Winner of Britain’s ugliest building revealed

The sheepish victor of the Carbuncle Cup 2018 was branded “one of the most horrendous architectural responses ever”...

Redrock Stockport, a leisure complex located just south of Manchester, has been voted Britain’s ugliest building.

The £45 million development, which houses a cinema, shops, restaurants and a gym, pipped five other unwitting contenders to the post to scoop first place.

Built as part of a £1bn regeneration project, the complex was intended to revitalise Stockport, however, the judges said the structure was a “missed opportunity” and a “sad metaphor for our failing high streets”. One even added: “You feel sorry for the people of Stockport”.

Designed by BDP for the local council, the panel objected to the awkward form of the box-like buildings, along with their garish blue cladding. BDP is currently working on the £4bn renovation of the Houses of Parliament.

The shortlist

Lewisham Gateway, London by PRP Architects

Redrock Stockport triumphed over five other ungainly dwellings, including London regeneration project Lewisham Gateway, 23-storey Haydn Tower, Liverpool’s Shankly Hotel and Beckly Point student housing in Plymouth.

Beckley Point, Plymouth - Shortlisted for Britain's ugliest building

A residential Passivhaus in Streatham, London also made the cut. Building Design remarked that the property, which pairs red brick with orange guttering, tiles, shutters and gates, has “the appearance of a red-faced child who has said something gauche in a room full of grown-ups”.

Passivhaus project: Winner of Britain's ugliest building revealed
Ambleside Avenue, Streatham

The dwelling's nominator was equally as gushing, labeling it “garish… blockish and a clumsy and alien blot on the streetscape.”

Shankly Hotel, Liverpool also made the shortlist - perhaps unfairly

Haydn Tower, Nine Elms Point in London was also shortlisted for the Carbuncle Cup

Readers' comments

Awarded by the B2B architecture publishers, Building Design the Carbuncle Cup recognises Britain’s worst new buildings each year. The judging panel included Building Design’s editor and architectural critics, along with author Jonathan Glancey and Rosemarie McQueen, the commissioner for Historic England.

Readers’ comments also played a part in the competition’s judging process. The most passionate responses include: “Absolute monstrosity. I’ve seen better-looking prisons” and “Wrong in everything that is important and to a degree that makes one wonder what were the designers and planners who worked on this abomination thinking.”

The original nominator even went so far as to dub it “one of the most horrendous architectural responses ever conceived for Greater Manchester”.