1988 – St. Stephens Green Centre, Dublin

Often referred to as Mississippi paddle boat in style, this vast project by British Land was the culmination of many years of property acquisition and dereliction on the Green. Memorable only due to its bizarre facades facing St Stephens Green, and the top of Grafton Street constructed from decorative ironwork panels. To be redeveloped itself in the next few years.

“Ersatz ideas, verging on kitsch, are also embodied in British Land’s vast new shopping centre on St Stephen’s green which gobbled up a total of 70 mainly Georgian properties in the cause of “comprehensive redevelopment”. Meant to evoke the Curvilinear Range of glasshouses in the National Botanic Gardens, it looks instead like a Mississippi riverboat which has somehow been stranded on the edge of the Green – without its paddlewheels. Even in its dying days, South King Street was full of interest, with a whole range of shops dealing in antiques, books and bric-a-brac. Now its entire south side has been reduced to a row of doorless “shopfronts”, topped by a brick façade mimicking the Gaiety Theatre and the most cluttered roofline in the city, full of flues, ducts and vents.”
Frank McDonald, Saving The City, 1989

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