Archinect - News

Oliver Wainwright on the state of Britain's student housing: "shamefully shoddy"

2017-09-13T14:41:00-04:00

Free to ignore building standards for dwellings, student housing isn’t just ruining British cities – it’s damaging student life. As universities start back, we reveal how developers get away with it [...] Hardly a year goes by without a slab of PBSA featuring on the Carbuncle Cup shortlist for the ugliest UK building. This year it was the turn of a dismal block in Portsmouth, designed by Cooley Architects for Unite, the biggest student housing provider in the country.

Besides aesthetics, Wainwright also points out issues of affordability, government regulation, and basic building safety: the Portsmouth housing block, as well as other new Unite student accommodations, failed fire safety tests of their cladding systems in July, conducted after the tragic Grenfell Tower fire.

And the winner of this year's "worst new building" is...

2016-09-07T12:16:00-04:00

This years wooden spoon goes to a luxury block of flats in London’s Docklands. Lincoln Plaza, a residential development in London’s Docklands is the winner of the 2016 Carbuncle Cup. Designed by BUJ Architects for Galliard Homes, the development consists of two residential towers integrated with a hotel and a standalone drum shaped building set off to one side.

The luxury block of flats in London designed by BUJ Architects has beaten five other projects in the running, Saffron Square by Rolfe Judd, The Diamond by Twelve Architects, One Smithfield by RHWL, Poole Methodist Church by Intelligent Design Centre and 5 Broadgate by Make Architects. The judges described the scheme as "a hideous melange of materials, forms and colours... Lincoln Plaza is the type of project that gives high-rise housing a bad name". Four of the nominees featured facades composed of offset geometrical patterns, utterly confusing to the eye at odds with the openings on their facades. It seems that the once fashionable patchwork quilt approach to facade design has worn thin.

However, there is a certain amount of discomfort surrounding the Carbuncle Cup. With the position of architects and their authority in the construction industry being ever challenged, is it productive to have an award of shame singling out architects? (and not dodgy contractors or clients?). Or is t...

Walkie Talkie Tower wins Carbuncle Cup for UK's worst building of the year

2015-09-02T12:06:00-04:00

A City of London skyscraper, nicknamed the Walkie Talkie, has won the annual Carbuncle Cup, awarded to a building judged to be the UK's worst. In its short history, the 37-storey office tower has melted parked cars and critics have compared its three-storey roof garden to an airport terminal. Thomas Lane, who runs the awards, said the carbuncle "crashes into London's skyline like an unwelcome party guest".

Previously:

Cutty Sark wins award as worst new building in Britain

2012-09-13T13:37:00-04:00

The architects, Grimshaw, have taken something delicate and beautiful and surrounded it with a building that looks like a 1980s bus station. Clumsy and ineptly detailed, their new glass greenhouse around the Cutty Sark totally ruins her thrilling lines, obscures much of her exquisite gilding and cynically forces anyone who actually wants to see her to pay their £12 and go inside.

Carbuncle Cup 2011: MediaCityUK is crowned Britain's ugliest new building

2011-09-01T13:46:20-04:00

There were other strong contenders, but the 2011 Carbuncle Cup for Britain's "ugliest new building" has been awarded to the £600m MediaCityUK. This concatenation of anaemic buildings is the controversial new regional headquarters of the BBC, and home to the media studies faculty of Salford University.