![\"Celebrity](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/94871809.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHis funeral service at St Patrick\u2019s Cathedral in Dublin on Friday was told by his friend John Waters that Wallace was a man of \u201cvery strong words and offered them, whether asked to or not\u201d.<\/p>\n
Describing himself as \u201cshy\u201d but no \u201cshrinking violet\u201d, Wallace opened some of Ireland\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cthickest boy in the class\u201d who rose to become perhaps the most famous.<\/p>\n
A judge on RT\u00c9\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
In 2021, he also fronted My Bungalow Bliss, which involved giving a new lease of life to the much-derided one-off houses from \u201coff-the-shelf\u201d plans by Meath \u00adarchitect Jack Fitzsimons.<\/p>\n
His excitement at discovering \u00adstylish 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.<\/p>\n
Wallace, who died suddenly last Sunday, just shy of his 69th birthday, was born the only child of a Protest\u00adant couple in south Dublin on December 9, 1956. His parents, Ken and Susan, were reasonably well-off, and he attended the fee-paying \u00adSandford Park school in Ranelagh.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Celebrity architect Hugh Wallace, who has died aged 68. Photo: Paul McCarthy<\/p>\n
\u201cI was dyslexic in school so I was just assumed to be \u2018thick\u2019,\u201d he said last month. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he always knew he was \u00adgoing to be an architect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was four or five, all I played with was Lego and Meccano, and I loved making buildings,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Allowed to do his Leaving Cert orally, he got enough points to get into a design course in Bolton Street College, \u201cwhere I met Catholics for the first time\u201d. He left and, with college classmate Alan Douglas, started Douglas Wallace Consultants in 1982.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
We give loyalty to our clients and the clients are loyal to us<\/p>\n
When the property crash came, he spent time in Oman working for a wealthy businessman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe period around 2009 when we lost the business \u2014 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLoyalty 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\u2019s about how you deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told the Sunday Independent that both he and his father had a \u201cnasty relationship with alcohol\u201d and both eventually gave up. He said it was only after his father stopped drinking that they got to know each other.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s The Restaurant.<\/p>\n
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 \u00adancient architecture, but also because its people \u201cown the streets\u201d.<\/p>\n
![\"'My](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/920867fa-b85a-4e32-b2af-4492aaeb1dbe.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
‘My Bungalow Bliss’ host Hugh Wallace<\/p>\n
Wallace met his husband, hairdresser Martin Corbett, from outside Thurles, Co Tipperary, in The George pub in Dublin on \u00adValentine\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had some wild experiences,\u201d Wallace said, describing how they accidentally ended up \u201cin a brothel in the middle of a cornfield\u201d in Egypt.<\/p>\n
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 \u00adenjoyed colour, texture, wallpaper and lots of artwork.<\/p>\n
\u201cMartin\u2019s a minimalist, I\u2019m a maximalist,\u201d he said, but they managed to compromise.<\/p>\n
More recently, they had renovated a house in Clanbrassil Street in Dublin\u2019s 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 \u00adrenovation this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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\u2019m out looking at houses, filming for TV, meeting homeowners, advising people on their homes\u2026 that\u2019s the fun stuff and I love what I do,\u201d Wallace said recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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\u2019s a crying shame when you drive around the country and see homes that are abandoned and not just very old houses, recent ones too.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His funeral service at St Patrick\u2019s Cathedral in Dublin on Friday was told by his friend John Waters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,43288],"class_list":{"0":"post-180101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-liam-collins"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}