Nominees revealed for Britain’s ‘ugliest’ building of 2018
The shortlist for architecture’s annual Carbuncle Cup prize – which names and shames the UK’s biggest built eyesores – has been revealed.
Six projects are vying for the crown of Britain’s ‘ugliest’ building, bestowed by readers of Building Design magazine. These include a £375m ‘regeneration calamity’ in Lewisham by PRP Architects; a ‘grotesque’ hotel extension in Liverpool by Signature Living; and a house extension in Streatham by Pace Jefford Moore Architects which has been likened to an ‘electricity substation.’
‘Bland, boxy and with some vaguely delinquent menace, the towers stand like a sneering street gang,’ says Building Design. Photography: Building DesignBeckley Point in Plymouth by Boyes Rees Architects
The tallest building in the south of England is also one of the most controversial, capped by a ‘pyramidal spire that sprouts from the top like the traffic cones inebriated students are so fond of.’ Photography: Building DesignShankly Hotel, Liverpool by Signature Living
‘This two-storey extension to an attractive historic building in the centre of Liverpool couldn’t be more out of keeping,’ said the judges. Photography: Building DesignHaydn Tower, Nine Elms Point, London by Rolfe Judd
‘This 28-storey residential tower is one of the most confusing and discordant buildings in Vauxhall, no mean feat among a sea of similarly dumb high-rise sentinels,’ says the judges. Photography: Building Design1 of 4
Rounding off the pack is a tapering ziggurat in Plymouth by Boyes Rees Architects designed as student accommodation, BDP’s Redrock Stockport leisure complex (dubbed ‘the worst building on the entire planet’ by one reader) and the lackluster Haydn Tower in London’s Vauxhall by Rolfe Judd.
The winner of the prize – founded in 2006 as a barbed comment on bad architecture ‘blighting the country’s towns and cities’ – will be announced on 5 September.
Previous winners include the Nova Victoria mixed-use development in London by PLP Architecture, described as a ‘crass assault on the senses’ and Rafael Viñoly’s Walkie Talkie skyscraper.
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