Glass Ribbon is the renovation and extension of a 1930s semi-detached house in Dublin. The property had survived decades of poor alterations with enough of its original modest detail intact to make restoration worthwhile: well-proportioned rooms, a triangular south-facing garden along its largely blank side gable, and period features worth saving. Scullion Architects worked to give those qualities back their coherence while opening the house toward the garden it had never properly addressed.

The organizational move is a return to the enfilade: a generous entrance hall reinstated as a paneled reception room, with rooms arranged axially so that movement through the house passes from room to room without corridors. The south gable is opened up to redirect those axial relationships toward the garden. Along it, a thin steel-framed glass ribbon is draped as an undulating skin, modeled on a traditional conservatory or sun parlour. The extension houses dining areas, a study, and a route to the drawing room, with thick sills inside planted with indoor and outdoor plants, and polished white concrete ledges outside. The new rooms are deliberately light and lush against the handsome solidity of the original house.

The restoration of the existing fabric is handled with equal care. The oak paneled hallway, scalloped timber linings, and staircase are all custom designed to sit in harmony with the spirit of what was already there rather than simply reference it. New elements are based on what once might have been: the intervention reads as a considered continuation rather than a graft. The interior aims for calm and sobriety while retaining something of the playful materiality of the period.