Ireland’s ugliest buildings
From my fourth floor desk, I have a wonderful view of the architectural brute that is Hawkins House, and its ugly sister Apollo House. The former, in particular, with its green hunchback, is a building that truly saps the soul. In my days as a bicycle courier, I used to have the pleasure of going into it daily - the pleasure coming from being able to leave it straight away.
When it rains, these two building amplify misery in an almost preternatural way - as if their architects had some sort of gripe against the city and, perhaps, humanity. Occasionally, I can see window cleaners making their way across their gloomy windows. It appears the very definition of Sysiphean.
Anyway, they’re coming down, to be replaced by a high density office complex. If they need some help with the demolition, I’ll buy a new sledgehammer especially.
They are not the only ugly buildings in Dublin, or the country, of course. Off hand, you could argue that they form a quadrangle of ugliness alongside Liberty Hall (toweringly horrible) and Busáras (architecturally seminal, visually offensive). The capital also has the Penney’s building and the Ilac Centre; while the new building by City Hall on Dame Street is breathtakingly misplaced, and a worthy new addition to the hall of horrors.
Elsewhere, Cork County Hall may be a protected building, but not because the city loves it. Queen’s University Students’ Union has been touted as Belfast’s ugliest, but Dublin has UCD, which remains a riot of ugliness (ironic, really, because it was designed to be riot-proof).
Any other suggestions? We might get a gallery of the grotesque out of it.
The Ilac isn’t looking quite so bad lately since they started doing it up. Actually Parnell St in general is looking increasingly attractive in recent years with the amount of work being done on it*.
The old Harp (now Heineken) building over Q bar is particularly disgusting, though, although it doesn’t stick out quite as much as Liberty Hall.
Then there’s Central Bank, which isn’t exactly soul destroying but is quite bleak and, of course, the ESB offices on Merrion Square. Damn you Stephenson.
The one you mention beside City Hall is a bit out of place, alright, although it doesn’t look as bad when it’s lit up at night.
*Although if you want an example of terrible interior design, check out the Moore St. Mall there - I was in there just after it opened and it struck me as a dank just waiting for the adequate number of scumbags and chip wrappers to infest it.
Comment by Adam | September 26, 2007 at 12:20 pmThe City Hall one is the most appalling building I’ve seen in years. It couldn’t be more out of place if it tried.
Glad that Hawkins House is coming down. It’s truly rotten. You can update us on its progress when you pass it on your way to Mulligans each day.
Comment by Twenty Major | September 26, 2007 at 12:45 pmLimerick sadly has a collection of awfulness right bang in the centre of the city, the frontage of Todds is a affront to any main street(who dares to call it Brown Thomas!)
http://www.limerickcorp.ie/media/Media,1310,en.JPG
and then that whole building when taken as a block with Guineys. Then there is Bank of Ireland opposite it, the rebuilt Penneys (this is what was once there
Comment by Dan Sullivan | September 26, 2007 at 12:50 pmhttp://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?page=4&t=3946
and God help us Cruises st and Arthur’s Quay which along with Arthur’s Quay park form an axis of hellmouth proportions.
what about the monstrosity with the statoil in the middle of it on ushers quay? deserving of a very dishonourable mention.
Comment by Rosie | September 26, 2007 at 3:35 pmUCD Library is like something which was planted there from 1960s East Berlin. Grey, dark, concrete. Just the type of fun a college student needs. Hence the whole UCD Gateway project thing with glass and light and stuff.
Indeed it’s so ugly, I can’t find a picture of it!! Enter ‘UCD Library’ into Google Image Search and you get nothing…
Comment by Waffler | September 26, 2007 at 3:37 pmOh wait, here it is.
http://www.chien-noir.com/images/celt/UCD2384.jpg
Comment by Waffler | September 26, 2007 at 3:39 pmI actually used to go looking for and photographing Dublin’s ugly buildings. Do the old Irish style of shopping centre count? Or is that too much of an easy target? But the mother of them all is Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre, a huge hulking tribute to making a meal of it.
I agree with Adam; Parnell street has improved enormously in the last few years (in fact, at an amazing rate). I also agree about ESB building on Fitzwilliam street - not only ugly, but the result of a crime, no less (the Georgian buildings already there were quite nice. The lovely chaps even left one standing as a reminder.).
Two banks stand out in my mind, too: not just the Central Bank on Dame street, but also Bank of Ireland on Baggot street.
And blasphemously, there are a few of the new churches about, those angular ones which look like half-finished origami. this isn’t a country noted for it’s fantastic indigenous architecture…
Comment by kevteljeur | September 26, 2007 at 4:02 pmAdam & Kevteljeur - Sam Stephenson had a lot to answer for, ESB and Wood Quay for starters. As for ugly shopping centres, Phibsboro leads the way, I reckon. Although it’s days are numbered.
Twenty - I cross from Slatterys to Mulligans every morning, so see a lot of ugliness.
Dan - What about the Clarion in Limerick? I want to like it, but I just can’t warm to it.
Rosie - I used to live by that Statoil, and it’s a wart on the quays. Although, given its 24-hour status, Rizla wouldn’t like to see it go.
Waffler - UCD (my alma mater) is famously the Albanian Airport of Education. The library is but the knock-off jewel in that cubic zirconia crown.
Comment by Shane | September 26, 2007 at 4:20 pmThe Clarion and the newer Riverpoint building are quite good when seen in their setting of presenting a gateway into the city.
Comment by Dan Sullivan | September 26, 2007 at 5:11 pmPhibsboro! I forgot about that one. You’re right about that, it’s cracker, and beats all competition; I have reason to believe that Ballyfermot may hold such a thing too. When I drive past Phibsboro centre I tend to block it out - makes the driving tricky, but I’d go blind otherwise. Took some photos of it a while ago, I should post them.
I must say, that in a perverse way I like those ugly buildings, it’s reminder of a grimmer, more ignorant time, when life was tough and rubbish was stuff you threw on the ground in order to make it safer to walk on.
Comment by kevteljeur | September 26, 2007 at 5:14 pmDo folks like the buildings on Wood Quay now? How come I wasn’t sent the memo if they do.
Comment by Brock Landers | September 26, 2007 at 5:29 pmDelighted to hear that Hawkins House is on it’s way out. I used to work next door and the sight of it, as I made my way into Mulligan’s, was nearly enough to put me off me pint.
In it’s absence, that monstrosity beside the City Hall must surely be the worst, for context if not for intrinsic butt-ugliness. I just can’t believe that it got planning permission.
Actually, there’s quite a history to be written on architectural ugliness as a direct by-product of bad planning over the past three or four decades.
Comment by Fergal | September 26, 2007 at 5:59 pmAs for ugly shopping centres, Phibsboro leads the way, I reckon. Although it’s days are numbered.
The old Dundrum shopping centre was horrible too. It looked so hopeless. Like everything you bought would be slightly gone off or spoiled or something.
I cross from Slatterys to Mulligans every morning, so see a lot of ugliness.
Well, there’s always Ned’s if you fancy hanging with the beautiful people.
Comment by Twenty Major | September 26, 2007 at 8:05 pmJesus, mary & joseph that picture reminds me of waiting for the 48A in the rain. Years of waiting beneath those horrible buildings.
The old Dundrum Shopping Centre was a trophy of a horror. I still miss the days though when the fanciest place you could buy clothes was in Gaywear.
Comment by Liz | September 26, 2007 at 11:05 pmTwenty - Spot on about Dundrum shopping center. Is it still standing? It was idle for a while I think.
You can’t talk about ugly shopping centres without mentioning Nutgrove. Stillorgan too.
Comment by Russ | September 27, 2007 at 3:45 amDIT Aungier St. Ugly on the inside, ugly on the outside. Knock it. If we’re talking shopping centres - let’s add Stillorgan to the list. Dun Laoghaire shopping centre is like a diamond in comparison (and it has a mezzanine level - rare, mysterious place like the 13 1/2th floor in Being John Malkovich or the top of the Faraway Tree)
The Tara Towers Hotel? Raze it. The Berlitz building in Dun Laoghaire. Knock it. The non-gasometer apartments of the Gasworks/Googleplex compound (Like hamster cages for suits). Knock ‘em, and while you’re at it, consider knocking a lot of the new apartments in the docklands. UCD’s science block, possibly Ireland’s largest prefab. Burn them all, laddie. Burn them all.
Comment by Markham | September 27, 2007 at 5:34 amThe news that those two buildings are coming down has made my day….really!
My biggest gripes is shop- fronts. Supermacs on O’Connell St., the now closed discount store on Georges St., the kebab houses on Dame St. etc!
Comment by Le Catch | September 27, 2007 at 9:05 amRuss - I think they’re going to knock it soon. Last time I passed by it looked boarded off, although I think there might one or two shops still going.
Comment by Twenty Major | September 27, 2007 at 9:10 amIs there such a thing as a beautiful shopping centre in Ireland? Go on I dare ya!
Comment by 73man | September 27, 2007 at 9:58 am73man - How about the St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre?
Comment by Shane | September 27, 2007 at 10:54 amNorthside. Boom-boom. Northside. Boom-boom. The great, great shopping centre.
Comment by Twenty Major | September 27, 2007 at 11:15 amTwenty - The shopping centre I spent my childhood wandering around, wishing I was doing something more interesting, like being in a coma. Tedium was occasionally broken by trips to Donaghmede shopping centre. It was a privileged childhood.
Comment by Shane | September 27, 2007 at 11:24 amStephen’s Green was meant to all light and air and just ended up being a pain in the arse to get from A to B. I mean: how many floors are there?
Comment by 73man | September 27, 2007 at 11:57 amBorn with a silver spoon in your mouth, Shane.
Comment by Twenty Major | September 27, 2007 at 12:04 pmI heard a story about some of the buildings on UCD - possibly involving that library too.
Basically they were being designed and built against the backdrop of the student-led riots in Paris (in 1968), which ended De Gaulle’s term in office. So certain tricks and tactics were employed to stifle similar dissent in Ireland.
For example, that massive water feature at the middle is there instead of an open patch of land, which would have allowed large gatherings. And the steps to one of/some of/all of the buildings are built at a particular depth and width to break the average walking rhythm - and so force marchers into a disorganised mess that would disrupt their protests wherever possible.
There were other things mentioned to me which I now forget.
Not sure how true that is, it may be complete bull, but in my few times in UCD I have noticed how awkward the steps are to walk up comfortably.
The steps thing kind of reminds me of that technique used in some places to stop racist chants - basically they re-broadcast the chant back to the crowd with a .5 second delay or more, which confuses people and makes it impossible to start a unified sing-song.
Comment by Adam | September 27, 2007 at 5:43 pmThose steps were very difficult to cycle up and down comfortably too.
Comment by Liz | September 27, 2007 at 6:27 pmAdam, the story about UCD is quite true in that there were alternate plans for the layout of UCD but those were altered after student unrest across Europe and also the Kent State killings in 1970.
The motto was along the lines of “a campus that could not be taken”. The layout is such that it is very hard to create a secure area with barricades and part of the reasoning for the water feature is as a ready source for use by a water cannon.
Also another rumour was/is that the principle architect of UCD Belfield was a survivor of the camps from WWII and that this gave him as somewhat bleak outlook on life which translates into the austere concrete facades and also the desire for an absence of natural light creeping into some of the buildings.
I still think the nuclear reactor in UL beats all the above as best unknown college story in Ireland.
Comment by Dan Sullivan | September 27, 2007 at 7:16 pmUsing a sledgehammer to knock down Apollo house? Too slow, too gentle. I think think the thousands of people that had to look at everyday deserve a more explosive end that that …. run a competition to see who gets to push the plunger.
Comment by Paul Browne | September 28, 2007 at 9:44 amDonaghmede shopping centre, eh Shane? Were you too taunted and teased by the Star Wars figures that were “too expensive” in Pride & Joy?
On that common bond, no doubt you will agree that Raheny Chuch is without a doubt one of the ugliest buildings in the world.
Comment by markg | September 28, 2007 at 2:00 pmYeah, but you always knew you were in Raheny when you saw it.
Comment by Twenty Major | September 28, 2007 at 3:33 pmI think that some truly horrendous buildings can be so ugly as to be fascinating, like Crumlin College, and even Apollo House. I live next the Irish Times building though and am grateful for the welcome intrusion of a more conventionally attractive structure.
Comment by Lynsey | September 28, 2007 at 4:53 pmWell the “Welcome to Raheny” signs also helped and were less aesthetically offensive.
Comment by markg | September 28, 2007 at 5:16 pmYeah, but you couldn’t get communion from a road sign.
Comment by Twenty Major | September 28, 2007 at 6:05 pmTwenty, I’m sure that more than one person has attempted communion with a road sign.
Comment by Dan Sullivan | September 28, 2007 at 7:42 pmFolks - There will be a piece on this very subject in Saturday’s Weekend Review section of The Irish Times. I don’t think that Raheny Church made the cut, though.
Comment by Shane | September 28, 2007 at 10:36 pmMissed it. Any chance of posting it here?
Comment by Twenty Major | September 30, 2007 at 3:02 pmWeekend Review, Saturday Sept 29, by Roisin Ingle
Knock ‘em. Nuke ‘em. Let the wrecking ball swing. The news that two of Dublin’s most reviled buildings are to be demolished has revitalised the enduring national conversation concerning the very worst examples of architecture to be found across the State. There will be few tears shed when the brutal Hawkins House and Apollo House - two concrete monstrosities unsympathetic and out of scale with their surroundings - are levelled, but they will leave behind an extensive list of buildings we love to hate. Yes, we mean you, Liberty Hall, Cork County Hall, the Central Bank, Galway Cathedral, Busárus and, for that matter, most of the country’s soulless suburban shopping centres.
Artist Robert Ballagh says the news that “hideous” Hawkins House will soon be no more is to be welcomed, even if he is not a fan of the kind of public-private partnerships which are behind the planned demolition.
“It’s good news, but it also brings to mind what we’ve lost,” he says. “I am old enough to remember the Theatre Royal, which once stood on the site of Hawkins House. I saw the likes of Bill Haley and the Comets there in the 1950s.” He bemoans the fact that in contemporary Dublin, big acts now get to choose between a cavernous former railway station (the Point Depot) or a showjumping arena (the RDS) when it comes to large-scale venues.
If Ballagh was demolition man for the day he’d be pointing one finger at the “horrible” old motor-tax office building - River House on Chancery Street - at the back of the Four Courts in Dublin and another at a certain controversial office block designed by Sam Stephenson on Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin, although here, he says, he would stop short of actually pressing the red button.
“The ESB buildings on Fitzwilliam Street are awful, but if we pull them down we still don’t get back the beautiful Georgian vista that once stood there, so it would be a pointless exercise,” he says. “I do think I would knock down most of Mount Street though. There is nothing particularly inspiring along that road in Dublin.”
Architect Eamon McCarney, of Taylor Architects in Castlebar, Co Mayo, says it’s understandable that buildings such as Hawkins House and Apollo House are deemed eyesores, given that they represent an era when the face of the capital began to be altered.
“I think there was a genuine public grievance, especially in Dublin, which was once a beautifully co-ordinated city where you experienced the city in its totality rather than with object buildings that screamed for your attention,” he says. “Once you started raking chunks out of that fabric and instating these tall 1960s functional buildings which exposed the materials they were made of - designs based on an almost kind of Talibanesque fundamentalist architectural belief - people naturally felt a sense of loss. Architects at the time argued that anyone who didn’t appreciate the work simply didn’t understand it. You could argue that buildings such as the Central Bank were of their time and they ranked with others that were being built internationally, but in the context of the Dublin streetscape they were completely wrong.”
McCarney praises Edinburgh as a classically designed town similar to Dublin, where planners and architects got it right mainly due to “rigidly controlled planning laws” as opposed to what he diplomatically calls our “more flexible approach”.
The most offensive building in Ireland, he maintains, is the Statoil petrol station on Usher’s Quay, Dublin.
THE LORD MAYOR of Dublin, Cllr Paddy Bourke, is more concerned with some newer structures in the Docklands area of the capital. “Leaving aside the dreadful Hawkins House, I feel there are quite a number of new buildings on the southside quays, stretching from Matt Talbot Bridge to the East Link Toll Bridge, that would not win any architectural awards,” he says. “Liberty Hall, in particular, is looking very dilapidated, but I believe plans are in hand for its demolition. Some of the infill buildings do not appear to be of the same high standard as the much-loved and gracious Georgian buildings in the city.”
Dermot Boyd, a Dublin-based architect and lecturer at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Bolton Street, says it’s difficult for those in the profession to answer questions about which Irish buildings should be destroyed. “Architects tend to suffer from self-delusion and a belief that they could always have done better themselves,” he says.
Still, like many of those asked to name and shame the worst architectural offenders, Boyd points to the new Dublin City Council building on Dublin’s Dame Street by City Hall. “It is just really poorly conceived within the streetscape,” he says. “The building is overly pretentious in its conception, and the relationship to the square beside it is strange.”
He is not keen either on the tacked-on structures that sit out from the building, the ugly crane-like construction or the half-dome on top, which, he feels, is a poor attempt to “mimic the adjacent City Hall”. The green strip-lighting across the façade of the building, which gives it the look of a Vegas slot machine at night, is “unnecessary and gimmicky - I don’t believe you need to dress up architecture in that way”.
While critical of what he calls the trend of “facadism” that has blighted the capital in recent years, Boyd does stick up for some of the most hated buildings in Dublin, including the Lord Mayor’s bête noire, Liberty Hall. Appraising Dublin’s first skyscraper, Boyd says it’s one of those buildings that has become “part of the memory and understanding of the city”. He believes the building is “well-conceived” and would prefer to see it refurbished, with the reflective shatterproof coating on the windows removed and the iconic silver fume mosaic reinstated.
Regarding the Central Bank and the Civic Offices at Wood Quay, Boyd says the public’s negativity towards them is understandable because they are both strong architectural statements. “They are two quite difficult buildings for a lot of people,” he says.
PUTTING HIS DEMOLITION hard hat on, editor of the Dubliner magazine Trevor White wants to get rid of Jurys Hotel in Ballsbridge, which some are currently lobbying to save.
“It’s the ugliest building in Dublin,” he says. “This was once a widely held view, but in our rush to demonise the developer Sean Dunne we have forgotten how appalling it actually is. What is remarkable is that some of the people who objected to the building in the first place are now trying to ensure that it’s not demolished. The sooner it goes, the better.”
If author Colm Tóibín had his way, the “ghastly” Siemens building at the back of Fitzwilliam Court in Dublin would be levelled. “It’s actually being added to at the moment; a dreadful piece of work completely out of character with the buildings around it, and should be destroyed,” he says.
Elsewhere, Tóibín has it in for wind turbines at the edge of Inis Meain. “They overlook the Atlantic Ocean, which is one of the most austere, empty, lonely and beautiful places in the world, and they are an absolute disgrace to this country,” he says.
Whatever about knocking the aesthetic quality of office blocks, hotels or even wind turbines, Brian Merriman, director of the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, has a cautionary tale when it comes to criticising the design of a private house in a small country such as Ireland.
“There are a couple of houses on the Clontarf Road in Dublin that are pretty awful,” he says. “There is one in particular that is like a square box with battlements on it. Many years ago I was driving past with a friend, saying ‘wait until you see this, it’s the worst house in Ireland’. We pulled up and I pointed it out, there was silence in the car. My friend then told me that was the house he was born in. I haven’t seen him since.”
GALWAY
A maritime city should impress from the sea, and Columbus may have thought so when he berthed in Galway on a trading voyage between Bristol and Iceland in 1477. Were the Genoese explorer to return today, his first view would be of one of the western capital’s many ugly “monuments to consumerism” - the roof of Corrib Centre Eyre Street shopping centre.
The separate Eyre Square shopping centre kills neighbouring Merchant’s Road stone dead with its rear elevation, according to several professionals who despair of the fact that Galway has no city architect. Down at the harbour, the two top windows of the Portmore building by the Spanish Arch have earned it the irreverent moniker of “Madonna’s bra”. Controversially, Portmore was approved on a public and historical space - - site of the city’s medieval harbour and fish market quays at the Claddagh. “A missed opportunity” says architect Sybil Curley. Her “most out of context” vote goes to the multi-storey complex housing Habitat on the corner of Forster Street, which “looks like it landed in from a Dallas shopping mall”.
Across the river Corrib, a new apartment building by the old Fisheries Tower “completely disrespects” its waterfront location, according to one critic who notes that city’s approaches constitute a “diffuse arrangement” of soul-less industrial estates with no landscaping and no architectural merit whatsoever. - Lorna Siggins
BELFAST
When the 19-storey Churchill House was demolished several years ago, few Belfast citizens shed a tear. It was reduced to rubble to make way for the new £400 million (€570 million) Victoria Square retail development. Billed as “a renaissance for Belfast”, the partially built complex, with its signature glass dome, has itself already been given the thumbs-down by some.
One latter-day eyesore continually singled out for criticism is the Queen’s University Belfast student union building, a drab 1960s edifice squatting inelegantly opposite the university’s graceful Lanyon Building. Its recent makeover makes it appear, in the words of one architect, “not as mundane and cheap and nasty any more”.
The relatively new Hilton Hotel and BT Riverside Tower, both in Lanyon Place, are often regarded as chunky and boringly bland. Few can agree on the ugliest building in Belfast. But David Brett, retired reader in the history of design at the University of Ulster, recently nominated the Great Northern House and Mall in Great Victoria Street. He describes the chrome and black glass building as “an impostor, a sort of Toad Hall that pretends to an amplitude and height it hasn’t got . . . May it fall down soon”. - Fionola Meredith
CORK
The former chairman of the Cork International Film Festival, Charlie Hennessy, has always been passionate about most art forms and has no difficulty in identifying a number of buildings on Leeside with which he’s less than enamoured. “The student hostel at Victoria Cross is one building that I have arguments with people over,” he says. “Some people love it, but to my mind it’s just like a box, bland and featureless, and it sticks out like a sore thumb in an area with still a lot of residential housing.” Hennessy, a former chairman of the board of Cork Opera House, willingly concedes that the north wall of the opera house was once another construction that presented an unattractive face to Cork. “Of course, the building was designed to go on the Western Road, but the people of Cork wanted it kept in Emmet Place, with the result that you had this huge grey wall facing out to the river,” he says. “But the redesign by Murray O’Laoire has improved the building immensely.”
As a solicitor working in the South Mall, Hennessy also casts a jaundiced eye across the River Lee at the tax office building on Sullivan’s Quay. “That’s an absolute monstrosity - it has little to commend it and it just ruins the vista from the Grand Parade,” he says unequivocally. - Barry Roche
Comment by Shane | October 2, 2007 at 2:30 pm© 2007 The Irish Times
Does anyone know when Hawkins House / Apollo House are due to be demolished? Or even libery hall?
Comment by Rua | February 20, 2008 at 11:32 ambleedin Sam Stephenson! anyone seen his house out in Sandycove? a person who would design and live in a monstrosity like that shouldn’t have been allowed to design any other buildings. he’s more responsible, imho, for the destruction of dublin than anyone else
Comment by Ciaran | April 3, 2008 at 12:09 pm