HOWZAT

Stephenson is said to have been chosen to plan the Central Bank in 1965, the same year that he designed Fianna Fail’s general election posters,becausethe business community in the city admired the way he had stood up to the preservationists.

The Commercial Buildings, dating from 1796 and listed for preservation, were demolished to make way for the Central Bank. Like several other buildings by Stephenson, it was inspired by the work of Kevin Roche, later to win the Pritzker prize in 1982. In this case, Roche’s unbuilt 1969 design for the US Federal Reserve in New York, which lifted the offices 165ft into the air on four vast piers to create an outdoor plaza, was Stephenson’s spur.

In 1973, when the Bank was under construction, it was discovered that the roof was 29ft higher than authorised, in what has been described as the most flagrant ever breach of the planning act. Fianna Fail was no longer in power, and Stephenson was hung out to dry. He railed against “noisy lynch-mobs baying around the drawing board” and complained vociferously of “character assassination.”

Although the building was eventually completed in 1978 after an ill-tempered public enquiry and a subsequent series of planning applications and appeals, his career never really recovered.

He began to see himself as a latter-day Gandon. “All great public buildings, including the Four Courts and the Custom House, were vilified in their time and history has proved their critics wrong,” he said in 1981.

“Look at the Central Bank. The dubious citizens of Dublin will learn to love it in time. It will become a significant aspect of Dublin’s character.” And the truth is, it has.

His greatest debacle, however, came at Wood Quay, where 20,000 Dubliners took to the streets to protest against the destruction of the city’s earliest archaeological remains during construction of the civic offices. Stephenson’s design was drastically cut back but, this time, there wasn’t even the thin consolation of a great work to balance what had been lost.

Stephenson’s grim, monolithic bunkers glowered over the city, bristling with such hostility that, more than a decade later, he was not even invited to take part in the competition to complete the troubled complex, eventually won by Ronnie Tallon.

Despite all the setbacks, he never allowed himself to become bitter, cynical or disillusioned. But there would be no second coming. He would remain forever the “starchitect” who fell to earth. But his early glories cannot be taken away. More than once he said architects should be judged by what they do, not what they say.

He designed the Irish pavilion for the 1970 World Fair in Osaka. His Bord na Mona headquarters near Baggot Street bridge appeared on a stamp. He was awarded the RIAI Gold Medal for the Central Bank’s currency centre in Sandyford, Co Dublin. Typically, he said he was tempted to tell the RIAI to keep the medal, because the Central Bank, completed at the same time, “is much more significant, a landmark building”.

Stephenson had a very good eye and a sure sense of form, particularly when sculpting in brick, as at Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club, the Institute for Advanced Studies on Burlington Road and his own office, Molyneux House on Bride Street.

His best buildings are perfect symbols for the times in which they were made — glamorous and just a little bit dangerous.

What his legacy will be remains to be seen, but Stephenson’s posthumous reputation is ripe for reassessment.