Saffron Tower, Croydon, shortlisted in the 2016 Carbuncle Cup. Credit: Wikipedia.
The Nobels, the Oscars, Pipe Smoker of the Year: glittering prizes all, but I prefer the Carbuncle Cup, which is awarded annually to the “the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months”.
Organised by the magazine Building Design, it has (in my aesthetic judgement) produced a worthy shortlist and a worthy winner every year since its inception in 2006.
But there’s a big problem with the prize — not its subjectivity, but the fact that the winning buildings still exist. Indeed, buildings like them are still being built. Name-and-shame is not working.
There’s an argument to be made that things are getting worse. We’ve swapped the horrendous, but interesting, brutalism of the post-war period for the offensively bland spreadsheet architecture of the 21st century. In an age in which Jane Jacobs has won the intellectual battle against Robert Moses, we really ought to know better. Yet we continue to fill up our towns and cities with inhumane, alienating architecture.
It’s environmentally destructive too. For instance, around Victoria Street in London you see buildings that went up within living memory now being demolished and replaced. Though that’s no great loss to our heritage, it can’t be sustainable to throw-up these great piles of concrete, glass and steel only to tear them down again a few decades later. Is it not too much to ask our architects to design buildings that won’t just enhance our lives, but also outlive us?
It might seem paradoxical, but to end the cycle of destruction, we need to accelerate it. Every year, there should be a public vote to choose the worst new building in the land. The winner wouldn’t get a cup, but a wrecking ball. Yes, that’s right, it would be physically demolished — immediately and without compensation. Indeed, the owner would be required to foot the bill for the building’s de-construction (though they would have the option of suing the architect and the planning authority).
This would concentrate minds wonderfully. Instead of competing among themselves to épater les bourgeois, starchitects would need to design with due regard to the common good. Meanwhile, developers whose sole objective is to squeeze as much profitable square footage into any site they can get their hands on, would have to contend with the possibility of financial (as well as literal) ruin. The planners would come under immense pressure to do a better job too. At the cost of sacrificing one new building, development across the land would be greatly improved.
There’d be a minimum threshold of votes required to trigger a compulsory demolition, so by achieving a broad consensus behind new development — not least by properly involving local people in a positive planning and design process — it’s possible that no new building would have to come down.
But can the people be trusted? By placing the wrecking ball in their hands, would we imperil innovative projects that shock a lot of people at the time that they’re built, but come to be loved? Here I don’t mean the concrete monstrosities that sophistication-signallers like to rave over on Twitter, but genuine wonders like the Eiffel Tower.
We could, perhaps, complement the vote-to-demolish with a vote-to-save, but beyond that I am inclined to trust the people. Indeed, radical democratisation would do more good than harm, freeing architecture from the stifling conformity imposed by elite taste-makers and those who pay for their work.
If there is a flaw in my modest proposal it’s that the focus would be on the tallest, flashiest new buildings — and therefore London. The problem isn’t that these aren’t crap, but that less prominent crappiness in other parts of the country might get overlooked. The prize therefore should be regionalised, with categories for a different scales and types of development. After all, we don’t just need well-designed, sustainable landmarks but also beautiful houses, shops and other everyday buildings.
Some of you might think that I’m ignoring the real objection to my idea — which is that the state can’t go round demolishing newly-built, structurally-sound private property. But it can and sometimes does. You could build a brilliantly-designed dwelling in an area that desperately needs more homes, but if you do so without planning permission, it’ll be knocked down. That’s the law.
Admittedly, my idea concerns buildings that have got planning permission. But that’s precisely the point: the planning system as it stands is failing. Over-and-over again it stops the development we do need while allowing development that makes places worse. Despite recent reforms, the system remains opaque, important decisions are made behind closed doors and the whole process advantages the rich and powerful over ordinary people.
Unlike bad art or bad literature, bad architecture is something that whole communities are forced to live with. Our existing laws clearly doesn’t provide them with the protection they need, so we must redress the balance. I’d prefer it if we could move to a fully democratic, consensus-based planning system, but that won’t happen unless the developers, and the financiers behind them, are incentivised to make it work.
My proposal provides the incentive. I’ll admit it does so in a brutal, uncompromising manner, but fans of modernism should surely approve of that.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeIn America, this would call for a quote attributed to Yogi Berra, a cultural icon here, ‘Nobody goes there anymore – it’s too crowded.”
As a general rule I find the British strangely self-effacing when abroad…and they don’t colonise the beaches with their towels like ze germans.
Interesting read. I recently read a story about how the local shopkeepers and bar owners in Brugge lament the fact that when the cruise ships dump their passengers at the nearest port, thousands of tourists descend upon the streets of the ancient city, take pictures on their phones incessantly and then return to the mother ship within hours, usually not spending a dime while in town.
I can’t think of a more obnoxious scene.
Put more simply –
I am a traveller
You are a visitor
He/she is a tourist.
To the locals we are all tourists. I remember once being told that ideally the locals would like us all to stay at home and just send our money to the town/country.
Well I like tourists much more than ouanker “travellers”.
I can’t remember who said “it’s a paradox that the more people who go somewhere to enjoy themselves, the less fun it is for everyone”.
We have just been to beautiful and fascinating Korea where we saw about 6 westerners during the fortnight we were there.
Our charming guide said the country was planning to encourage more tourism which made my heart sink – though what were we except tourists.
I just hope it doesn’t become like Thailand.
We rented a canal boat and took our two young children for a ten-day excursion on the Shropshire Union Canal – an unusual vacation for Americans, but we wanted to experience the countryside as many native Britons did. It was April, and even though it rained every day but one, it remains one of our favorite family memories. The only unpleasant moment we had involved encountering a group of dentists from North Carolina and their obnoxious wives, who left everyone from Llangollen to Whitchurch with stories of epic American rudeness. I adopted a vague English accent for the rest of our trip out of sheer embarrassment.
One’s counrtymen can often be an embarassment, it’s difficult to know how to eal with it though. However, we can be over5-sensitive to them sometimes; I was with a visiting Australian friend in the UK when we ran into an Australian woman that my friend found extremely embarassing, but I didn’t actually find her too much of a problem.
Yes, but you’re obviously lovely. When we came upon the dentists in Llangollen, I tried to help them unblock the canal, which involved negotiating a sort of watery cul-de-sac emptying into the lane surrounded by rock and backed up with leisure boats. As an American, I’m too embarrassed to describe what ensued.
You can’t leave that story at such a tantalizing place. Please tell all!
How exactly were they rude?
But it sounds like you weren’t the falling down drunk ones. But the tough bit is that they tend to part with the most money.
The writer suggests that disdain for ones fellow Brits abroad is just snobbery. However, when one reads of the drunken barbarity of some groups of – mainly young – British tourists in Mediterranean resorts (public copulation, shouting, fighting, assaults), disdain, along with a sense of shame and sympathy for the locals, are surely the only appropriate responses.
In the early 1970’s 2 young Coldstream Guards Officers, skint and desperate for a free holiday in The South of France, managed to get the MoD to pay for a trip there, under the auspices of ” Adventure Training” so their hosts were less than pleased when they turned up at the villa in Villefranche with 3 x 3 tonner Bedford trucks, 2 x Landrovers and a platoon of thirsty Guardsmen and Non Commissioned Officers.
The horrified hosts, on night 2 of their stay suggested that said Officers took ” the boys” into Menton, lost them in a bar, and then came on to dinner at the then exclusive ” Le Pirat” seafront night club on Cap Martin.
Unfortunately, said Officers stayed drinking in Menton, and rocked up at Le Pirat, 3 sheets to the wind, with the entire platoon and vehicles.
It did not take long after the Guardsmen had taken to the dance floor, and started approaching the lissome females,?for the petrified regulars to call the CRS…
The punch up that ensued was legend itself, and post to a night in the cells, the adventure training ” exercise” was terminated… as later were the Officers commissions!
We like tourists here in Alaska. I have told visitors “we like you and we like your money!”
I spent considerable time 1990s – 2000s in Whittier, Alaska, a village on Prince William Sound. It is a big summer cruise destination because it does have (long) tunnel access to the outside world. Winters there are very severe and the town becomes very isolated. I asked a full time resident what the Whittierites thought of the tourists. She said “in the spring we’re glad to see ‘em come and in the fall we’re glad to see ‘em go!”
I spent considerable time 1990s – 2000s in Whittier, Alaska, a village on Prince William Sound. It is a big summer cruise destination because it does have (long) tunnel access to the outside world. Winters there are very severe and the town becomes very isolated. I asked a full time resident what the Whittierites thought of the tourists. She said “in the spring we’re glad to see ‘em come and in the fall we’re glad to see ‘em go!”
Oh gawd, a Daily Mail type diatribe of cliches about the British. Why are journalists allowed to trade in such stereotypes about the British when it’s deemed offensive to do the same for anyone else?
What a great piece. I recommend How To Make Friends And Oppress People by Vic Darkwood for some insights into Brits abroad in times gone by.
What a great piece. I recommend How To Make Friends And Oppress People by Vic Darkwood for some insights into Brits abroad in times gone by.
Its funny that I’m reading this in Paris. I’ve come for the architecture and the history but oddly enough I haven’t been in a single museum today but I did spend €73 euros in a Monoprix!
Its funny that I’m reading this in Paris. I’ve come for the architecture and the history but oddly enough I haven’t been in a single museum today but I did spend €73 euros in a Monoprix!
The right crowd and no crowding. We pay dearly for it!
Yes, but for those of us who can’t afford to “pay dearly,” if we want to travel, we have to go with the wrong crowd.