Jefffry's House
Commissioned by Donegal County Council in partnership with the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF) and Coillte the Irish Forestry custodians
Jeffry’s House was designed and constructed on site by the architect/artist team in the summer of 2014.
...A child’s first experience of the world is not his realisation that “adults are stronger but rather that he cannot make magic,” .... It is, in fact, quite likely that the invincible sadness that sometimes overwhelms children is born precisely of their awareness that they are incapable of magic. What ever we can achieve through merit and effort, cannot make us truly happy.... (Walter Benjamin)....
...Jeffry’s House is a respite from the elements and from the trials of merit, effort and the everyday. It has portals for the irreducible universes of the sky, the sea and for the earth. It is for children and for the child within us....
A larch timber frame, thatched in flax, Jeffry’s house is curiously familiar while remaining weird and un-programmed.
Jeffrey’s House is so named after Jeffry’s Loch over which it commands a view.
We have no idea who Jeffry was, his name alone remains.
By naming our project for Jeffry we hope to embed the shelter not just in the physical world but also in a more expansive landscape of memory and lore.
