BBC媒体城被评为英国最丑陋建筑

MediaCityUK has been chosen as winner of Building Design magazine’s Carbuncle Cup - the prize for the worst-realised development of the past 12 months - by a panel of architecture critics.

The unwanted award is named after Prince of Wales' notorious description of a proposed extension to the National Gallery as a “monstrous carbuncle”.

The Salford site, designed by Wilkinson Eyre, Chapman Taylor, and Fairhursts, accommodates ITV as well as the BBC, in addition to the Media Studies Department of Salford University, a school, housing, shops and a hotel.

It came in for scathing criticism from the magazine’s judging panel.

One critic, Jonathan Glancey, said: “How uncreative can a ‘Creative Quarter’ be? And which truly creative person would ever want to work in such a place?”

The magazine said: “Quite how the BBC stooped this low is hard to fathom.”

It said the waterside site location - alongside the Lowry arts centre and the Imperial War Museum North - appeared to have “everything going for it” but failed to realise the “urban aspiration” indicated by its name.

“What we are presented with instead is a crazed accumulation of development, in which every aimlessly gesticulating building sports at least three different cladding treatments,” said the article by the magazine’s Ellis Woodman.

“The overwhelming sense is one of extreme anxiety on the part of the architects about the development’s isolation, 20 minutes’ tram ride from the centre of Manchester.

“The incessant visual excitement reads as a desperate attempt to compensate for an underlying lack of urban vitality.

“Following the Blue Peter garden’s recent relocation to Salford, one can only presume that the newly-reinterred Petra must be turning in her grave.”

The architectural wooden spoon is the latest setback for the BBC’s controversial move north.

It follows the decision of 80% of BBC Breakfast staff, including presenter Sian Williams, not to go to Salford.

The corporation is moving several major departments, including sport, children's and Radio 5 Live, from London.

The enormous cost of the new facilities has been criticised as well as the reluctance of BBC chiefs, including the head of BBC North, Peter Salmon, to move their families to Manchester. -By John-Paul Ford Rojas，01 Sep 2011

BBC Media City at Salford Quays reflected in docks. Photo: Alamy