The Zit Building Award
For the worst building completed since the last awards
Chumleigh Academy Trust (England)
In a beautiful landscape of fields, woods, lanes, farms, villages, towns...this is a school completely out of step. It looks more like a cheap factory than a place to inspire a love of learning, ambition and imagination. More like a "learning" factory. mjackson
Edinburgh Airport extension (Edinburgh)
Johnstone Community Hub (Renfrewshire)
Kirkton Church Garage (Lanarkshire)
The internal steel frame of the garage was erected and an application was submitted retrospectively to the planning department, the planning department deemed:- “Whilst the introduction of a building in this position will inevitably have a degree of impact, the severity in comparison to what could be undertaken under the provisions of The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2011 is not sufficient to sustain refusal of planning permission.”
The application was approved without alteration to the garage and despite the resistance of the neighbouring properties. It should also be noted the roof of the garage is 500mm higher than the garage door opening, with the garage door being an ‘up and over’ style the additional 500mm headroom is both unusable and unnecessary.
Nominated by: Martin Hannah
Lennoxtown (North Lanarkshire)
Oxford University Port Meadow Buildings (England)
Nominated by: Al
Premier Inn, Pacific Quay (Glasgow)
Queens Hall (Argyll & Bute)
Scottish Parliament Extension (Edinburgh)
I believe that Enric Miralles was a great architect and the Parliament his greatest building. The entrance to any building is important and to the most important public building in the country, even more so. The original route into the Parliament was incredibly well designed. There was a key axis from the bottom of the Canongate out to the wild landscape. This connection was indeed the generator of the whole design. Turning off this route, under a double canopy the wall folded back to the entrance into a low space and the security booths. The visitor slowed here, turned then passed into a double height space and into the end of the darker vaulted undercroft of the chamber.
There was a vital view back to the outside square from here, allowing a reorientation before continuing the journey. The visitor moved along the length of this public foyer and up into the light of the stair, always turning, under the cantilevered points of the towers before finally reaching the chamber's visitors gallery. It is a route reminiscent of Mackintosh's through the Art School up to the museum and beyond but much more complex. It was a brilliant experience of turning through low and high, dark and light spaces with carefully framed views back to the city or the landscape. This has now been destroyed. The visual formation of the key idea, the connection of city and the land has gone. The experience of entry is that of an airport security hall.
The sequence of movement is cut short and the visual connection from inside to outside removed. In its attempt to look like a Miralles' design it looks like a poor forgery. And is it any safer? The original entrance was two floors below the chamber. Would a suicide bomber carry enough explosive to carry that distance and breach 800mm of concrete floor? Who would be killed or injured? The same people who will be killed now if a bomb goes off. The Scottish Government have boasted of its strong advocacy for architecture and design yet we have just seen this insensitive extension ruin the best building built in Scotland for nearly a century. Ironically, if their other policies prevail, a year from now Scotland may sit as a lower level target. As an independent, small country, it will no longer cling onto the post imperial ambitions that have angered so many people across the globe. Lets hope that if this happens this damage can similarly be resigned to history and the extension removed.
St Paul's (Perth & Kinross)
The Observatory (Glasgow)
