Scullion Architects and Johan Dehlin Open a Dark Dublin Terrace to Its Own Garden

Victorian terraced houses in Dublin are long, narrow, and historically indifferent to their gardens. Rooms stack behind the street facade like carriages on a train, and the further back you go, the darker things get. Apple Tree Terrace, a collaboration between Scullion Architects and Johan Dehlin in Ranelagh, takes this familiar problem and solves it not by blowing open the plan but by reorganizing how the house touches its edges: structure, courtyard, and garden are pulled into a single sequence that makes a narrow plot feel genuinely expansive.

What makes the project worth studying is less the extension itself, which at 130 square meters is modest, and more the logic behind it. Functions line up along the structural walls, swelling inward only where they need to. An internal courtyard punctuates the depth of the plan and brings light into the middle, while hardwood doors allow the rear rooms to fold open entirely in summer, leaving the concrete frame standing free like a garden pavilion. It is a house built to change with the seasons, and that adaptability is its most convincing argument.

Street Face, Garden Soul

From the street, the house reads as a well-kept Victorian terrace: red brick, an arched opening, planted beds framing a pale front door. Nothing about the facade signals what has happened behind it. Walk through to the garden side, though, and a larch-clad timber volume emerges through the branches of a mature apple tree. The contrast is deliberate. Scullion Architects and Dehlin treat the street elevation as civic fabric and the garden elevation as private architecture, letting each face answer to its own audience.

The dusk view through the tree canopy is especially revealing. The extension's timber cladding glows warmly against the concrete soffits, and the layered glazing gives the garden facade a transparency that the brick front wall never attempts. Ranelagh's terraces achieve a density of about 73 dwellings per hectare through these long, narrow plots, so every move at the rear is an exercise in neighborly restraint as much as architectural ambition.

Concrete Below, Timber Above

The hybrid structure is the project's backbone: blockwork and in-situ concrete at ground level, larch-clad timber frame for the upper storey. You can read the system directly in the living spaces, where exposed concrete beams span between columns and the timber frame sits visibly above. A black woodstove anchors the living room, and afternoon sunlight picks out the raw surfaces without any attempt to hide the joins between old masonry and new concrete.

At the rear, a concrete column and beam frame a built-in timber bookshelf that doubles as a threshold between the interior and the garden. Glazed doors sit within this frame so that the structural grid, rather than a conventional wall, defines the boundary of the house. It is a small detail with outsized effect: the garden feels like another room, and the bookshelf feels like it belongs to both.

The Courtyard as Hinge

Pushing the main ground-floor functions to one edge freed space for an internal courtyard that acts as the plan's hinge. Timber sliding doors pull back to expose a planted void between the front and rear halves of the house, and the concrete ceiling above reads continuously across the opening, making the courtyard feel carved out rather than added on. Light floods the hallway and kitchen from this opening, solving the perennial problem of dark mid-plan zones in terraced houses.

The hallway photograph captures the quality of light the courtyard produces: a low, raking glow that grazes vertical timber paneling and catches the underside of the concrete beam. Glazed doors at the far end layer the depth of field so that standing anywhere in the house, you are always looking through at least two spatial conditions. It keeps the 130 square meters from ever feeling corridor-like.

Terracotta as Continuous Ground

Handmade terracotta floor tiles run from inside to outside, treating the entire plot as a single surface. In the dining area, three timber French doors open onto the garden, and the tile extends underfoot without a change in level or material, erasing the threshold between served and sheltered space. The warmth of the terracotta also sets the tonal register for the interior: walls in a similar earthy pigment wrap the stair and frame the built-in bookshelves, creating a cohesion that feels crafted rather than coordinated.

The internal window framing the stair is a quiet highlight. Terracotta-toned walls, the timber balustrade, and the shelving behind it compose a view that rewards a second look. These moments of carefully framed depth turn circulation into inhabitation. You do not simply pass through this house; each transition offers something to pause on.

Seasonal Performance

The architects designed the house to behave differently across the year. In summer, hardwood doors fold back at both the courtyard and the rear garden face, and the concrete ground floor stands open as a pavilion. The mass of the blockwork and in-situ concrete absorbs solar gain during the day and releases it slowly in the evening. In winter, the same thermal mass, combined with the stove and the sealed timber-frame envelope above, keeps the house warm without relying on brute-force heating. Drawing the extension closer to the south-facing garden was not just a spatial move; it was a passive-design strategy.

This seasonal adaptability is where the project distinguishes itself from the typical Dublin rear extension, which tends to treat the garden wall as a glass curtain and hope for the best. Here, the openings are generous but the structure is robust enough to work when they are closed. Longevity and flexibility were stated goals, and the construction, completed in just nine months from May 2022 to February 2023, suggests a level of buildability that matches the ambition.

Why This Project Matters

Dublin's Victorian terraced stock is enormous, and most of it shares the same problem: dark interiors disconnected from long rear gardens. Apple Tree Terrace offers a replicable strategy rather than a one-off gesture. By organizing functions along the narrow plan's edges, inserting a courtyard as a light source and spatial hinge, and deploying a hybrid concrete-and-timber structure that performs differently in summer and winter, Scullion Architects and Johan Dehlin show that density and domesticity are not opposed.

The project also makes a quiet case for material honesty as a form of generosity. Nothing here is hidden: the concrete beams, the timber frame, the terracotta tiles all declare their role and their making. That legibility turns a modest extension into a house that teaches its occupants how it works, and that kind of transparency tends to age well. For a city where narrow terraces will need to serve another century of living, that is a valuable proposition.

Apple Tree Terrace by Scullion Architects and Johan Dehlin. Ranelagh, Dublin, Ireland. 130 m² (185 m² gross internal and external). Completed 2023. Photography by Scullion Architects and Johan Dehlin.

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