Rath Lodge is a development comprising 198 dwellings, designed to provide a range of house types and sizes to suit a wide variety of needs and budgets. 32 dwellings are designed to be readily adaptable for people with special needs. A large proportion of the houses are designed on an ‘L’-shaped courtyard principle: this enables all the principal rooms to surround, have view of, and directly access the inner garden, itself a totally private space, which is achieved by controlling the aspect from adjacent first floor windows. This house type also has the benefit, by way of a single-storey wing, of allowing the sun to penetrate the garden whilst maintaining privacy. These are wide-frontage houses, but site depths are shallower that the norm, so that a comparable residential density can be achieved. These dwellings are an evolution of the RIAI award winning prototype houses previously undertaken by the practice.