Clonmacken Housing, Limerick

Paul Keogh Architects’ Clonmacken social housing scheme for Limerick City and County Council is located in an expanding residential neighbourhood at the western perimeter of the city and to the north of the River Shannon. 

Responding to the sites’ elongated profile, the 43 unit scheme comprises a terrace to two-storey houses that line the back of the site and provide a backdrop to a triangular duplex block that fronts onto the Condell Road approach to the city centre.

Homezones principles have been implemented to prioritise the needs of pedestrians, through the use of reduced carriageway widths and shared surface streets. A gated privacy strip mediates the transition from the public realm to the private dwelling.

The two-storey terraced houses back onto the stone wall of the former Clonmacken House, now demolished and the site of a future housing development. Their wide-frontage plans are essentially single-aspect, thereby activating their street frontages and maximising passive surveillance of the public realm.

All units in the three storey duplex block are of the own-door type, comprising a mix one- and two-bedroom dwellings. Ground floor units have their own private garden, and upper floor apartments have a ground floor private yard accessed via the circulation core. 

Elevations to both the two-storey houses and the three-storey duplexes are characterised by double-height recessed porches. Finished in brick (duplexes) and render (houses), the use of a standard window type creates a consistency to the restrained architecture of the scheme, due to be handed-over in December 2023.

The architecture of the scheme is restrained: brick and render walls, metal windows and slate roofs are composed into well-proportioned elevations with more than a passing reference to the architecture of Georgian Limerick.

Client: Limerick City & County Council
Value: €7,500,000

Size: 43 units
Reference: Mr. Billy Lynch, LCCC
Design: 2016
Completion: Ongoing