Cork-based firm wins design award for The Dean

THE Dean Hotel has scooped a major international architectural award for a Cork firm.

Wilson Architecture, based on Wellington Road, was the only Irish winner to be named in The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

The architecture awards recognise 130 of the best-designed buildings and landscapes from around the world, with The Dean taking home the award in the hotel category.

Known for its black panelling, the Cork hotel is part of hospitality chain Press Up and consists of 120 bedrooms and a popular rooftop restaurant known as Sophie’s, which provides an impressive view of Horgan’s Quay.

“The striking and unique form is generated in response to the site’s immediate environment, its relationship to the other elements of the masterplan and the greater landscape of this part of the city,” the awards said of the hotel’s design.

“The bespoke black panels alternate from tilting in at the top and in at the bottom in an apparently random pattern, creating alternate reflections in the light,” Paud O’Mahony, managing director of Wilson Architecture, and lead architect on The Dean Hotel, said.

“The black colour contrasts the white limestone of the adjacent Carriage Sheds in a symbiotic relationship where each compliments the other. The windows tend to blend with one or another of the reflections alternating as the sun’s direction changes throughout the day. The overall effect has the building appear as a single vibrant, constantly changing object.”

The winning projects will be honoured at a special awards ceremony in Athens, Greece in September.