A glass office building outside Victoria station in London has set a “new benchmark for dystopian dysfunction”, according to the judges of the Carbuncle Cup, an annual prize for the ugliest new building in the UK.
The £380m Nova building “was built to rejuvinate the area and add interest to a formerly run-down and barren block, with trendy food shops and a modern design”, says the Daily Telegraph. But judges have called it “one of the worst office developments central London has ever seen”.
The “bright red prows that adorn various points of the exterior like the inflamed protruding breasts of demented preening cockerels” were singled out for particular criticism.
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“It makes me want to cringe physically,” said judge Catherine Croft. ”It’s a crass assault on all your senses from the moment you leave the Tube station.”
The blueprint for Nova was conceived in the mid-2000s, says The Guardian, and its all-glass design follows what is already an outdated trend for “crystalline” objects.
Nova was designed by PLP Architects, the company behind 22 Bishopsgate in the City of London, a glass-and-steel skyscraper due to be finished in 2019.
According to the company president, Lee Polisano, Nova's red colour “is a reference to Victoria being an important transport interchange”, which prompted the architects to choose ”a colour that’s synonymous with transport in London”.
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