Liverpool city centre has been named home to the UK’s ‘worst new building’.
The Carbuncle Cup awarded the dubious honour to the city’s Lime Street redevelopment, which was completed in 2019 close to the train station.
Revived by The Fence magazine, the prize is an antithesis to the Stirling Prize, which is given out for the country’s best architectural structures.
A jury deemed the Lime Street redevelopment as ‘banal’ after replacing a row of buildings that dated back over a century including the old Futurist cinema.
It beat off competition from rival structures in Edinburgh’s W Hotel, the Virgin Hotel in Glasgow, Mast Quay II and Ilona Rose House, both in London.
Tim Abrahams, jury chair for the 2024 Carbuncle Cup, said: “People aren’t hopeless romantics.
“Most of us understand that sometimes, buildings need to be knocked down and replaced with better ones. This is the nature of dynamic, forward looking cities: things change.
“Here, though, a bunch of developers have been allowed to knock down a happy, eclectic row of buildings – including the much-loved, sorely-missed Futurist cinema – and replaced it with such nothingness, such banality that their only option is to cover it with a screen.
“Upon which, they have drawn portraits of those same old demolished buildings.”