The Irish Times

The giant city garden, behind this 1823 south Dublin house, used to be accessed through a tall window in the kitchen. That was how houses were often designed back then: grand rooms were to the front while small, dingy wet spaces - bathrooms, sculleries, kitchens - were all sent to the back to accommodate activities that were to be hidden from public view (such as cooking and unmentionables in the bathroom). The owners of this house, who have lived here for 20 years, have long lunches with their four children and five grandchildren on Sundays and found that everyone congregated in the small back kitchen, with its 1960s units. They preferred this to the beautiful, classical but somewhat cold and dark diningroom to the north-east-facing front of the house. The couple had already opened up a lower ground floor room near the kitchen, to a design by architects (and friends) Mary and Peter Doyle, by taking out half of the floor above it to create a gallery with views across the now double-height space out to the garden. The latest home improvement is an extension to the kitchen, which has symbiotically linked the exterior and interior despite the fact that the new room hovers above the garden. While the neighbours have opted for a Victorian-style conservatory to extend their house, the owners of this home were keen not to add a generic "period style" decorative object to their 200-year-old property, whose tall windows and towering chimney stacks are part of its lofty design. They brought in architect Manfredi Anello of Anello Architects because of his conservation credentials. And, as he sweetly puts it, his clients were modern thinking - "but more 1970s" than futurist.