Carbuncle Awards

Not to be confused with Carbuncle Cup.

The Carbuncle Awards were architecture prizes, presented by the Scottish magazine Urban Realm (formerly Prospect) to buildings and areas in Scotland intermittently from 2000-2015.[1]

They were established following a discussion about why policy initiatives to improve the quality of the built environment seemed to be having so little impact beyond the centres of Scotland's key cities.[2]

The name of the awards was derived from a comment by the then Prince of Wales Charles III, an outspoken critic of modern architecture, who in 1984 described Ahrends Burton Koralek's proposed extension of London's National Gallery as a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend".[3][4]

There were three award categories:

  • Plook on the Plinth Award "for the most dismal town in Scotland". A "plook" is a Scottish noun for pimple.
  • The Pock Mark Award "for the worst planning decision".
  • The Zit Building Award "for the worst building completed since the last awards".

Public nominations were made via the magazine's website, with a small group of critics selecting the final winners.

Cumbernauld in North Lanarkshire won the Plook on the Plinth Award twice and was the town most frequently nominated for the award.

The Carbuncle Awards inspired the Carbuncle Cup, another architecture prize launched in 2006 which was given annually by Building Design magazine to "the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months".[5] The latter went on to achieve somewhat greater prominence in the media, and was last held in 2018.

  1. ^ "Carbuncles". urbanrealm.com. Retrieved 2014-09-04.
  2. ^ "The Carbuncle Awards 2005". urbanrealm.com. Retrieved 2014-09-04.
  3. ^ Glancey, Jonathan (17 May 2004). "Life after carbuncles" – via The Guardian.
  4. ^ "A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales at the 150th anniversary of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Royal Gala Evening at Hampton Court Palace". Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2014-09-04.
  5. ^ Watson, Anna (22 July 2010). "Six in race for Carbuncle Cup". bdonline.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-09-04.