60 house development, Clare

It is very rare for us to work with national ‘mass house-builders’, but this opportunity was in our office-town of Clare and we wanted to be able to have influence over the design of what might otherwise have been the developer’s basic and standard house types. After much effort, we managed to convince the developer-client to depart from their usual house types at key locations within the development, such as those facing the main public thoroughfares (a strategy very much supported by the local authority planners) and to include a number of authentic traditional designs.

Comprising 60 houses of mixed size, this development was difficult to achieve, not least because of local objection, but also to get the developer to include more authentic construction details. Fortunately, most of what we designed was implemented (though some details were left out to cut costs) and the final development has been well received locally.