Hasta La Ideas

For a week or so back in July, people who talk about architecture were talking about London’s newest and tallest residential skyscraper, the Strata Tower. The response to it was mixed, with some thinking the “green” tower with its power-generating turbines up top was absolutely the best, and others of the polar opposite opinion. In the latter camp comes Building Design, who have released their pick for the Carbuncle Cup, awarded annually to the ugliest new building in Britain. Nominated by readers, the magazine sorted through the 31 finalists and ultimately selected the Strata, calling out a number of problems they have with it, from its “utterly inescapable” size to its claims of being green, but not really being so green after all to simply its “sheer breakfast-extracting ugliness” in general. They also pick apart many of the other nominees, resulting in a very funny, witty, and likely hurtful read. Here’s a bit more about the Strata:

The building’s grim stridency is exacerbated by its sporty livery of alternating black and white stripes, configured, needless to say, in voguish barcode distribution. And to literally cap it all off there are the three gargantuan wind turbines at the top. The architect has trumpeted that these could supply 8% of the building’s energy requirements, which seems nothing much to shout about given the enormous expenditure in carbon that has been required to engineer such a baroque arrangement and the fact that this is a part of London that has absolutely no need for the creation of a 147m-tall tower.

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