What an amazing house

up for anything wrote: »

The location is very picturesque and the waterfall is lovely but all that greenery is claustrophobic and the damp in the house in 10 years time will be appalling.

Well given its age..... The original owners renamed it "Rising damp" apparently. More down to the construction methods more than the design. If built today you could make it a lot more damp proof.

As a design and how it fits in the landscape it's pretty damned impressive. Originally the client wanted a weekend getaway house further down the river, a favourite spot for summer picnics. Wright,integrated the house into the scene in a very clever way. Made an average enough looking site so much more. He did it very quickly too. He only sketched it when he knew the client was coming to see him with an hours warning. He was supposed to be working on it for months, so it as a rush job initially. Originally he wanted to clad the sticky out bits in silver or gold leaf, but thankfuly the client went WTF to that notion.

kylith wrote: »

You'd see more amazing buildings on Grand Designs any day of the week.

Eh no. You wouldn't. You really wouldn't.

storm2811 wrote: »

That house looks like a school or something,just looks so cold and out of place.

I would tend to agree. It's brave, but it mixes too many angles for the sake of it IMHO. What appears to be the nod to the white bungalow in the facade is ok as a joke, but as architecture? Im not so sure. It does fit into the surroundings more than usual though.

http://www.daft.ie/searchsale.daft?id=520562

I love this house,beautiful.

It's location is spectacular, but its overall design for me is pretty dire IMHO. Typical lets build big vibe to it. Feck all balance and doesnt fit the surroundings. No wonder they keep outside views of the house to a minimum. A talented architect and visually open client could have made so so much more of that site.

Now each to their own, but this thread and some of the comments within it are reminding me why our recent architectural heritage is pretty damn sparse and why bungalow blight ruined the Irish landscape. Then the celtic tiger came along and we had such out of balance monstrosities as the one in that ad. As a culture, we really lack a visual eye in a lot of ways. We either build cheap or follow the mainstream american notion of more is more. Yet we do have a historical vernacular we could refer to. One going back 1000's of years too.

I'm not one of those who just wants modernist stuff. A lot of it is dire. I like balanced architecture, old and new. Some of our Georgian stuff is gorgeous in it's balance. Ditto for the Dutch style houses that preceded them(but were often updated). Most of the new builds Ive seen, expensive and more reasonable tend to be either godawful or clumsy attempts at modernism.

Then again each to their own and if that's what the majority want.

pmcmahon wrote: »

looks like a building site

Seriously? You think falling water looks like a building site? OK personal taste is personal, but objectively speaking its a pretty cool house. Remarkably small in the flesh apparently, according to an uncle of mine who was in it.

KaiserGunner wrote: »

Very unique looking for a house, so in that sense I would call it amazing, however it is an ugly building. Reminds me of the concourse buildings in NUIG or UCD.

It has as much to do with those examples as... well nothing. Yes that slab sided type design thang really got going in the 50's and 60's rarely to good effect, but that example of wrights is in another league.