The Irish Independent

Central Bank

The architect behind some of the capital's most famous and controversial landmark city buildings has died. Sam Stephenson died suddenly following a heart operation at St James's Hospital in Dublin on Thursday. He was 72. The Dubliner, who received the Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland Gold Medal in 1985 for his design of the Central Bank's Currency Centre in Sandyford, studied at the Dublin Institute of Technology and in England, France and Switzerland. But most of the projects he was involved in attracted controversy. He first came to the public's notice in the mid-1970s with his design for the new ESB Headquarters on Dublin's Fitzwilliam Street. This involved the destruction of the longest complete Georgian streetscape in Europe where 11 houses were demolished which led to a break in the flow of Fitzwilliam Street/Square and Merrion Square.