Building Design magazine’s Carbuncle Cup, an award for the
worst UK building completed in the past year, singles out Grimshaw Architect’s
Cutty Sark scheme as this year’s ‘winner’.
Whilst I agree with Ellis Woodman’s critique of the project, the Carbuncle
Cup is misconceived because of the way in which it humiliates the recipient. It adopts the emotive language of Prince
Charles’s notorious criticism of Ahrend
Burton & Koralek’s National Gallery extension, which he likened to a
‘monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend’.
Perhaps amusing in private, or on the pages of Private
Eye, this sort of labelling has no place in the serious architectural press and
debases the currency of criticism. It is
wrong to single out one project and its author for vilification. There are many bad buildings. They are not only the result of poor
judgement, more often they are also the outcome of conspiring
circumstances: pressure for over-development,
the wrong brief, budget constraints and statutory restrictions.
The real scandal is not the occasional spectacularly misjudged
attempt by architects to create something special, but the insidious mediocrity
of much of what is built, mainly designed by people who are not
architects. This reflects an underlying
problem: a general lack of appreciation
of good design and an unwillingness to pay for it. The annual award of the Carbuncle Cup has
become a blood sport and BD does itself a disservice by persisting with it. The architectural press has an obligation to
raise the debate and should take a hard look at what passes for criticism on
its own pages.
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