goodbye hawkins house

The ‘Save Hawkins House’ campaign starts here

It part of the heritage of the city’s heritage at this stage!
But unlike other more quirky or streamlined ‘monsters’ from the 60s, Hawkins is just horrendous in every respect, esp the steel windows, which are an interesting giveaway as to the age of the building – vestiges of 1950s construction.

Whatever about the architecture, it cannot be nice to work in the place – apparently many of the windows won’t budge at this stage, true to form – do people ever maintain steel windows…?
Often laughed at the Dept of Health being sited in the most unhealthy looking building in the state – and when you see it on the News in grim dusky light it’s just embarrassing (and very scary looking)
The Minister’s office is funny too – a bog standard room (with manky steel windows), but tarted up with happy happy brightly coloured sofas and other suburban nick nacks to keep the depression at bay 🙂

By far the worst view of the building is looking south down the tunnel of Marlborough St. With the rest of the city skyline out of sight it just dominates – it turns the city into Kruschev’s Moscow 🙁
Must take that pic before it disappears…

A redevelopment of Hawkins House would be one of the five most important developments in Dublin’s city centre over the past twenty years. If done right and not just a giant apartment block, I think it would give major impetus to the proprietors of Apollo House and the other monstrosities of the area to clean up their act. Could also encourage Trinity to open up Pearse Street.

For a €50 donation to charity, the OPW should rent out a sledge-hammer and hard-hat, and let the people of Dublin enjoy taking the monstrosity down themselves.

I’d pay!

James

That is excellent news; I think it is something that most have us have been waiting to hear for a long time and I am very happy that the site will not be used for the Abbey as it’s hidden nature would have done little for that institution. Only two left between Appollo House & College House. It is only a pity that one developer couldn’t secure that entire Block and do a unified scheme, with the Abbey sitting at the College St corner.

As for the Charity Sledge-athon a great idea but you would probably end up on a hospital trolley for the construction period of you got hurt.

Every time I see the title I just think of that song…

If someone’s witty enough to compose a send-up, the words are here (think the Diana version offers greater potential for humour):
http://www.eltonography.com/songs/candle_in_the_wind_1997.html

The winner recieves a shiny new propeller pencil 🙂

(also please excuse that rubbish written in my last post – no not the content, just the 1st line)

Well whats missing here?

Note the absence of any location for the new office. Health was listed for decentralisation, but no location was ever indicated for it.

My guess is Citywest – what is yours?

I reckon the 50 euro a whack suggestion should raise a good few quid.

I think health are off to Naas.

No health was’nt to be decentralised…though the dept might not be staying in the city centre (see the article).

Sorry TLM

On the contrary Health was the only Department mentioned for decentralisation, in the Mc Creevy Budget 2004 announcement, for which no location was specified. This kind of got lost in the initial reaction to this very bizzare proposal.

At that stage M Martin was Minister for Health, leading to some suggestions that Cork was envisaged. as the favoured spot. There is, by coincidence no doubt, a strange but not perfect alignment of initial decentralisation location decisions and Ministerial home towns.

Now it is Ms Harney, of West Dublin who is Minister for Health.

This pic really shows it at its worst – the view from Liberty Hall.
If Liberty Hall is purchased and the viewing deck reopened, Hawkins really must go.
For anyone who’s seen it recently can confirm, it is abominable from up there – really really awful:

There is a certain ship-like quality to it alright – don’t remember it swaying, just the dizziness from the height!

There is something of the deserted 1940s swimming pool to it up there – like those abandoned ‘baths’ you see all over southern England. Just the mosaics, the railing, the roof profile, even the aluminium windows – it’s all slightly exotic, yet sadly decayed – F McD’s ‘misplaced optimisim’ perfectly sums it up. That man really has a knack for classic phrases, they just fall off the tongue! 🙂

In 1998, Hawkins House was voted Dublin’s Worst Building on this site.
Nearly 7 years on, would it still top the poll?
The results of a re-run would be interesting…

The Office of Public Works is to sell the Department of Health building at Hawkins House in Dublin city centre.
It has been described, ironically, as the most unhealthy public building in the country.

Recent attempts to engage in a property swap have proved unsuccessful.

It was hoped that a developer would offer office accommodation at a separate location for the 500 or so staff in return for possession of Hawkins House.

However the offers received did not match market expectations, with the result the Office of Public Works is now planning to put on the open market.

http://www.unison.ie/breakingnews/index.php3?ca=39&si=77085

I read reports (possibly on another thread) which stated that staff were unhappy moving into a ‘modrin’ open plan style office. All those grades having to share the same space…ugggh.

I think this site is a great opportunity for a true Dublin landmark building/s that is greater than 32 floors like Éire Tower for example. Then same should be done with Apollo House and the former An Post building behind Pearse Street Station (cant remember the name of it)

Tell us that Heuston is not being titled ‘Éire Tower’?!

I hope not. It’s quite a tacky name to be honest – like New York’s ‘Freedom’ Tower.

Hawkins House is certainly appalling, but surely it doesn’t deserve the title of Dublin’s worst building? That must belong to O’Connell Bridge House.

If you put Hawkins on the O’Connell site, you might think differently 😉

32 story at heuston isnt called eire tower, its “heuston gate”
eire tower is a fantasy building that never got much attention…. eire tower
how likely is a high rise in this site?

@source for “Eire Tower” wrote:

Name: éireTower
City: Dublin
Country: Ireland
Illustrator: Buck McAllister
Status: fantasy
Finished: 2007
Floors: 41
Use: mixed use
Antenna:
Spire: 174.1 m
Roof: 160.4 m

Interesting that the OPW have vetoed the first of the land swaps mooted and given this result which I would say is the correct one; you have wonder as to the status of the accelerated disposal programme of sites to be swapped for social/affordable housing that was announced with great fanfare only a short time ago.

i would hope that a newer building on this site would be the same height or higher again.

@alpha wrote:

i would hope that a newer building on this site would be the same height or higher again.

This is an awfully cramped area of the city and it doesn’t look like Hawkin’s fugly sister, An Post, is going to be demolished anytime soon. Had both buildings been pencilled for demolishment then a whole city block could have been developed into something worth while.

As for the replacement structure, I’m not sure anything above the current height of Hawkins is going to look great here. Ulster Bank has already sealed the deal in relation to maximum height in this area of the quays. What a shame.. 🙁

Pencil Please

Goodbye Hawkin House
Though we never liked you at all
You were the thing that placed itself
Where Dublin was torn apart
You called out to our city
And you whispered to those in pain
“Haha, tough luck, pal
I’m an architectural shame”

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a suicidal in the wind
Ever fading with the sunset
When the rain set in
And your footplate will always fall here
Though we’ll rebuild-oh yes we will
Your design burned out long before
Your infamy ever will

Loveliness we’ve lost
These empty days with your pile
This torch we’ll always carry
When we burn you to the ground
And even though we try
The truth brings us to tears
All our words cannot express
The hurt you brought us through the years

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a suicidal in the wind
Ever fading with the sunset
When the rain set in
And your footplate will always fall here
Though we’ll rebuild-oh yes we will
Your design burned out long before
Your infamy ever will

Goodbye Hawkin House
No we never liked you at all you
You were the thing that placed itself
Where Dublin was torn apart
Goodbye Hawkin House
From a country delighted you are gone
Who’ll miss nothing about you
When the demolitions blow

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a suicidal in the wind
Ever fading with the sunset
When the rain set in
And your footplate will always fall here
Though we’ll rebuild-oh yes we will
Your design burned out long before
Your infamy ever will

Impressive attempt Fergal, alas we’re rather conveniently out of propeller pencils at the minute. Found these at the back of the stock room though – congratulations!

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Impressive attempt Fergal, alas we’re rather conveniently out of propeller pencils at the minute. Found these at the back of the stock room though – congratulations!

Methinks there be a shortage of the milk of human kindness.

I don’t mind Hawkins House too much. Maybe it should be kept; if all buildings from this time are demolished/changed, we won’t have any record of what buildings from this time looked like.

I honestly cannot comprehend for one second (and i’ve tried) how anybody could see the slightest redeeming factor in hawkins street house. Some people like the loop line, some the screen college green, but how anybody can think this building acceptable is beyond me.

In Britain certain so called Sixties Monstrosities are now preserved. The Centre Point tower at the end of Oxford Street is one example.

Just replacing Hawkins House wont do a huge deal for that area of town. The An Post office building is, in my opinion, just as ugly and visually damaging. Hawkins House is mostly “contained” on its site. While I’ve a soft spot for the Screen cinema because I was a frequent patron, the way it’s set back from the street destroys the screetscape from many angles. For example, it would be just about possible to visually “terminate” Fleet St. if there was a properly shaped corner building on that the screen site. A curved corner building would have symmetry with the Garda Station, Doyles pub and the ever changing corner resteraunt at the Townsend end of D’Olier Street. I know currently there’s a vital traffic artery running through it but, who knows, maybe in a decade or so, that “square” of Dublin could be pedestrianised.

I won’t be chaining myself to Hawkins House if the wrecking balls arrive but I would have like to have seen one of the Ballymun towers refurbished and retained.

Get rid of Hawkins house – it’s fucking rubbish

Keep O’Connell Bridge house and restore Libery Hall – the best of the 60s

@dodger wrote:

I honestly cannot comprehend for one second (and i’ve tried) how anybody could see the slightest redeeming factor in hawkins street house. Some people like the loop line, some the screen college green, but how anybody can think this building acceptable is beyond me.

It’s very well located and must have good views. I’d be happy to live or work there.

Is this building brutalist?

Anyone know the story of how it got planning permission? Was permission granted around the same time as O’Connell Bridge House?

@Frank Taylor wrote:

Is this building brutalist?

No just brutal

It’s a very very poor example of 60’s architecture at it was “designed” prior to the 1963 planning regulations

@Rory W wrote:

Get rid of Hawkins house – it’s fucking rubbish

Keep O’Connell Bridge house and restore Libery Hall – the best of the 60s

Interestingly, though, the latter two have both had alterations, while Hawkins House is a completely unaltered example of its time.
(O’Connell Bridge House had alterations to its windows and mullions in the ’90s, and the original transparent glass of Liberty Hall was replaced with mirror glass after a bomb in the ’70s.)

@Rory W wrote:

It’s a very very poor example of 60’s architecture at it was “designed” prior to the 1963 planning regulations

There were planning laws pre 1963, including planning schemes for Dublin. I was wondering how this building was permitted under these older rules.

Is there a book on the 20th century planning history of Dublin pre-1963?
Why is this building worse than any other cuboid office block of the same height? Not shiny enough? No pyramid on the roof?

When it is knocked, will it not be replaced by something that is essentially the same yet shinier?

Centre Point in London is a completely different story to Hawkins House – It’s actually a reasonably elegant piece of architecture for one thing even if it is a little frilly in places. It’s also well sited at a major London hub and has stayed pretty fresh looking down the years – nice white concrete…

Compared to the pile of cheap, nasty, and unhealthy (as in sick building syndrome) crap that is Hawkins house it’s a masterpiece…

In that second picture of Hawkins House (courtesy of http://www.fantasyjackpalance.com btw) you can just see the An Post building sticking out the left hand side. As has been said already it’s equally offensive and should be removed as part of any redevelopment of the Hawkins House site.
I have to say I find the renovation of the old Irish Press building in the foreground pretty nasty as well when viewed from the other side of the river.
This stretch of the South Quays is a bit of a disaster, basically because of whats behind the quay frontage. The most offensive building in that picture is actually the apartment scheme in the lower right hand corner – take a look at it from Eden Quay and see how it looms over the actual quay buildings in a way that doesn’t really happen anywhere else along the river. It’s also unbelievably crap – obviously “designed” with no regard for the fact that the rear elevation would be plainly obvious from many vantage points – therefore random window sizes, cheap clip on balconies and plastic waste pipes abound…

Yes, the apartment scheme on Poolbeg Street that rises over the Corn Exchange as seen from Eden Quay is shockingly bad – it looks like the back of a bungalow…

So much crap has been allowed on eden quay precisely because hawkins street house is there. I agree that apollo house and an post are offensive too but neither are as bad as hawkins st house because neither are anything like as big. Let’s not forget the Screen too. All in all the ugliest few acres in ireland.

Does anyone know where there is picture of the refurbishment plan proposed for Hawkin’s House a few years ago; the idea was partial reclad to break up the bulk a bit, something about the car and a funny floating roof thing on top.

You just want to keep it Devin because it has steel windows 😉 😀

I would agree to a certain extent though in that it is by no means the most damaging building in the city; the western quays apartment stuff as far worse than Hawkins. Also as has been said, Hawkins is self-contained – it is so god-awful, and located in such a compact place as to make quite distinctive from everything around it. It’s almost acceptable as a token piece of trash 🙂

But I disagree that it is an example of its time, simply because it’s barely even architecture. It doesn’t attempt to be radically Brutalist, nor go in the opposite direction and have a more designed, self-conscious look like Gibney’s ESB, or Centrepoint. It is just a heap of concrete panels chucked together that just happen to form a building. Considerably more effort went into designing Ballymun.

As it is now, it’s something of landmark – it stands for everything that went wrong with the city in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s intimately associated with all the ‘old’ arguments, with The Destruction of Dublin, the call to arms in the 1980s to save the city – essentially pre-Celtic Tiger Dublin. As such, it is somewhat difficult to let go of it all, turn a corner and move on – something which will happen with the demolition of Hawkins House.

Sorry, to answer my own question, there is a picture in the previous hawkins house thread:

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=2112

I would like to see them do up Hawkins House. I know it is terrible looking but I’m sure it could look way better if they made an effort.

By far the worst view of the building is from College Green; it is hideous how it looms over the little Wide Streets Commission buildings like a dirty old man:

It is impossible to image how lovely this view once was with only the terraced buildings’ chimneys piercing the skyline.
How disgraceful that this heap of junk, along with College House, were permitted to be shovelled onto this site in the very heart of the city.

The only time the former looks half decent is at night:

@Graham Hickey wrote:

it is hideous how it looms over the little Wide Streets Commission buildings like a dirty old man:

LOL at this most vivid personification of an inanimate object!!

Or maybe I’m just getting a bit mad in the head being up at 2:51am trying to finish a project!!

Actually Graham, in my opinion, that “looming picture” highlights the fact that it’s the An Post office building and Apollo House (which I vaguely recalling hearing had contracted some sort of concrete disease a few years ago and was due – at the time – for imminent destruction?) which are the real “loomers” in that block. Hawkins House almost looks elegant and refined in contrast to them which is some acheivement.

Would those two buildings be the most brutalist buildings in the centre of Dublin?

Apollo house isn’t even in the picture and cannot be seen from college green.

Apollo house isn’t even in the picture and cannot be seen from college green.

If the building to the right with the “To Let” sign is the An Post building and the green building to it’s left is Hawkins House, what is the building behind Hawkins House towering over it?

@jimg wrote:

If the building to the right with the “To Let” sign is the An Post building and the green building to it’s left is Hawkins House, what is the building behind Hawkins House towering over it?

Thats the rest of Hawkins House – I think the Destruction of Dublin said it best “a brutalist slab with two green biscuit tins strapeed on”

Well the only arguments for retaining it will come from people who are congenitally blind..

Once it’s knocked, there’ll be taller buildings in its place. And fair enough, the Liffey frontage can take the height. But several mixed height towers would break up any horizontal opression that the view in the photos conveys.

In my uneducated opinion.

Oh it has to go…!!! Whoever had the suggestion to arm Dubliners with sledgehammers is on the right course.

On the one hand, its seems logical that OPW should hold off a move from HH until Marlborough Street become available. Afterall why pay rent needlessly for a short period of time. On the otherhand, will Marlborough Street become available in 3 years? Will the decentralisation of Education go ahead? Desirable though it is for HH to be redeveloped sooner rather than later I think the OPW decision probably makes better business sense.

Depends on what they were offered for HH which in my opinion should have gone out to tender as a straight disposal as a redevelopment opportunity, The investment return on the proceeds assuming a €60m sale would have easily exceeded the €2.75m annual rent roll on the Parnell St property with much of the fitout transferable if the new HQs were to be designed along similar floorplates which is entirely possible given that sites have not yet been selected.

much of the fitout transferable if the new HQs were to be designed along similar floorplates which is entirely possible given that sites have not yet been selected.

Eh?:confused: Not sure what you mean here. The new HQ has been selected – its the cureent Dept of Education.

Which is already fitted out but many other buildings in the pipeline are not and if the floorplans were replicated it would post vacation be possible to transfer much of the internal fitout to new buildings.

It appears that the only reason given for not disposing of the property was the assumed fit out cost on Chapel House c€5.5m would have to be written down over a 3 year timeframe.

As a straight move selling HH as a development opportunity and investing the proceeds would over a 6 year time frame would exceed the costs of leasing and fitting out Chapel House should the proceeds be invested in a low risk NTMA type model.

Should NTMA be acquiring buildings in the knoweldge that they can provide the tenant as part of the National Pension plan?

What about recladding and refurbishing the building – this has been done sucessfully elsewhere, eg the awful eyesores that were on Stephens Green… It just strikes me that any developer of this site would be unlikely to get pp to replicate the volume as currently exists, as well as demolition being wasteful.
Now theres a thought – bet you never imagined that I would be advocating a development strategy that would in part keep/ reuse a building that we all – and me especially – depise!

:p

Not a runner one two grounds unfortunately

1>>> Floor to ceiling heights are too low to install raised access floors and proper air-con services ensuring it would never achevie the standard required to secure a Grade A rent which would make up a 30-40% difference with the uplift probably being insufficient to justify the risk premium of 30% factored in by prospective developers.

2>>> Site layout; HH is plonked badly in the middle of the site with curtilage all round; through use of lucent cladding a much higher quantum of floorspace would be possible even at a slightly lower height

TP, I defer to you on grounds 1, however Point 2 would be irrelevent to any developer if they were then to lose sq area!

So back to whacking it anyway then 🙂

So, who’s going to win the biggest PVC contract in the history of the state?

Might as well go the whole hog and clad the entire building in the stuff – a monument to Ireland’s love affair with plastic.
And aptly, a short term solution.

You know its funny, when you look at the picture above you realised that someone loved this building once: real care was taken in designing it, it isn’t like a million other crap for the sake of it buildings, whoever designed it meant it to be great, they just did so at a time when there was no concern for planning rather than architecture and the materials have aged badly.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

So, who’s going to win the biggest PVC contract in the history of the state?

Might as well go the whole hog and clad the entire building in the stuff – a monument to Ireland’s love affair with plastic.
And aptly, a short term solution.

ROFL 😀

@notjim wrote:

You know its funny, when you look at the picture above you realised that someone loved this building once: real care was taken in designing it, it isn’t like a million other crap for the sake of it buildings, whoever designed it meant it to be great, they just did so at a time when there was no concern for planning rather than architecture and the materials have aged badly.

Actually when it was first built nobody loved it then either, not even the architect

I’m not too certain on this demolish Hawkin’s House movement. I fully understand that hawkin’s house is the vilest building on the skyline in Dublin and the site it selfishly stakes out for itself could be used for something better but I think that, well, it acts as a sort of warning against architecture of its ilk. You know, if someone wanted to build a concrete monstrosity like it in the future all people had to do is point to Hawkins House and that would lead to the concrete hulk being shelved.

fill in the blanks

I just hope tcd is involved in their alumnus’s redevelopment of this site: they are idiots if they aren’t.

@missarchi wrote:

fill in the blanks

You’ve come up with the ideal solution there.
Don’t demolish it. Save the money, and just paint it blue.