London's 'Walkie Talkie' wins UK's ugliest building award

The skyscraper at 20 Fenchurch Street, more commonly known as the 'Walkie Talkie Tower', has been named Britain's ugliest building by Building Design magazine.

On giving the award, one judge of the Carbuncle Cup described the building as "a gratuitous glass gargoyle graffitied onto the skyline of London", while another said it was "a challenge finding anyone who has something positive to say about this building".

The 160m-tall tower has generated controversy ever since construction began in 2013. Trumpeted as "the building with more up top" by its developers, 20 Fenchurch Street quickly became known as the Walkie Talkie building due to its bulbous shape.

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Developers were soon forced into a million pound renovation of the building's south facing glass façade after it concentrated the sun's rays sufficiently to melt components on nearby parked cars. Then, after the building's Sky Garden was completed in January this year, pedestrians complained of dangerous downdraughts being funnelled along the street below.

A profile of the building by The Guardian's architecture critic Olly Wainwright in 2012 described it as "a literal diagram of developers' greed" that provides the "painful proof that form follows not function but finance". Even the building's architect – Uruguayan Rafeal Viñoly – admitted they had "made a lot of mistakes".

This year's victor won comfortably, Building Design said, "with many readers saying there was no point in continuing to run new nominations as the Walkie Talkie was bound to win". One reader even commented: "I now have a new personal goal: to live long enough to see this building demolished."

Another said the building made him "yearn for the good old days of the Second World War, when there was a good chance that one might emerge from the shelter to find buildings gone".

The annual Carbuncle Cup award is named after part of a 1984 speech made by Prince Charles, who called a proposed extension to London's National Gallery a "monstrous carbuncle".

Last year's winner was London's Woolwich Central development, described as "oppressive", while previous pillars of ignominy have included a "prison-like" student housing estate and the museum surrounding the Cutty Sark ship – both also in the capital.