Tributes paid as Home of the Year’s Hugh Wallace dies aged 68

Renowned architect and popular TV personality Hugh Wallace has died, just weeks before his 69th birthday.

He is survived by his husband, hairdresser Martin Corbett.

It is with deep sadness and shock that we announce our beloved friend and client, architect, Hugh Wallace, RIAI passed away suddenly at home last night,” his family announced.

“Hugh was a director and co-founder of architecture firm, Douglas Wallace Consultants and was widely known and admired for his work as the presenter of RTÉ’s The Great House Revival and as a judge on Home of the Year. 

His passion, creativity and warmth touched colleagues, audiences, and his many, many friends across the country.

Wallace was a familiar face on Irish televisions, appearing as a judge on RTÉ’s Home of the Year and presenting The Great House Revival.

He was the only judge to appear in every series of  Home of the Year, fronting the hit property show since it first aired in 2015.

Leading the tributes, RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst said Wallace’s passion for creative design and his advocacy for the wider benefits of good architecture made him “a hugely popular figure with audiences and across the industry”.

“On RTÉ’s hugely popular  Home of the Year, Hugh, with his fellow judges, not only opened the door to the most extraordinary homes in Ireland, but he also inspired viewers to engage with the vast possibilities of innovative design,” he said.

Bakhurst added that he greatly admired Wallace’s openness about his own life story, “which helped so many.” 

Hugh Wallace, who has died aged 68.

Wallace spoke candidly in interviews about his personal life, including his experience of alcoholism. 

“When I was 52 I went to the doctor at the bottom of the barrel and he said ‘you’re an alcoholic’. I was very relieved I wasn’t going to die because now I knew I could stop it,” he told Vickie Maye in The Moments That Made Me podcast from the Irish Examiner. 

“I knew what it was and I knew I could get help. I did counselling and went to the Stanhope Centre for rehabilitation.”

He also recalled the moment he danced with the legendary Freddie Mercury.

“In 1982 I was in Studio 54 in New York and was lucky enough to have a dance with Freddie Mercury.”

In an interview with the Irish Examiner last year, he also spoke about the transformative effect of being diagnosed with dyslexia at 18 had on him and the impact of that diagnosis on his career path.

“All I’d wanted to do from the age of seven was be an architect. 

“All I did was draw — I loved drawing boats and houses. My parents had decided I was going to go into a trade — nothing wrong with that but I wanted to be an architect.  

“In this moment of getting my results I knew I had the possibility of doing architecture at college.”