study. The ground floor of 4 and 5 forms a large living and dining area, with a kitchen and breakfast room behind, across the courtyard from the study.

At the front, over the living room, are two bedrooms. To the rear is a large, east-facing bedroom and a west-facing terrace that catches the sun.

An acid-etched glass screen — Boyd’s favourite material — restricts the view from the flats behind and acts as a reflector, bouncing south light into the house.

The space, anchored by the stone-floored courtyard with its riverine head, is fluid, with many connecting views and openings. Glass panels seem to make the hard-edged forms dissolve. There is little of Ballagh’s art to be seen. “The spaces are much more comfortable with very few pieces,” he says. “The ghosts of the three houses are still here.”

Robert Ballagh — Community of Faces, an exhibition of portraits, including No 3, is at the Crawford Municipal art gallery, Cork, from August 30 until October 4, 021 427 3377

www.crawfordartgallery.com/ballagh.html
Exhibition details

www.boydcodyarch.com
The architects’ website