List of winners of the Sir Hugh Casson Award
The Sir Hugh Casson Award for the worst new building of the year has been awarded annually since 1982 by the 'Nooks and Corners' column of the British satirical magazine Private Eye. The name ironically honours Sir Hugh Casson. Column author Gavin Stamp explained in 2015 that "he would turn up – take a fee – for giving evidence at public inquiries to recommend the demolition of buildings: a trade I despise". Stamp noted that Casson would sometimes mention his office as Vice-Chairman of The Victorian Society when arguing for the demolition of Victorian buildings. The medal of the award uses a sketch of Casson which is a self-portrait.[1]
Winners
| Year | Building | City | Architect | Comment | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Ismaili Centre | London | Casson, Conder and Partners | "lumpishness, banality, repetitiveness and repulsiveness of texture" | Eye 549 p. 7 |
| 1983 | Fire Station, Shaftesbury Avenue | London | Richard Seifert and Partners | "It is tawdry fancy-dress architecture, without life or imagination" | Eye 575 p. 7 |
| 1984 | Renault Centre | Swindon | Foster and Associates | "You can tell the Renault Centre is a whizzy High-Tech building because it is painted bright yellow" | Eye 602 p. 9 |
| 1985 | Lloyd's building | London | Richard Rogers and Partners | "a great glazed grey warehouse ... how astonishingly naive it is as architecture" | Eye 627 p. 7 |
| 1986 | Clore Gallery, Tate Britain | London | James Stirling | "a vast hole-in-the-wall entrance, a gratuitous neo-Constructivist unsupported corner" | Eye 653 p. 9 |
| 1987 | Police Station at Buckingham Palace | London | Property Services Agency | "ugly, obtrusive, insensitive, banal" | Eye 679 p. 7 |
| 1988 | Skylines Village, Isle of Dogs | London | Maxwell Hutchinson | "a 45-degree triangle on its side ... hyped-up mediocrity" | Eye 706 p. 9 |
| 1989 | The Mound[n 1] | Edinburgh | Allies and Morrison | "a series of pointless, pretentious structures" | Eye 733 p. 9 |
| 1990 | Concert Hall | Glasgow | Sir Leslie Martin | "a building which looks as if it was designed in 1950 in, say, Bulgaria" | Eye 757 p. 9 |
| 1991 | Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery | London | Robert Venturi | "the elaborate and expensive camp joke" | Eye 784 p. 9 |
| 1992 | United Kingdom pavilion, Expo '92[n 2] | Seville | Nicholas Grimshaw | "a showy, pretentious exterior with nothing behind it" | Eye 810 p. 11 |
| 1993 | Maitland Robinson Library, Downing College | Cambridge | Quinlan Terry | "a gauche and vulgar essay in misunderstood Greek Classicism" | Eye 836 p. 7 |
| 1994 | Principal's Lodgings, Harris Manchester College | Oxford | Peter Yiangou | "illiterate red-brick neo-Georgian" | Eye 862 p. 9 |
| 1995 | Faculty of Law | Cambridge | Foster and Partners | "a long extruded half-cylinder of glass and stainless steel" | Eye 888 p. 7 |
| 1996 | House for an Art Lover | Glasgow | Charles Rennie Mackintosh | "[an] unreal design by [a] long dead architect" | Eye 914 p. 12 |
| 1997 | Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre | Glasgow | Foster and Partners | "a triumphant betrayal of all that modern architecture was meant to stand for" | Eye 940 p. 9 |
| 1998 | Buchanan Galleries | Glasgow | Legge Ericsson, Jenkins and Marr | "a triumph of barbarism, vulgarity, ineptitude" | Eye 967 p. 9 |
| 1999 | Millennium Dome | London | Richard Rogers and Partners | "a huge circular plastic tent ... [an] extravagant, vapid toy" | Eye 992 p. 17 |
| 2000 | Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel, Pangbourne College | Pangbourne | Crispin Wride Architectural Design Studio | "so very like the Ruskin Library that its 'architects' are obviously shameless" | Eye 1018 p. 9 |
| 2001 | The Forum | Norwich | Michael Hopkins and Partners | "all entrance ... a huge and crude building" | Eye 1045 p. 12 |
| 2002 | Extension to City Art Gallery | Manchester | Michael Hopkins and Partners | "the splendid and really beautiful interiors of the original building .. have been gratuitously spoiled" | Eye 1070 p. 12 |
| 2003 | Juxon House, Paternoster Square | London | William Whitfield | "an overdone embarrassing compromise, a dog's dinner" | Eye 1097 p. 15 |
| 2004 | Scottish Parliament Building[n 3] | Edinburgh | Enric Miralles | "confused and confusing mish-mash of upturned boats and leaflike forms" | Eye 1122 p. 12 |
| 2005 | Monument to the Women of World War II | London | John W. Mills | "crude and inept ... from a distance, the memorial becomes an incoherent dark lump, formless and inelegant" | Eye 1149 p. 14 |
| 2006 | Palestra, Blackfriars Road | London | SMC Alsop | "a giant gimmick that is also plain ugly" | Eye 1174 p. 14 |
| 2007 | The Meeting Place statue, St Pancras station | London | Paul Day | "this tasteless creation" | Eye 1200 p. 14 |
| 2008 | The Public | West Bromwich | Will Alsop | "a big box ... with no obvious entrances" | Eye 1226 p. 12 |
| 2009 | One Hyde Park[n 4] | London | Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners | "an overweening (half-empty) ... masterpiece" | Eye 1252 p. 15 |
| 2010 | One New Change | London | Jean Nouvel | "on this crucial, prominent site, Nouvel's incoherent, solipsistic glazed lump is an insult to St Paul's" | Eye 1278 p. 14 |
| 2011 | Museum of Liverpool[n 4] | Liverpool | 3XN and AEW Architects | "a cheap rip-off of [ Zaha Hadid's ] Deconstructivist style" | Eye 1304 p. 12 |
| 2012 | RAF Bomber Command Memorial | London | Liam O'Connor | "pompous, self-regarding and triumphalist" | Eye 1330 p. 12 |
| 2013[n 5] | Restaurant at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery | London | Zaha Hadid Architects | "as incoherent as it is expressionistic" | Eye 1356 p. 8 |
| 2014 | Reid Building, Glasgow School of Art | Glasgow | Steven Holl Architects | "crude and insufferably arrogant essay in minimalist neo-modernism" | Eye 1382 p. 18 |
| 2015 | Investcorp Building, St Antony's College, Oxford | Oxford | Zaha Hadid Architects | "a long, curved, metallic thing like a big shiny slug" | Eye 1408 p. 21 |
| 2016 | NEO Bankside and The Switch House | London | Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and Herzog & de Meuron | "ragged, discordant and rather incoherent in both surface modelling and overall form", "new, discordant brickwork" | Eye 1434 p. 20 |
| 2017 | Statue of George Orwell, Broadcasting House | London | Martin Jennings | "The great man is depicted holding a fag, dressed in a crumpled suit and standing like a music hall artist about to crack a joke. The plinth is pathetic" | Eye 1460 p. 20 |
Notes
- The award was for the remodelling of The Mound, to make a new public square.
- A temporary building, demolished in the year it was built.
- This building uniquely won the Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture in the same year.
- Shortlisted for Building Design magazine's Carbuncle Cup in 2011.
- The column notes that there were two "conspicuous front-runners" for the award, mentioning first the "Walkie-Talkie" (20 Fenchurch Street, by Rafael Viñoly). Column author Gavin Stamp has subsequently said that the Walkie-Talkie was the winner of the award for 2013, as for instance in Eye 1408 p. 21; however the column in 2013 states "The winner this year, however, must be ... the restaurant attached to the new Serpentine Sackler Gallery".
References
- "Page 94: The Private Eye Podcast. Episode 13" (Podcast). 30 November 2015.
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