SPIRE HOSPITAL, THE GLEN, BRISTOL BY STRADFORM

Spire Hospital is a national centre of excellence for 'cardiac, brain and spinal surgery', apparently. It's a private hospital, so it has loads of cash. But not only can they not afford an architect for their extension, but they don't pay their contractor enough to use a proper CAD package. Sketchup hell ensues.
As for the building itself, is it just me, or can I detect influences of Elizabethan theatre architecture in the above picture? In any case, it will win the award for 'greatest number of differently pitched roofs in the smallest possible building'.
Whereas this part of the extension adopts a more modern idiom, the image excelling in expressing just how bad the chequerboard cladding will look on completion. The roof appears to be made of corrugated iron.
There was one architect involved in this, as planning consultant: Turley Associates, you are hereby named and shamed for your part in this atrocity.

WOODLAND COMMUNITY PRIMARY SCHOOL, ROCHDALE BY NPS ARCHITECTS

FAT SHED WITH TINY WINDOWS. THAT'S WHAT WE SHOULD EDUCATE THE VERY YOUNG IN THESE DAYS. IF IT FAILS AS A SCHOOL, YOU CAN ALWAYS TURN IT INTO A FUCKING DISTRIBUTION SHED. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN, LIKE NPS, YOU HAVE A BOARD OF DIRECTORS WHO LOOK LIKE NEWS OF THE WORLD PAEDOPHILES.

CARPENTERS PLACE, KNOWLE, BRISTOL BY CIRCLE CONSTRUCTION FOR EMINENCE DEVELOPMENTS

This building is the reason we started this blog. Absolute drivel, posing as contextual housing. The inexplicable symmetry, accentuated by black plastic extracts and downpipes; timber cladding that is varnished so hideously that it no longer looks like wood; 'balconies' that are not balconies (the three bonsai shrubs behind the top balcony in the middle are a heartbreaking expression of what the residents really wanted); regulation beige brick; the mud borders showing how money ran out before the landscaping was finished.
The building replaces a pub called the Venture Inn, which faced this square in West Knowle. Housing developers and local authorities care not a toss for social spaces like pubs and corner shops. They'd rather have flats full of junior management consultants than communities.
The inn's replacement is the architectural equivalent of porridge. Bland, formless, cloying, does nothing more than fill a hole.

PIER HEAD FERRY TERMINAL, LIVERPOOL BY HAMILTON ARCHITECTS

Hmm, I wonder what they've been putting in the tea at Hamilton Architects? The practice has what you might euphemistically describe as a 'mixed' portfolio, ranging from fugly Georgiana to a plasticky hospital. But here they were clearly given a bit of a budget, and decided to give free reign to their frustrated avant-gardism.
It riffs on the new (and nearby) Museum of Liverpool by 3XN, with a stone-clad slightly angular form. they've then gone ahead and made some hideously ill-considered glazed cut outs that collide horribly with the already deeply questionable geometry.
This building is what happens when a bad architect reads a few too many architecture magazines, and think that doing shapes is a good idea. The result is this anti-context, anti-scale, uncivilised building, exuding a staggering lack of decorum on the benighted World Heritage Site that is Liverpool's waterfront.
When shit practices do shapes, it also reveals the absolute stupidity and rampant subjectivity of architecture today. This was the winner of an international competition - the jury probably thought they were getting a B-team Libeskind or something.
Liverpool people will be relieved to hear that the programme of this building is an absolutely essential addition to the city's cultural landscape - a second Beatles Museum. The museum promises a "magical journey through the music of the Beatles, complete with motion, sound and water". Sounds like a museological fucking revolution.
According to the architect, the building has become popular with 'photographers' because of its 'quirky' 'angles'. Unfortunately, as you can see from the photos above, it has become popular with really shit photographers, who barely know how to hold their cameras up straight.

WATERLANE SPORTS CENTRE, LOWESTOFT BY DV8 DESIGNS

It's very difficult for the uneducated observer to understand what the jazzily named DV8 ("We pride ourselves on providing a friendly, down to earth, supportive and competant [sic] service") is doing, spatially, with this building from their 2D elevation rendering.
Helpfully, they provided the section below to explain the scheme better, so we can really understand the 3-dimensional complexity of the proposal, feel the play of light and sound, and have evoked for us the intricate mix of programmes that make this into so much more than a D&B leisure centre.HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Look at how the dance studio is evoked in this section as a place ideally suited to the joyous expression of the human body. And how the staff are given the best space in the building, dignifying their important role as guardians of the community's health and fitness.
1st year student... my mum can draw better... worst section I've ever seen... etc...

GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE AUTHORITY HQ, CENTRAL PARK, EAST MANCHESTER BY AEDAS

Oh Aedas, you make really bad architecture quite a lot of the time. Here is a quite monumentally ordinary building for the police on a business park in Manchester. What I like about it most is how it marks the corner entrance with a full-height void, a big glass atrium and one spindly column sticking up. And what does this sculptural corner, wherein all the architecture of this building is contained, face? A roundabout.
They could have at least make it convenient for the cops, who, arriving by car and parking presumably at the back of this building, will have to walk all the way around it to get inside. People driving by won't care anyway. They'll be too busy crashing after belly laughing at the pathetic piece of public art that occupies the centre of this roundabout. I wonder if Aedas designed that, too?

QUICK LINK LITE DEPLOYABLE BARRIER SYSTEM BY CORUS, HYDE PARK, LONDON

A VBIED is a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. A car bomb. When you absolutely, positively need to keep fundamentalist terrorists or ecosocialist nutters from carbombing your shrubbery, you can deploy the Quick Link Lite barrier system like this...

at the impressive rate of 30 metres of barrier per hour with 'minimum disruption'.
This is the architectural expression of how the government has allowed the police, through terror legislation (specifically in this case Lord West's terrorism strategy CONTEST2) to militarise our public realm unabashedly and completely. The top picture looks like a checkpoint along the Berlin wall, and I think it's really interesting how the photographer has tried to give it the maximum intimadation factor by taking the picture from down low.
Quick Link Lite was first used at the G20 summit in London in April, and is coming soon to a perfectly legal and peaceful demonstration near you...

HOUSE POD BY ECO-MODS, ANYWHEREVILLE

The picture above is of the bleeding edge of the British construction industry, the technology that will solve the crisis in British housebuilding in terms of environmental sustainability, build quality and aesthetics. Behold, the House Pod.
There was a time when the future looked like the future, and so on and so forth, but now all the future aspires to be is profitable. And that means shite like this. We've seen this before on this blog.
They're weird, though. The roofline on this terrace alternates high gables and dormer windows to try to give the impression that these are triple fronted detached houses, when noone could make that mistake thanks to the oversized porch canopies (with flashings and wheelie bins in syncopated rhythms along the street).
These houses will be substantially built off site in a factory. We've heard this before (almost every six months. The biggest noise I remember is Yorkon and its Murray Grove flats in London. Yorkon seems to have given up on resi now, by the looks of its website), and it hasn't transformed the supply chain yet.
Listen, though, there will be 'no compromise on quality' in this factory-made future, according to the press release, because 'The House Pod is building regulation compliant'. Well, that's a relief! The future of mass-manufactured sustainable housing will keep the rain out. The text also describes how the pod 'can currently meet levels 3, 4 and 5 of the Code for Sustainable Homes.' So you can choose how slowly you want your modular development to kill the planet.
Naked, the House Pod looks like this, which is, to my mind, an improvement, although there are DDA issues with the front door.

FOREST WAY SEN SCHOOL, COALVILLE, LEICESTERSHIRE BY HUNTERS

You know how architects always tell their clients that the proposed timber cladding will 'weather down' into a shimmering grey colour? Well, they're lying. In this case it's Hunters' sweet chestnut cladding on a special needs school in Leicestershire, looking pretty ropey a few months after opening. Click on the picture for the close-up horror.
This school is sustainable. So sustainable, in fact, that trees grow inside the building!
This might be my first example on this blog of something that's so bad, it's good.

ST MARY'S ROAD HOUSING, PECKHAM BY ALAN CAMP ARCHITECTS FOR L&Q

WAIT A MINUTE, NO, YOU CAN'T DO THAT. YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED FUCKING DESIGNING IT YET. YOU CAN'T JUST SEND OUT AN IMAGE OF A LOAD OF GREY WALLS IN SKETCHUP. OH, IT'S ALREADY GOT PLANNING PERMISSION? OH. OKAY THEN. FUCK IT. JUST PUT SOME TREES ON IT AND SEND IT OUT.