The "laureates" each year are determined by the British architectural weekly Building Design. This year, the biggest outrage among the architectural critics jury was the Media City mixed-development area of Salford, with the regional headquarters of the Air Force, mainly for having everything necessary for successful implementation, including $ 600 million. pounds budget, this project turned out to be absolutely faceless.
The complex, which includes, in addition to the BBC and ITV TV studios, the Media Studies Department of the University of Salford, a hotel, housing and a school, occupies 81 hectares on the banks of the canal. Despite its excellent location and lack of significant planning restrictions, according to the jury, Media City is absolutely ordinary: it could appear anywhere in Dubai or Qatar, since it is completely ripped out of the urban environment and devoid of any urban idea. Critics found neither recognizable architectural language nor compositional clarity in him; there is no difference between front and back facades, between public and private. Instead, there is a motley jumble of square meters, in which each building has at least three different types of cladding. The organizers of the award ask themselves the question: how architecture, absolutely devoid of charm and any kind of creativity, could arrange the world's largest media corporation.
The Museum of Liverpool, which was first built by architects from 3XN and finished by AEW, is just a little behind the leader. Two years ago, the world capital of rock music received the Carbuncle Cup for the Hamilton Architects ferry terminal, which irreparably damaged the famous urban panorama with the Three Graces, a trio of buildings from the early 20th century that gave Liverpool a recognizable architectural image and UNESCO site status. And this summer the museum invaded the same panorama. With such a bizarre ski slope-like roof and equally intricate ramps and staircases making it difficult to enter the building, critics ironically, the creation of 3XN and AEW can hardly compete with the historical dominants.
The list of the "Carbuncle Cup" also included the failed buildings of very famous architects, which disappointed the jury with a blatant discrepancy between the quality of construction (and such projects are unprecedentedly expensive) and the quality of architecture. The third winner of the anti-award is a fashionable residential complex
One Hyde Park in London, designed by Richard Rogers. 86 huge apartments on the edge of Hyde Park cost the developer 500 million pounds (however, only one of the penthouses was sold for 135 million, the average price for an apartment - 27-33 million). This is one of the first residential complexes in Europe managed by the Mandarin Oriental five-star hotel chain. The infrastructure is appropriate - a private cinema, a pool with ozonation, a squash court, wine cellars, etc. And all this is in inexpressive and too tightly packed "glass". For the emergence of such a grotesque, as the critics write, only the name of the architect was sufficient.
Together with Rogers, another "star" of world architecture also taught his "carbuncle", concurrently - President of the Royal Academy Nicholas Grimshaw for the Newport station. The two lobbies of the complex are shaped like glasses with a bow thrown over the railroad tracks; however, as noted by the jury, this original form can only inspire birds flying over the building, while people will hardly remember this architecture, besides, the layout of the station is extremely confusing.
The Carbuncle Cup has been awarded in Britain since 2006 as the "antithesis" of the Sterling Building of the Year Award. Its purpose is to draw public attention to the blatantly poor quality of new buildings and make architects do better. The original name comes from a quote from Prince Charles: in the 1980s, he called the unrealized project of the new wing of the National Gallery in London "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a beloved and elegant friend."
N. K.
