Dublin’s Ugliest Building

Just as a point of information, the new Cork street isn’t a dual-carraigeway as it has no central median, but is instead a primary distributor road.

The fact that it is being discussed on here as such is indicative as to the destructive anti-pedestrian treatment delivered by DCC’s Roads and Traffic Dept.

DCC’s R&T dept have succeeded in making a new inner-city street feel like a bad old-style DC relief road – quite an accomplishment!

Michael Philips, where are you? 😡

Can i just ask by what stretch of the imagination that Cork Street building is one of the ugliest in Dublin? I mean, ffs, you could pick a million buildings, including half the quays and most of the docklands, that are uglier than that.

@gunter wrote:

I think if you read back, you find that nobody was saying that this was Dublin’s ugliest building, I introduced it to get the discussion away from pilloring again all the usual suspects and move it onto a debate about aesthetic progression / regression in the architecture of the Dublin streetscape.

Yea! that’s what I was doing

. . . . and I may have wanted to have a go at a project that I knew was about to be laden with architectural honours🙂

Hmm ok. Getting a bit off the point then! Reading all the posts would be a tedious process, I have to content myself with the last couple.

@rumpelstiltskin wrote:

Reading all the posts would be a tedious process……

I’ve spent a tedious Sunday afternoon doing just that. For research purposes and a bit of divilment !
I decided to rake back over the 10 and a half years of this threads existence to find the definitive answer to the question of Dublin’s ugliest building based on the suggestions and nominations put forward by the contributors. I used a very scientific formula to conduct this exhaustive endeavour. :p

Namely :

– Only buildings that are actually named are included. There were numerous references to apartment blocks being located close to this or that, so to avoid confusion I decided to omit such vague contributions.

– To reflect the context of individual posts, only buildings which I deemed to have been suggested as ugly by the poster are included and not other buildings he/she may have mentioned by way of comparison.

– Some people have nominated more than one building in their posts, with preferences numbered 1-10 etc. Others just mention 1 or 2 buildings in no particular order. I have included all buildings in these lists regardless of pecking order. (I don’t have time for all the re-counts proportional representation brings).:rolleyes:

– Someone suggested the airport as Dublin’s Ugliest Building. I took this to mean the present 1960’s terminal building as there are a number of other buildings in the airport complex with their own nominations.

So here are the results – and shut that drum roll up please.

Of the 66 buildings suggested, a total of 37 were nominated only once.
Too many to mention here, and I won’t single out one or two of the interesting ones because to do so would only lead us down off topic street.

A total of 19 buildings received 2 nominations. (Again, too many to list here).

The following buildings that grace our capital city are suggested on three occasions…
The ILAC Centre.
Central Bank, Dame St.
Woodchester House, Christchurch

These ones are suggested 4 times in the thread….
Ulster Bank, Georges Quay.
Civic Offices, Woodquay.

Those mentioned 5 times are…..
O’ Connell Bridge House.
The former Statoil garage, Usher’s Quay
Busaras

One building is nominated 6 times……
Liberty Hall

And the winner (or loser) with 9 nominations is………
Yep, its Hawkins House.

So now we know !

Here is some additional useless information.
Of the 66 suggested buildings there are….

6 Hotels.
4 Shopping Centres.
3 Churches.
1 Embassy.
1 Theatre.
1 Bridge.
Bits of an airport.

Now for ya. 🙂

No surprise that Hawkins House emerged as the winner however it is clear that Hawkins House can’t be taken in isolation it is the middle block of the gang of three comprising College House and Apollo House.

On reflection one is surprised that no proposal was made to redevelp all three during the boom years as it is clear that Grade A office space worth a lot more could have been delivered.

With Grade A space likely to become scarce in 2012 due to the fall off in activity and occupiers moving from Grade B to Grade A space on lease expiry; lets hope that a plan with vision emerges. I’d not like to be holding any of these post lease expiry which I understand some of which occur around 2014 or so unless one had a vision

There is no doubt in my mind that Hawkins House is the one to beat, but it also “benefits” from a very bleak location, in an underscale car park, given priority over pedestrian access, and with a dreary bus park of a street to one side of it. Viewed, almost always, through a vision of diesel fumes. Replacing the Theatre Royal (no beauty itself but well liked, if not then appreciated or heavily used) also acts against it.

Now my question is if it had been built on a stand alone site, say somewhere in a field in Stillorgan, would it escape condemnation? I tend to feel no.

@PVC King wrote:

No surprise that Hawkins House emerged as the winner however it is clear that Hawkins House can’t be taken in isolation it is the middle block of the gang of three comprising College House and Apollo House.

On reflection one is surprised that no proposal was made to redevelp all three during the boom years as it is clear that Grade A office space worth a lot more could have been delivered.

With Grade A space likely to become scarce in 2012 due to the fall off in activity and occupiers moving from Grade B to Grade A space on lease expiry; lets hope that a plan with vision emerges. I’d not like to be holding any of these post lease expiry which I understand some of which occur around 2014 or so unless one had a vision

The big problem with this site is not that there was no demand but that all three buildings are in State ownership – DoHC, DSFA and An Post. The saga of relocating the DoHC shows how slow the State has been in realising what could have been a profitable asset.

Damn straight, the missed opportunities during the Tiger years take some beating. Any developer would have killed for those sites and happily paid serious loot to the Exchequer.

@pdosullivan wrote:

Damn straight, the missed opportunities during the Tiger years take some beating. Any developer would have killed for those sites and happily paid serious loot to the Exchequer.

Completely or they could have gone down the JV route and captured even more of the upside.

A scheme on this site with government department(s) as the tenant on a 15 year term certain would secure funding and remove Dublin’s only triple office horror story.

In the late 1990s whilst reality still existed the state decided to purchase buildings where Government departments were tenants on long leases; it was a good strategy of reducing future liabilities. Examples of good purchases include Lansdowne House occupied by the revenue commisioners. Had the leases been extended and the buildings sold in 2006 the government would have made an absolute killing.