Carbuncle Cup 2012, Shortlist, Buildings, Architects, Prize, Projects, News, Designs

Carbuncle Cup : 2012 Shortlist + Nominations

Carbuncle Cup Awards - UK Architecture Awards

14 Sep 2012 Carbuncle Cup Winner 2012 Britain’s worst new building Award The restoration of the Cutty Sark by Grimshaw wins. The £50m restoration of the dry dock in Greenwich, south east London, took six years to complete. The building (and the clipper contained within) opened to the public on 26 April 2012. Building Design's jury, which unanimously chose the Cutty Sark for the award, describes it as a "disastrously conceived" scheme, "misdirected… from the start," whose "myriad failings…tragically defile the very thing it sets out to save." Andrew Gilligan in The Daily Telegraph states, "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. The sight of people pressing their faces forlornly against the smoked glass to try to see something of the ship is one of the sadder in London." Andrew Gilligan goes on to say, "Most culpably, perhaps, there is Chris Nash, the Grimshaw partner in charge – who by pure coincidence, no doubt, last week announced that he was leaving the firm, having “reached a stage where I would like to offer my particular combination of skills and experience to a wider group of professionals and work at a smaller scale.” 30 Jul 2012 Carbuncle Cup Shortlist 2012 Britain’s worst new building Award - The Orbit, London, England Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond image from London Legacy Development Corporation ArcelorMittal Orbit Kapoor & Balmond’s Orbit is "nominated not only for its unique ugliness but for the mockery it makes of London 2012’s claims to sustainability". - Titanic Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland Architect & Lead Consultant: TODD Architects Concept Design: CivicArts / Eric R Kuhne & Associates photo : Christopher Heaney Titanic Museum Belfast a building that plumbs "new depths of inanity in their literal architectural expression. Belfast’s Titanic museum has been designed to resemble the collision of a ship and an iceberg". - Shard End Library, Birmingham, England IDP Partnership Shard End Library is a library with a shard sticking out its end. - Firepool Lock, Taunton, Somerset, England Andrew Smith Architects "dismally proportioned, thinly detailed and grimly utilitarian". - Mann Island Development, Liverpool, England Broadway Malyan picture from architects Mann Island Development "a scheme that completes the desecration of that city’s once great waterfront". - Cutty Sark visitor facilities, Greenwich, London, England Grimshaw Architects "a scheme that obscures one of the jewels of British maritime heritage behind an ineptly detailed greenhouse". 18 Jun 2012 Carbuncle Cup 2012 The award for Britain’s worst new building is back! The UK’s leading architecture newspaper BD invites the public to put forward their worst new building for this year’s Carbuncle Cup. Nominations are already pouring in from disgruntled architects and local residents. The list includes several high profile schemes including the renovation of the Cutty Sark and one of Prince Charles’ pet projects. But the hot favourite is one of the most controversial projects of the 2012 Olympics - the ArcellorMittal Orbit tower by artist Anish Kapoor and engineer Cecil Balmond. The ArcelorMittal Orbit, London: image from London Legacy Development Corporation Each week, one nominated building will be published on Bdonline - visit www.bdonline.co.uk/carbunclecup to see them all. The nominations that receive the most support in the comments section will automatically make the shortlist which will be revealed on July 20th. A final winner will be chosen by public vote and a jury of built environment specialists led by BD’s executive editor Ellis Woodman. “BD’s annual Carbuncle Cup offers the British public the chance to voice their distress at shoddy architecture, venal development and feckless planning,” said Woodman. “The ever-growing support that the prize receives suggests the UK still has a long way to go before the quality of its built environment meets its citizens’ aspirations. Until that happy day, the Carbuncle Cup will be there to name and shame the worst offenders.” Any building completed within the past 12 months or due for completion by the 2012 Olympics is eligible and anyone can nominate by sending in a short paragraph about the building to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . The deadline for nominations is Friday July 13th. Carbuncle Cup 2012 favourite - The ArcellorMittal Orbit tower About Carbuncle Cup Now in its seventh year, the Carbuncle Cup is the UK’s only award for bad buildings. “For a profession that loves to give itself prizes for excellence, an award that sets out to recognize the polar opposite is a moment for reflection. “Despite all of the planning rules and regulations in the UK, a Carbuncle is what happens when bad architecture and bad planning come together.” - BD Editor in Chief Amanda Baillieu Carbuncle Cup serves to highlight the fact that most of the UK’s new building stock is poorly designed or simply mediocre. The award acts as a counterpoint to the plethora of prizes handed out to architects each year - it is to the Stirling Prize what the Razzies are to the Oscars. Carbuncle Cup 2012 information from UBM Carbuncle Cup - Previous Winners 2011 - MediaCity UK, Salford image from architects The £600 million media hub in Salford, the new home for BBC North. “How uncreative can a “Creative Quarter” be? And which truly creative person would ever want to work in such a place?” asked Guardian critic and Carbuncle Cup judge Jonathan Glancey. Carbuncle Cup 2011 winner : MediaCity UK 2010 - Strata Tower, London photo : Will Pryce / BFLS In a bumper year for Carbuncle Cup nominations, BFLS’ tower in Elephant & Castle beat all the competition with its “Philishave stylings” and “services to greenwash, urban impropriety and sheer breakfast- extracting ugliness” 2009 – Liverpool Ferry Terminal - judge Sean Griffiths of architecture practice FAT explained that it wasn’t just Hamilton Architects’ derivative design that won it the Carbuncle Cup - "Third-rate Zaha Hadid, a crude, jazzy-angled lump of crap, a terrible example of an architecturally illiterate client trying to be groovy and getting it so, so wrong, like a 50-year-old making a fashion faux pas in a disco." - but also its location on Liverpool’s waterfront, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Carbuncle Cup 2010 winner : Strata Tower 2009 - Pier Head Ferry Terminal, Liverpool photo © Adrian Welch Carbuncle Cup winner by Hamilton Architects provocatively placed in front of the famous Three Graces. Carbuncle Cup 2009 winner : Pier Head Ferry Terminal

Stirling Prize

World Architecture Festival Awards

Carbuncle Cup - Previous Years

Carbuncle Cup 2010

Carbuncle Cup - 2009 Winners

Carbuncle Cup Nominees - Selection

Some Carbuncle Cup nominees shown on e-architect in recent years:

Bézier Apartments, London:

photo © Nick Weall

University of Nottingham Jubilee Campus Extension, Nottingham

photograph : Zander Olsen



Carbuncle Awards - Scotland, run by the Carnyx Group

RIBA Awards

AJ100 Building of the Year Awards

Comments / photos for the Carbuncle Cup 2012 page welcome: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Carbuncle Cup : page - adrian welch / isabelle lomholt

[Back to Top]

Tweet