News / Architecture
Tower named among UK’s worst new buildings
A Bristol tower block has been named among the worst new buildings in the UK to have opened in the last six years.
The Carbuncle Cup “reflects a range of developments from across the country which, taken as a whole, epitomise Britain’s architectural malaise”.
Entries were assessed “not only for their design flaws and lack of utility, but also for their wastefulness in construction, their impact on the urban environment around them and, of course, their hideousness”.
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A game of cricket being played in the shadow of Castle Park View tower – photo: Martin Booth
Bristol’s one entry on the longlist was the tower that is part of the Castle Park View development.
Built on the site of a former ambulance station, the tower now dominates views looking towards the city centre from Old Market Street as well as looming menacingly over Castle Park.
Castle Park View is made up of a cluster of buildings, with the 26-storey tower part of the scheme made up of 375 new flats.
Castle Park View tower now has the distinction of being Bristol’s tallest buildings thanks to its ‘crenulations’ beating St Mary Redcliffe church into second place.
Former Bristol mayor Marvin Rees joined lots of other men in hi-vis at the top of Castle Park View tower soon before it opened in 2021 – photo: Martin Booth
Castle Park View tower has been described as looking like a giant Travelodge gone wrong but lost out to being named the most repugnant new block of flats in Britain to Mast Quay phase 2 in Greenwich.
The local council deemed Mast Quay “so aberrant from its original intention that it has already ordered its demolition. But its image was burned onto their collective unconscious: born of a ferocious indolence, it is aggressively, hatefully ugly.”
The overall winner of the Carbuncle Cup 2024 is the Lime Street redevelopment in Liverpool which judges described as “a Joker-like stink bomb of local boosterism and cynical nostalgia”.
Listen to Castle Park View architect Nick Thursby in episode 18 of the Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast:
Main photo: Martin Booth
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