Room to Improve 2025 – Episode 4 – Tranquillity House
Sunday January 26th 9:30pm
In this Room To Improve special, Dermot Bannon sets about designing an unusual home. In fact, he is designing four homes away from home. This week sees Dermot team up with Julian Benson, former judge on Dancing with the Stars, to convert an old Victorian house into four self-contained pods, for families of people with Cystic Fibrosis.
Ireland has the highest rate of CF per capita in the world, around 1400 adults and children are living with the condition. Julian Benson is one of them. Julian was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis when he was two, his mother was told he probably wouldn’t live to become a teenager. He has gone on to become a successful choreographer, TV personality and in 2018 founded the Julian Benson Foundation.
In 2022, the foundation bought an abandoned Victorian redbrick in the south Dublin suburb of Rathgar. As founder of JBF, it was Julian’s dream to build a space that could cater for people with Cystic Fibrosis and their families, when they travelled to Dublin for treatment. Patients can be in hospital for long periods of time which is very difficult for both the patient and the families.
Julian throughout his life has witnessed the low moments for patients while in hospital. For families to visit and spend time with their loved one is expensive and stressful. Julian wants a home away from home for the families, a “home with a hug”.
Dream team Dermot Bannon and Patricia Power QS are on board for this massive project. The figure needed to complete this renovation is way beyond what Julian and the Foundation can afford.
And so begins the journey of getting volunteers and companies to come on board, to donate time, people, materials and resources for this mammoth project.
At the helm of the project is builder Brandon Duarte. He is overseeing and coordinating the teams of builders, restorers, electricians, plumbers, cabinet makers, fire specialists, painters & many more construction experts from around the country. There are endless volunteers who give their time to the build.
Working alongside Brandon is CEO of the Julian Benson Foundation, Louise Doogan, who has to manage the two biggest personalities of the project – Dermot and Julian, as well as coordinating over 120 companies.
When glitz and glamour meet considered design and functionality, things can get a bit heated. Which means many a debate between Bannon and Benson.
However, the most important part of this story, is the people who will benefit from staying there. We meet Lar Brennan and his family, who talk about the stress and sadness they have experienced in the past when Lar has had to go off to stay in hospital and his family haven’t been close by for many months. Tranquillity House will be a safe, warm, comfortable home from home, and that is priceless for people with Cystic Fibrosis and their families.
As the design process begins to implode, they all know that they have to work out their differences to complete this project on time.
