DesignSolutions/Problem: Jason Lawless works for architects and furniture designers Duff Tisdall and in April 2003 decided to build a house in the garden of his parent's home in Clontarf.

Jason was fortunate that the site allows the house to be very much a separate building and he did everything from getting planning permission to overseeing the building work (also doing much of it himself).

The decoration is very much his own style - a mix of pieces as expensive as a Zanotta sofa and as relatively inexpensive as Ikea wardrobes. Sleek grey kitchen units contrast with a giant gilt mirror propped against one wall.

The house was completed eight months later, in December 2003 - which must be something of a record in Dublin.

The area Jason had to build on was quite small and called for clever thinking when coming up with a layout that would include everything he needed yet not feel cramped: kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, livingroom and most importantly, a separate dining room. "I really wanted a diningroom away from the kitchen or the living area," he says. "I liked the idea of a diningroom being intimate, kind of like a restaurant setting, with not much more than the table and chairs." To do things the way he wanted would have meant building a two-storey building, something planning permission wouldn't allow.

Solution: "I wasn't able to make two floors with standard 2.4 m ceiling heights, so I built a bridge in one half where the room is open right up to the eaves," explains Jason.

This gives plenty of space on either side of the bridge and just enough to walk underneath. The top of the bridge is used as the dining area and has the desired result of being separate from the kitchen on the other side of the house.

Even if Jason had divided the space into two floors with low ceilings, there would have been wasted space on either side of the upper room where the eaves slope to meet the external wall. Now he says "It's really intimate up there and because you can see through the railings the bridge kind of floats and doesn't seem to take up much space."

Steel girders support the bridge from a grey concrete block (the chimney for the fireplace runs through this) and across the room to the opposite wall. The underside of the bridge is covered with metal grilling and the under-heated floors are porcelain tiles by Lomac Tiles.

The dining table is by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen and the chairs are Pantone. A fluorescent strip light sits along the floor of the bridge, giving an atmospheric glow on the white wall. A spiral stairs was used to access it because it doesn't take up much space.

Jason's bridge works in many ways but principally it's a clever way to make what is essentially an extra room in a small house and also creates an interesting place in which to entertain.