The Cube, Birmingham

I once saw an article entitled “Is The Cube Britain’s ugliest building?”

I assumed the question was rhetorical.

The Eureka Skyway, Ashford, Kent

An Infection of Iconic

Bridges. What are they for? To help transport people over an obstacle? Not if they were built in the last decade and a bit. Bridges are now a much beloved metaphor for councils and landowners, they “connect communities”, “cross boundaries” and provide “iconic” structures for “transforming the landscape”. But, why? Why do they have to do these things, why can’t they just get people from one place to another?

It’s not hard to trace the lineage of this lust for iconicism. In the late 90s there was an abundance of money around to pay for anything transformative and shiny for the millennium. The two, vastly successful, examples of this trend that spring to mind are The Millennium Bridge in London (here) and The Millennium Bridge in Gateshead (here) but for these two landmarks there are dozens of others out there crossing lonely canals and motorways that have been built as icons but will never be such.

I’ve always been slightly irked by the relentless lust for landmark status that has infected architecture in the last decade but it wasn’t until I walked across the new Porth Teigr Outer Lock Crossing in Cardiff that I really contemplated its effect on bridges. The bridge in question, which you can see (here), doesn’t even have a proper name because it crosses an incredibly short lock-entrance. The previous bridge was a small and inane affair but that simply will not do for an area so full of landmarks and breathless iconicism. So now we have the new bridge, a bright-red explosion of a bridge that clashes astonishingly with the low-key surroundings of the Norwegian Church and the Lightship. A £2.5m reminder of Cardiff Bay’s incoherence and desperation.

Why does something as simple as the crossing of a lock have to be turned into torturous architectural theatre? Why not just build a simple bridge for half the price? It seems almost unthinkable that a bridge could be built today that is simply a bridge, at least where there’s money sloshing around to make it otherwise. There’s a common process to be followed; architectural competition, council commission, local outrage/delight, sky-high costs, building delays, local paper grumbling and then finally the inaugural opening/spinning/lifting/swinging/blinking of the bridge.

A great example of this process is in evidence (here) where we can see a half dozen ’iconic’ designs for, what should be, a very simple crossing of a footpath over a motorway in Sheffield. There’d have been no local discontent if a low-key crossing was built here, it could have been done in about a month with a pre-fabricated steel walkway but, no, the council must have its icon so the locals have to wait longer for their bridge and when they get it it may well be a vortex or a porcupine. 

Bridges aren’t like buildings, there’s no-one to look after them on a day-to-day basis. They rust and their metal dulls and people graffiti all over them. A bridge I cross often is Valentine’s Bridge in Bristol which you can see (here), a curvy, suspended piece of nonsense that creaks incredibly loudly under foot and is always covered in stickers and gum and then there’s the nameless footbridge not 200 yards downstream that is in an even worse state and is even uglier, see (here).

I’m not arguing against all exciting bridges here, not at all, Stockton’s Infinity Bridge is truly a landmark, see (here), but could Ashford really have dealt perfectly fine with a girder bridge instead of its £8m Eureka Skyway (here) and could Poole have not thought of something better to spend £37m on than a bascule bridge which was predictably beset by displays and chronically ugly warning lights, see (here). Please can someone tell me why a bridge can’t just be a bridge any more and why something as simple and practical as this is so unfashionable and unthinkable to icon-obsessed councils and developers.

Dorset Fire & Rescue Service HQ, Poundbury, Dorset

Prince Charles, the well-known critic of modern architecture has stuck his neck out in the last few years overseeing the construction of Poundbury, a village that tries to transplant the spirit of twee English villages into a brand new suburb of Dorchester. This particular building, a 2009 Carbuncle Cup nominee is the home of Dorset’s fire service.

Some time around a decade ago, after years of standing on the sidelines of the architectural community hissing and booing HRH decided to answer the question “if you think you can do better why don’t you?”. The result is a chintzy, ugly village in Dorset, a marriage of New Urbanism and strawberries and cream jingoism, a collection of architectural set-pieces where even the bus stops seem to have the hand of Windsor upon them, see (here).

Poundbury comes across as a kind of architectural in-joke. It takes Charles’ aesthetic ideals to their logical extremes and creates a kind of neo-Georgian playground for him and his fellow Mailites to wallow around in and complain about the rest of the country going to hell in a handcart. There’s no architectural merit here, the kind of office blocks you can see (here) wouldn’t look out of place on a Basingstoke office park and what isn’t incredibly ugly is just a carbon-copy of vernacular buildings from elsewhere.

What really riled me though is the building I mentioned before, the fire station. It’s plain wrong, the proportions have nothing to do with Classical architecture and there is no detail that suggests any knowledge of classicism. Instead it is a stately home’s stable block, it is a copy of a copy of a copy and as you’d expect it has all the subtlety, poise and elegance of a Duchy’s Original scone dipped in honey and sprinkled with icing sugar. Not only does it look like something that would give Pevsner a heart attack but it’s also a working building, there’s three massive garage doors plumbed into the side and for the next few decades some poor firemen are going to have to live their lives through Prince Charles’ experiment. It’s just exasperatingly ugly and a massive middle finger to anyone who thought the Prince wouldn’t be able to live out his dreams. 

I guess he’s got to keep himself busy somehow. He probably thought he’d be king by now.