London, Sept 2(ANI): The BBC building in Salford has been chosen as the winner of the 2011 Carbuncle Cup- the prize for the worst-realised development of the past 12 months - by a panel of architecture critics.
The Building Design magazine's Carbuncle Cup is named after the Prince of Wales' notorious description of a proposed extension to the National Gallery as a "monstrous carbuncle", The Telegraph reports.
MediaCityUK, designed by Wilkinson Eyre, Chapman Taylor, and Fairhursts, accommodates ITV as well as the BBC, in addition to the Media Studies Department of Salford University, a school, housing, shops and a hotel.
The Salford site came in for scathing criticism from the magazine's judging panel, the report said.
"How uncreative can a 'Creative Quarter' be? And which truly creative person would ever want to work in such a place?" one critic, Jonathan Glancey, was quoted as saying
"Quite how the BBC stooped this low is hard to fathom," said the magazine, noting that the waterside site location appeared to have "everything going for it", but failed to realise the "urban aspiration" indicated by its name.
"What we are presented with instead is a crazed accumulation of development, in which every aimlessly gesticulating building sports at least three different cladding treatments," said the article by the magazine's Ellis Woodman.
"The overwhelming sense is one of extreme anxiety on the part of the architects about the development's isolation, 20 minutes' tram ride from the centre of Manchester... Following the Blue Peter garden's recent relocation to Salford, one can only presume that the newly-reinterred Petra must be turning in her grave," it added. (ANI)
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