With the hated Hawkins House now due for demolition, Róisín Ingleasks which other capital carbuncles are due for the skip. And what are the worst buildings in Cork, Belfast and Galway?
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 MAYORof 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 DEMOLITIONhard hat on, editor of the Dublinermagazine 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