urban agency builds compact residence in dublin on triangular plan

located in a dublin suburban estate, the tri house by architectural firm urban agency is built on a pure triangular plan resulting from the awkward triangular shape of its site. built in the back garden of an existing building, where the owner’s tree house used to stand when he was a child, the triangular residence is itself surrounded by three gardens; an entrance garden to the north, a breakfast garden to the east, and green garden to the south.

urban agency has applied the triangular shape on various scales of the project, from its plan, to a central staircase around which all rooms are organized, to various skylights on the building’s roof. ‘the triangle form has been used here as a compositional element throughout the project (plan, section, elevation and perspective) varying from equilateral to isosceles triangle to organize and articulate space and accentuate visual perception,’ the studio explains. ‘near and far, deep and shallow, low and high, etc., a technique which has been developed during the renaissance to create “real” space in paintings.’

extending to the edges of the site, the three corners of the triangular plan have been carved out to create a series of thresholds, articulating the transition between each garden. the project plays with ‘traditional ingredients’ of a typical suburban house, incorporating a blue grey pitch roof, painted render, attic rooms, velux windows, french doors, sliding doors, and more, in order to ‘fit in’. slightly sunken, the residence is topped with a roof whose slopes are shaped in a way to minimize overshadowing onto the neighboring gardens, while windows are carefully placed to avoid overlooking while framing important views, sky, trees, sunlight, etc.

the house is made out of reinforced concrete, which has been left exposed internally, and insulated externally. inside, a dynamic series of interconnected spaces is organized around a central triangular staircase. the modest-height ceiling at the entrance level increases gradually when descending to the corners of the house, where a series of double height spaces pierced with a skylights accentuate the scale of the rooms below onto which the corner rooms at the first floor level look.