PROJECT DETAILS

Stephenson & Gibney: Molyneux House, 1971C–1973

  • Dublin, Ireland, Show on map
  • #COM #Brick #Western Europe
  • The building started life in the eighteenth century as Molyneux chapel, serving as a blind asylum established in nearby Peter Street. … Stephenson and Gibney were uncompromising in their desire to bring modern American techniques and forms to Irish architecture. They also publicly delighted in confounding the conservation lobby, and were at the center of the most high-profile controversies regarding Dublin’s built environment during the 1960s and 1970s … In Bride Street, their tone was more conciliatory. The church’s frontage was entirely reworked, but its new red brick façade, broken up by oversized glass windows, was in sympathy with the traditions of Dublin’s vernacular architecture. Excerpt from Erika Hanna’s article in: SOS Brutalism: A Global Survey. Catalog DAM + WĂĽstenrot Foundation, Zurich (Park Books) 2017

  • The building has had a variety of owners since the architects moved out in the late 1980s. Although the exterior to the street has remained largely unadapted, the interior has undergone considerable remodelling and repainting over time.

    Today, only the front façade is left, since the rest of the building was torn down. It has been replaced with a new 258 bed hotel by Citizen M. The old building is said to have lacked structural stability.