No 64 Eccles Street, currently a Mater Private Clinic, was built as a speculative venture as an end terrace private house by Richard Johnson in 1795 and acquired as an office and residence by his brother Francis Johnston, the leading architect of post Union Ireland, and architect of the GPO, who extended the terrace to incorporate an office annex and an octagonal top-lit art gallery which survive today.
The building became the house of Issac Butt leader of the Nationalist Party which was later led by Parnell, and the octagonal room became a place of informal assembly for the Party. No. 64 had become a refuge for homeless boys prior to its conservation in the current project. The purpose was to reconfigure the building as a clinic on the lower ground floor with consulting suites to the upper floors.
The building required a lift to four floors and to a lower mezzanine. The Francis Johnson extension allowed this in the context of a new contemporary block above first floor level and the addition of a glass wall overlooking the City created a passage between the lift and the functional zones of the building. Strict principles of conservation were applied and the building, conceived as a private house and office in the 18th Century tradition, has now seamlessly evolved into a health support service without change of urban or essential architectural expression. The result is wholly at ease meeting a new purpose in the new iteration of an old society.
Conservation is the essence of the approach to No. 64, which seeks to conserve and evolve the established architectural character expressed through space, form, and detail, setting the contemporary use as its current character beside its historic expression and association. Access is designed to pass through the modern as an addition to the composition, to arrive at the historic, but without compromise to the efficient use or the inherent logic of evolved function.
Memorial plaques have been incorporated to record the associations of each major space: the building is seen by its users to work efficiently, without loss to its architectural and historic personality.
LocationDublin
ClientPrivate
ServiceArchitectural Services
Area851 sqm
Value€873,500
StatusComplete
