Imagine trying to enjoy watching tv in image 8.

Jason Orr and Joshua Cantwell could get 350 Brazilians into that place.

"Loads-a-MONEY!!!"

House for rent in Clontarf - check out the kitchen you can open up to the elements (make sense in the Irish climate?), and the crazy colour scheme in some of the rooms (hmmm)
https://www.daft.ie/dublin/houses-for-r ... n-1797143/

It looks like a puzzle room from the Crystals Maze

across the hall is a blue version!

It's more like a creche than a home

That house was on TV recently as an example of modern architecture and fitting new builds/extensions into urban spaces with little space. It was designed and built by an architect.
I can't think of the show...was it Diarmuid Gavin Room to Improve?

No handrails in the stairway as far as I can see.

Falling risk increased for persons.

Architect. Mmmmmm......

Not a fan of the stairs (getting anxious just looking at them, really; why would you do that?), but I really like the openable kitchen. Not that you could use it that much in Irish weather, but it’d be nice in the summer.

Building it without a supporting pillar (there's a room upstairs) is impressive. Or it could be a disaster...

I think you’d get a lot of use out of something like that in the Irish climate provided the orientation is right. It’s a very sheltered space and would be lovely with long bright evenings. It wouldn’t need to be very warm to open it up.

This is total crap.

I get the whole modernist stacked boxes open spaces thing, but it needs to be really well executed to work. If you look at any room you actually use it has stuff around walls. Plug sockets, plumbing, shelving, furniture.

By turning a wall into a hole you've created all sorts of practical difficulties in using the room.

Why do you need to be able to walk in and out anywhere along two faces of the room? What's wrong with a couple of doors or a slider?

Also, it's a kitchen, right? So you're there cooking pasta with a toddler running around when a football comes flying into the room, knocks the pan off the stove and BOOM, into Temple St for skin grafts.

Would not bang.

The added cost of building it also makes it a dumb idea. I never understood it. Maybe if you had a stunning view and the outdoor space was an integral part of the function of the house (yada yada etc...), but when it's looking onto nothing interesting then what's the point?

There's only one explanation for such weirdness - you guessed - our "planning" laws.

They couldn't get planning for a mews that occupied the whole garden so, hey presto, the folding doors which will be opened on summer days i.e. four or five times a year.

Who'd employ planning consultants if not to get such wheezes past their former colleagues. Architects howareya!

Read between the lines of this IT story
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-sty ... -1.3284381

I went to see this as part of the Open House weekend in October. It's actually really lovely. That kitchen/dining area especially is beautiful. It doesn't suffer from a lack of sockets as the cooking area is on the other side of the counter with a surfeit of power. The table will be positioned where those windows open. Certainly when I saw it, there was lovely evening sun coming into that dining space. It was also completely private, with a small but well put together garden. As for the folding doors, they're A-rated and went from fully closed to fully folded back in about 60 seconds. But yes, I'll agree that the colour upstairs is a matter of personal taste...

Is it a different style house? Yeah, absolutely. Did it cost more than building a simple cube? Undoubtedly. But we spend the majority of our lives inside, especially in Ireland where it rains so often. How great to have spaces that make the inside feel like outside. There's so many threads on this site that tell us we have a housing crisis. And we do. But more than that, we have a homes crisis. People want a place to call home.

I worry sometimes that we focus so much on the cost of houses that we forget about the value of them. Where you live has to be about more than just a number. It can't just be a resale value. Maybe taking a chance with design and doing something different adds a value that isn't easy to count. Because, Jesus, we have enough identikit housing estates in this country without squeezing more on every patch of available grass.