This year the award no one wants to win goes to an office development in London’s Victoria

Nova Victoria, a mixed use scheme in London has won the 2017 Carbuncle Cup.

The development, which occupies a whole city block in London’s Victoria consists of two office buildings designed by PLP Architecture and a residential building designed by Benson & Forsyth. The award goes to PLP Architecture for the office buildings.

The winner was selected by a panel of judges including BD editor Thomas Lane, Twentieth Century Society director Catherine Croft, Urbed director and chair of the Academy of Urbanism David Rudlin who won the Wolfson Economics Prize in 2014 and BD assistant editor Elizabeth Hopkirk. Readers’ comments were also considered during the judging process.

The development is bordered by Victoria Street, Bressenden Place and Buckingham Palace Road. Nova North is 12 storeys high and is located in the middle of the site and Nova South is bordered by Bressenden Place and is 16 storeys high. The site is dissected by an alley between the residential block to the north of the site and Nova North and between the two office buildings. The total floor area of the offices is 480,000sqft.

According to developer Land Securities’ marketing literature, ‘Nova North and Nova South are two distinct, architecturally daring buildings within the Nova scheme. Together, they create a new landmark business address in London’.

The judges disagreed, describing the building as ‘crass’, ‘over-scaled’ and ‘a hideous mess’ Judge Catherine Croft said, “Nova should have been good as it’s a prestige site. It makes me want to cringe physically. It’s a crass assault on all your senses from the moment you leave the Tube station.”

David Rudlin said triangular building forms were inefficient and that he was concerned about the zig-zagging fins which are applied across a large amount of the two office buildings. He said, “There’s no variety and you can’t read the floors.” He added the red cathedral like spire on Nova South was a particular cause for concern. He said, “It’s got the same proportions as Salisbury Cathedral. For me the spire gives it carbuncular status – otherwise it’s just a bad building.”

BD editor Thomas Lane said “The architect appears to have been inspired by the fractured, angular shapes beloved of stararchitects like Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind and applied these to a run-of-the-mill spec office development.

The result is two large blocks sliced and diced to create to create a series of angular volumes drunkenly leaning on each other. These volumes are clad with a medley of oversized vertical fins that zig zag up the façade to give each elevation a headache-inducing moiré pattern when viewed from the side.”