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This large, detached house for an Irish family newly returned from the UK has huge architectural ambition, introducing to a domestic context a contemporary aesthetic — folding planes, topographic metaphor — more common in major public buildings. Externally, it is designed to respond to the topography, the seaside views and the local rocky outcrops: a considerable challenge. The house is very much a part of its landscape. The apparent randomness of the shapes results from an unusually relaxed approach from architects for whom subtle control is more typical. However order is restored by the way in which the external cladding and structural materials are used — the granite base, followed by lime render, topped by the massive concrete roof slab — and between, the playful planes of glass.

The building really comes alive inside, where the architects' extremely complex plan and cross section of intersecting triangular and polygonal planes— not a right angle in sight — creates a warren of cave-like rooms. This is a building with geography, in which the eye is thrown this way and that. The client, while not expecting such an ambitious house, is delighted with it, and her children happily regard the place as a secret world. The quality of materials and detailing — the concrete and extensive joinery especially — is excellent, all the more so considering the speed of construction.