AAI Downes Medal for Clancy Moore Architects

Clancy Moore Architects have been awarded the AAI’s Downes Medal for Slievebawnogue, a project of two dwellings, set in the Dublin Mountains.

The project involves the construction of two dwellings for a brother and sister. Situated in a disused quarry with uncertain ground conditions of discarded spoil, the houses act as an inhabited bridge, spanning between natural and man-made outcrops of service structures and a shared entrance staircase. The houses’ language derives from the structure necessary to achieve these spans. The section internally is modelled to present a variety of scales of spaces. More intimate living spaces and bedrooms occur in a lower north east facing wing. Taller living spaces address the south west. The form of the two dwellings closes the quarry to create a shared communal garden room overlooked by a long veranda and the living rooms of each house.
The AAI’s publication New Irish Architecture 2012 is available from the RIAI Bookshop.