It has singed shopfronts, melted cars and caused great gusts of wind to sweep pedestrians off their feet. Now the Walkie Talkie tower, the bulbous comedy villain of London's skyline, has been bestowed with the Carbuncle Cup by Building Design (BD) magazine for the worst building of the year.
Responsible for a catalogue of catastrophes, it is hard to imagine a building causing more damage if it tried. It stands at 20 Fenchurch Street, way outside the city’s planned “cluster” of high-rise towers, on a site never intended for a tall building. It looms thuggishly over its low-rise neighbours like a broad-shouldered banker in a cheap pinstriped suit. And it gets fatter as it rises, to make bigger floors at the more lucrative upper levels, forming a literal diagram of greed.
The building, designed by Rafael Viñoly, was crowned with a Sky Garden , a babylonian jungle in the clouds that would be the pride of the Square Mile, framed as not just a place for bankers to drink, but a public space accessible to all.
The reality is anything but. A hefty cage of steelwork wraps around in all directions, obscuring much of the view, while the restaurants rise up in a boxy stack of glass portable cabins. The more you pay, the worse the view gets: at the very top of the gourmet ziggurat, you're as far from the windows as possible.
The planners have since raised concerns that what has been built doesn’t match the approved plans, but the underwhelming roof terrace is the least of the Walkie Talkie’s problems. Before it was even open, it was found that its south-facing concave glass facade channelled the sun’s rays into a deadly beam of heat, capable of melting the bumper of a Jaguar, blistering painted shopfronts and singeing carpets – with temperatures hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement.
Still, not content with burning people, the Walkie Talkie started blowing them away. The building was found to have a rather embarrassing wind problem after the downdraft caused by the 37-storey tower was accused of almost blowing pedestrians into the road and whisking food trolleys away this summer.
The building beat stiff competition in a vintage year for ugly architecture. In photographs that follow, we present the loser: a student housing complex in North Acton, designed by Careyjones Chapmantolcher. Finally, a previous Carbuncle Cup winner is the monstrous Parliament House apartment tower in Lambeth by Keith Williams.
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/carbuncle-cup-2015-winner-announced/5077354.article#
You can find the full article of The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/sep/02/walkie-talkie-london-wins-carbuncle-cup-worst-building-of-year
Responsible for a catalogue of catastrophes, it is hard to imagine a building causing more damage if it tried. It stands at 20 Fenchurch Street, way outside the city’s planned “cluster” of high-rise towers, on a site never intended for a tall building. It looms thuggishly over its low-rise neighbours like a broad-shouldered banker in a cheap pinstriped suit. And it gets fatter as it rises, to make bigger floors at the more lucrative upper levels, forming a literal diagram of greed.
The building, designed by Rafael Viñoly, was crowned with a Sky Garden , a babylonian jungle in the clouds that would be the pride of the Square Mile, framed as not just a place for bankers to drink, but a public space accessible to all.
The reality is anything but. A hefty cage of steelwork wraps around in all directions, obscuring much of the view, while the restaurants rise up in a boxy stack of glass portable cabins. The more you pay, the worse the view gets: at the very top of the gourmet ziggurat, you're as far from the windows as possible.
The planners have since raised concerns that what has been built doesn’t match the approved plans, but the underwhelming roof terrace is the least of the Walkie Talkie’s problems. Before it was even open, it was found that its south-facing concave glass facade channelled the sun’s rays into a deadly beam of heat, capable of melting the bumper of a Jaguar, blistering painted shopfronts and singeing carpets – with temperatures hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement.
Still, not content with burning people, the Walkie Talkie started blowing them away. The building was found to have a rather embarrassing wind problem after the downdraft caused by the 37-storey tower was accused of almost blowing pedestrians into the road and whisking food trolleys away this summer.
The building beat stiff competition in a vintage year for ugly architecture. In photographs that follow, we present the loser: a student housing complex in North Acton, designed by Careyjones Chapmantolcher. Finally, a previous Carbuncle Cup winner is the monstrous Parliament House apartment tower in Lambeth by Keith Williams.
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/carbuncle-cup-2015-winner-announced/5077354.article#
You can find the full article of The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/sep/02/walkie-talkie-london-wins-carbuncle-cup-worst-building-of-year
Silver medal: a student housing complex in North Acton
An other runner-up: the monstrous Parliament House apartment tower
in Lambeth
in Lambeth
"I came to London.
It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it.
And I was lost."
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul