Dunmurry village developed at the turn of the last century as a settlement of tightly grouped terraced houses aligned with the topography of the hillsides rising away from the railway tracks. Textile mills, a church and a school were the the foci of the place. This resulted in a legible urban plan with brick terraces and front doors to human scaled, open ended streets. Our intention was to continue this pattern within the proposal, creating a permeable plan that reflects a familiar and historic streetscape character of distinctive terraced streets huddled around elegant and robust industrial buildings.

Semi private recessed porches, external thresholds, kitchen windows, external seats and planters combine with public shared surfaces to encourage interaction between the public and communal aspects of urban domestic life while enabling the appropriation of streets as public spaces.

Special attention was paid to create a place in which people feel encouraged to interact and use both the parks and the street as an extension of their social environment. These communal spaces are overlooked by the living rooms and kitchens of surrounding dwellings.