1968 – Dundanion Court, Blackrock, Cork

Designed as high-quality housing for a new generation of professionals, adopting new technologies and approaches, and being fitted out with natural and often expensive materials. The scheme consists of two courtyards of thirty-six, two-storey, flat-roofed homes, grouped in stepped rows of six and four. Many of the original trees on the site, between two large Victorian villas, were retained within its courtyards, and on the development’s western boundary.

Designed by architect Neil Hegarty, a decade after he enrolled in the first class of the School of Architecture in 1956, at the Crawford School of Art. After graduation he visited modernist buildings in Belgium, the UK, and the US, including Lafayette Park in Detroit by Mies van der Rohe, often cited as an influence.

The houses are flat-roofed, with yellow brick walls, with facades infilled with glass and black-painted cedar sheeting. They are 1200 sq.ft. in size each, have dual access, either from ‘front’ doors in the courtyards, or via their rear walled in gardens. All services were enclosed or buried to maintain the quality and appearance of the shared spaces. Net curtains were ubiquitous here in the 1960s, indeed they were specified in the original lease to maintain a consistent façade to the courtyards.

Internally on the ground level, the main living area is open plan and dual aspect, ranged around a central brick chimney, and internal walls are brick, and ceilings in slender sheets of cedar. In their original state, the houses had underfloor electric heating, as well as open fires with hefty limestone mantles, plus white Carrara marble worktops in the kitchens. An open-riser staircase to the first floor allows light to permeate through the space. They have four bedrooms including one with an ensuite bathroom.

In 1975 it was announced that the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland awarded the Silver Medal for Housing for the period 1968-1970.