The Dublin House idea explores and promotes the potential of small-scale residential development in inner city and inner suburban areas. It is aimed at people who want to create a home for themselves and their children in the city.

For Dublin Innovation Week 2009, Dublin City Architect, Ali Grehan, in association with UCD School of Architecture's 'Now What' group, ran a one day architectural competition to look for ideas for a ‘Dublin House’, a new type of residential building that would be viable for individual infill sites or as building units that would fit together for infill development on larger urban sites. The competition looked for design solutions that would address quality and liveability and were sensitive to the historic fabric of the city, that would address the poor design quality of many infill schemes, the loss of appropriate scale and grain when plots are accumulated for large development and the lack of choice in the design of apartment homes in cities.

A public workshop held in November 2010 showed that there is a great interest in the potential for individuals or groups of friends/people to undertake small developments of 2 to 6 residential units for themselves to live in.
The recent dominance of housing development by large scale developers has shown up the weakness of people buying their homes as 'products off the shelf' or as short term investments to be traded up within a few years. In 1930s and 1940s many small terraces of houses in Dublin were built on a very small scale - a person who owned or acquired a piece of land would build 6 or 7 homes, live in one themselves and sell the others. Georgian Dublin was also built this way - plots capable of accommodating one house were sold to individuals who built on their plot to a broad set of design rules, which is how the "random" uniformity of the Georgian terraces was achieved.

The recent way the market has provided housing and apartments in particular, removes people from the process of design. Creative outlets and individual input is confined to choices about floor and wall treatment. Dublin House takes the concept of engaging with future residents of housing - an area which DCC has developed in its regeneration projects - on to the next stage. The project will appeal to people who like the idea of living in the city and want to be able to bring their own ideas and creativity to their homes. In traditional housing this need can be met by extensions, adaptations and attic conversions all impossible in an apartment scheme unless somehow people can become involved in the design of apartments from an early stage including choosing their site.

Work is currently underway in identifying potential sites for this type of development in the city which are feasible from a construction point of view.
Please click here to download the Dublin House information brochure.