Irish lesson: a carefully transformed traditional farm shows how Bungalow Blight can be counteracted.

As the miraculous Irish economy burgeons, prosperous parts of the countryside are being covered by a rash of villas, each separated from neighbours by a garden and total indifference to appearance, style, tradition, materials, massing and manners. Topography and microclimate are ignored in this low-density, land-greedy travesty of suburban development.

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The Wheatfield Courtyard is a riposte. David Mc Dowell wanted to show how the traditional agricultural farm type of County Dublin can be translated into modern housing, a strategy that helps both save old buildings and increase density of rural settlements. He took a decayed farmyard, and by judicious restoration, demolition and new building converted it into a house. Two of the existing stone buildings have been converted, re-harled and refenestrated (openings were retained with new frames). They are at right-angles to each other and are linked by a new node, a glass, cedar and galvanized steel box that relates the different levels of the two existing buildings. From this box, another projects westward, offering the parlour extensive views of the surrounding countryside--unlike the spaces in the masonry blocks, which look in to the old farmyard. Clearly, such a building had rich clients, but the jury felt that it has lessons to offer for less prosperous people. Good existing buildings have been kept and enhanced; a model of dense development is suggested; materials have been handled in an exemplary manner, with old and new distinct, but sympathetic to each other, a sympathy that will grow as the cedar weathers to its final grey. The jury felt that it set a geometrical and tectonic example of how Bungalow Blight might be mitigated.

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