A precisely crafted, confident and delightful building
McGarry Moon Architects for McGarry Moon Architects
Contract value: £160,000
GIA: 150m²
This studio is set in the garden of the architects’ award winning house in the gently rolling countryside. It references the local metal skinned agricultural buildings while continuing their tradition. It provides a studio space for the growing practice along with a garage and an accessible guest suite.
At first the building appears almost impenetrable, a casually shuttered concrete base with a simple weathered steel pitched roof and gabled form on top, the deep rust colour a familiar tone in the landscape. Access is via a ramped perforated steel gantry, slightly skewed on plan, rising from a concrete plinth to a glazed door on the gable.
Inside, a joyous series of bright, overlapping spaces is revealed. From the generous mid-level, timber stairs lead up to a third-width mezzanine, a meeting space within the open roof volume, where glazed gables and a linear roof light saturate the interior with daylight. The studio itself is embedded into the lawn up to work surface level.
A plywood portal structure rises from the concrete base, its depth occupied by storage, open shelving and roof purlins. At the garden gable the plywood portal is interrupted by fine steel posts, allowing the composition to seemingly float above the lawn.
This is a precisely crafted, confident and delightful building that clearly demonstrates the ‘can-do’ attitude, enthusiasm and skill of its architects.
See the other winner of the RIBA Regional Awards 2017 - Northern Ireland