NATIONAL CURLING ACADEMY IN KINROSS, BY ARCHIAL ARCHITECTS

You might have to click on this one to see it properly, but it is a quite remarkable drawing of possibly the ugliest sports hall you'll ever see. What's really, really bad about Archial is that they can't just accept they're rubbish. They feel a pressing need to 'do design', making funky (as in 'offensively malodorous') windows as in the right-hand side of the north elevation, and bizarre supergraphics.
The supergraphic totally confused me to begin with, until I realised it's a cack-handed version of an Otl Aicher pictogram. It's someone curling, of course. Although it looks at best like an Edwardian rugby player, and at worst someone readying themselves for a painful shafting.
OK, a little competition with this post. Can you make head or tail of Archial director Charles Smith?
From the press release: Charles Smith, director at Archial Architects, said, “The general design features of the building reflect the intentions for a world class facility. The elevational treatment of the building is suitably distinctive and will enhance the site’s sense of identity and linkages to the adjacent rural character, using natural, sustainable materials such as timber cladding within the scheme, which creates a horizontal emphasis to the building."
Hm, OK. I'm not sure I know exactly what you mean.
“The use of different materials externally relates directly to the internal composition, therefore linking the internal space arrangements with the external appearance which, in turn, relates to the site and its origins."
Sorry, Charles, you've lost me there.
“Whilst the development is to become an integral part of one of Kinross-shire’s main settlements, the palette chosen specifically reflects the rural setting, enhancing the natural materials and complementing the landscaped setting.”
Yep. Absolutely no idea what you're getting at. Good luck with the planning application, though. The committee should be like a Beckett play if he carries on like that. Might be worth sitting in...

UNDERGROUND CONTROL CENTRE, WEST LONDON BY MORGAN PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

This is the kind of shite that London Underground commissions these days. While in Switzerland you get signal boxes by Herzog & de Meuron etc, in our nation's capital you get a giant bunker that isn't so much ugly as completely undesigned. It's just acres of grey surface, undifferentiated apart from what appears to be four downpipes marching across the facade. Interesting how shit architects are always very precise about downpipes in their visualisations.
Morgan Professional Services is the kind of multi-disciplinary that believes in 'creative collaboration', the kind of platitude that today's construction industry sprouts like acne on a teenager's face. It's impossible to not believe in creative collaboration, of course, but when all you have to send press releases out about is a building like this one, you have to ask yourself what all that creativity and collaboration has brought you to.
Here's the back:
A close up of that green wall (designed to 'minimise visual impact' and 'soften' this humungous building), two years on:
No, not really. That's DSDHA's little bit of Paradise. But it's a fair approximation.
Inside, it's the normal Dr Strangelove/Gattaca kind of thing:Many thanks to an esteemed correspondent for this one...

DORCHESTER MEDICAL CENTRE, BREWERY SQUARE, DORSET BY CZWG

CZWG are bad architects, peddling their weird brand of postmodernism up and down the country. But this one's gone too far. It's cartoon art deco, with a stupid, cartoon art deco typeface above the door. It does nothing to dignify its sullen but very English context, just shouts as loud as it can.
Possibly CZWG is trying to provide the next logical progression in the Prince Charles pastiche
around Dorchester. That isn't real Georgian, and this isn't real, well, anything. It's probably trying to be bingo hall, Wurlitzer, popular architecture, but in fact it's three sets of curvy goalposts. It has no richness, no detail.
There are 24 CZWG buildings in this masterplan. So the town's basically fucked.

BLAR MHOR HOUSING IN CAOL, FORT WILLIAM BY ARCHIAL FOR LORNE DEVELOPMENTS

Regular readers will be aware of what I consider to be just about the most prolific bad architect in the UK. Step forward Archial, the conglomerate that will be shitting out something awful in your neighbourhood very soon. I've had reason to think that they read this blog before, but now I know they do. Imagine the scene.
"Lads, we have a 300-home masterplan to do in Scotland, but we're shite at masterplanning. What shall we do?"
"I can't remember where I saw it, but whoever it is who made those great drawings of the Leyland Bus site has got real talent - we should hire him/her."
And they obviously did. This masterplan is much, much worse, though, with an even bigger array of Brookside Close moments, and a truly flagrant disregard for any existing geographical or architectural features of the place. Councils! You can have better than this! Just commission a good architect (there are other websites with some of those on them) rather than an utterly shit one who will transplant an urban and architectural language from out of their arse into your town.
One helpful rule of thumb, from Nairn to you. When someone presents a masterplan with a perimeter of a line of trees, it means they're trying to hide something. Do not trust these people.


And the housing itself? Mush. Just mush.

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?