Clonrath Lusk
This is a proposal for 41 houses forming the first part of a comprehensive master plan for the lands. The site is edged by a linear park along Skerries Road to the west and Rathmore Road to the south. The eastern edge is onto playing pitches while the northern edge is the first part of the east-west avenue accessing the master plan lands. A soft organic approach is employed to give a soft edge to the development along the park side edges, while a mews lane informally divides the urban block.
Shared surface roads are used throughout with the exception of the access avenue. This approach allows the accommodation of the stream side walk into the scheme where the houses are arranged to form a necklace of intimate spaces along the stream. Similarly, the mews lane is broken into small home zone spaces.
The style of the houses and their informal arrangement is to compliment the existing village and its fine grained structure of individual and simple building forms. Narrow house depths and juxtaposed angles generate a feeling and roofscape particular to rural clusters and avoids a sense of the suburbs creeping into the countryside.
Corner houses are used frequently in this organic layout not just at street junctions but also along streets where the orientation of terraces expose gables ends of houses. Passive surveillance of streets has been designed into the layout using these housetypes that are specifically designed to turn corners and expose their gables.
A Distinctive Place
The new housetypes respect the distinctive character of Lusk through their design, character, density and height. The outer edge to the stream consists of a number of detached larger houses which with their associated landscaping will provide an attractive outer edge to the town.
