The Carbuncle Cup
Admit it, as much as we may admire the winners of prestigious architecture awards, what we love are the losers – those projects so bad, they are worthy of their own kind of recognition.
Hence, the Carbuncle Cup.
Launched last year by “BD” - an architectural website in Britain – “the Carbuncle Cup is to the Stirling Prize what the Golden Raspberries are to the Oscars.” This year’s nominees are here.
A sample:
It’s Opal Court in Leicester, by Stephen George.
And another, “More London,” an office complex by Foster and Partners:
It was nominated by Edwin Heathcote, architecture critic of the Financial Times, who writes:
Reasons to hate More London: More Toronto, Less London. Corporate facelessness, slick and facile glass and steel in a sea of ill-conceived and sinister public space, all CCTV, chain sandwich shops and overchlorinated fountains.
More Toronto? That’s pretty low, Edwin.
I’ve always wonderd why with so many candidates we don’t have a Carbuncle Cup in Vancouver. Likely because local media is waaaay too cosy with the development community.
First vote goes to: Paramount Place … unsurprisingly named as a finalist in the 2007 Awards for Excellence in Concrete Construction
The original plan for the Paramount site was a project of 3 towers by Busby & Associates – which probably would have turned out similar to the More London project above – sleek, modern glass and steel. What we got was a project by Rafii & Associates sporting the typical biege concrete and attempts to soften the massing (likely a response to complaints about the blank facade opf Sears, which I don’t mind).
Personally, I would have preferred a uniform modernist sculptural treatment of the upper podium facade rather than all of the fake windows.