His funeral service at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin on Friday was told by his friend John Waters that Wallace was a man of “very strong words and offered them, whether asked to or not”.
Describing himself as “shy” but no “shrinking violet”, Wallace opened some of Ireland’s most stylised and desirable homes for public scrutiny with a series of programmes that featured everything from perfect interiors to dilapidated mansions and repurposed bungalows.
He attributed his love of design and architecture to dyslexia, which was diagnosed when he was a teenager. But in the end, it was the “thickest boy in the class” who rose to become perhaps the most famous.
A judge on RTÉ’s Home of the Year since its inception in 2015, he went on to present the property renovation programme The Great House Revival for five series. It championed the renovation of old and neglected vernacular buildings with the help of restoration grants.
In 2021, he also fronted My Bungalow Bliss, which involved giving a new lease of life to the much-derided one-off houses from “off-the-shelf” plans by Meath architect Jack Fitzsimons.
His excitement at discovering stylish renovations, no matter the budget, was palpable, and his opinionated take on design features helped to bring a frisson of excitement to his TV productions. He also ran an architectural practice, which, at the height of the Celtic Tiger, employed 160 people before going bust in the crash.
Wallace, who died suddenly last Sunday, just shy of his 69th birthday, was born the only child of a Protestant couple in south Dublin on December 9, 1956. His parents, Ken and Susan, were reasonably well-off, and he attended the fee-paying Sandford Park school in Ranelagh.
The Wallace family were intrepid travellers, his father driving a caravan around Donegal and Connemara during the summer. In later life, Hugh would delight in travelling to more exotic locations.
Celebrity architect Hugh Wallace, who has died aged 68. Photo: Paul McCarthy
“I was dyslexic in school so I was just assumed to be ‘thick’,” he said last month. “It was a period where I had no confidence in myself to do anything. When I was diagnosed as dyslexic, it was such a relief that I decided that I was not going to rely on anyone else.”
He said he always knew he was going to be an architect.
“When I was four or five, all I played with was Lego and Meccano, and I loved making buildings,” he said.
Allowed to do his Leaving Cert orally, he got enough points to get into a design course in Bolton Street College, “where I met Catholics for the first time”. He left and, with college classmate Alan Douglas, started Douglas Wallace Consultants in 1982.
Their early contracts included working for Peter Mark, the hairdressing group, and moving the Brown Thomas department store across Grafton Street to its present location.
We give loyalty to our clients and the clients are loyal to us
When the property crash came, he spent time in Oman working for a wealthy businessman.
“The period around 2009 when we lost the business — talk about seeing into the abyss. But our clients were very loyal to us, people like Peter Mark, Dunnes Stores, Gerry Barrett, that was very important,” he said.
“Loyalty is very important in business. We give loyalty to our clients and the clients are loyal to us. We are all in business and we can all make mistakes, but it’s about how you deal with it.”
He told the Sunday Independent that both he and his father had a “nasty relationship with alcohol” and both eventually gave up. He said it was only after his father stopped drinking that they got to know each other.
The Douglas Wallace partnership eventually regrouped, and at the time of his death employed more than 25 people in design and consultancy. As well as relaunching his career as a television personality, he was an accomplished cook and was awarded five stars when he appeared on Virgin Media’s The Restaurant.
His other passion was travel, and he recalled a balloon ride over the Skeleton Coast of Namibia and a visit to Luxor in Egypt as the highlights of his experiences. He fell in love with Rome, and Italy in general, because of its ancient architecture, but also because its people “own the streets”.
‘My Bungalow Bliss’ host Hugh Wallace
Wallace met his husband, hairdresser Martin Corbett, from outside Thurles, Co Tipperary, in The George pub in Dublin on Valentine’s night in 1988, and they entered a civil partnership in January, 2012. Although they had different tastes in interior design, food and other things, they had a close relationship.
“We’ve had some wild experiences,” Wallace said, describing how they accidentally ended up “in a brothel in the middle of a cornfield” in Egypt.
They lived first in Ranelagh, where Corbett has a hairdressing salon, before moving to McMahon Street in Portobello, where they did their first renovation job. Talking about the project, Wallace said he enjoyed colour, texture, wallpaper and lots of artwork.
“Martin’s a minimalist, I’m a maximalist,” he said, but they managed to compromise.
More recently, they had renovated a house in Clanbrassil Street in Dublin’s south inner city, which got them into some planning difficulty. The furniture arrived after his death and the couple were planning to move in to their new home after a three-year renovation this weekend.
“I am a very lucky man. I have the best of both worlds. I spend three days a week working as an architect and the rest of the time I’m out looking at houses, filming for TV, meeting homeowners, advising people on their homes… that’s the fun stuff and I love what I do,” Wallace said recently.
“I am particularly passionate about The Great House Revival. We talk about sustainability, but the most sustainable home is the one that gets reimagined and reused. It’s a crying shame when you drive around the country and see homes that are abandoned and not just very old houses, recent ones too.”
Despite all his accomplishments, Wallace said his proudest moment was receiving a lifetime achievement award from TU Dublin 12 years ago for his contribution to the design industry.