Here's an image for those of you too lazy to click a link (or doctrinally opposed to the Guardian):
For those of you who don't know UCL is University College London, known to me because it includes one of the best architecture schools in the world, called The Bartlett for some deeply English reason incomprehensible to a colonial. I was thinking about going there for my post-grad work but the cost (a staggering $50k per semester) and the serial and byzantine processes of application prevented me. I've written about the Bartlett before and don't wish to impugn it here. I only point out that UCL includes an absolutely fantastic architecture school because it makes the criminal negligence of everyone involved in the creation of the massive, description defyingly awful piece of shit more shocking.
My favourite line in the article is the spirited defense raised by the planning inspector who overturned the previous (and manifestly correct) decision telling the architect, developers, and everyone else involved in the project to go fuck themselves by stating the accommodations were, "unlikely to be perceived as overly oppressive by the occupiers." Strange, I would have thought "oppressive" was a sufficient condition to send the developers on their mercenary way. Apparently not. The decided factor appears to be the likelihood the conditions would be perceived as overly oppressive.
If you're looking at the picture and thinking, "It doesn't look that bad" there isn't much hope for you. Stay away from architecture as a career. On the other hand, that's just good advice for anyone. OK, the problem, aside from the fact of the facade held up in front as if it is (rightly) ashamed to show it's face, is that the windows on the fake facade don't line up with the windows in the rooms behind them. Meaning anyone unfortunate enough to get stuck living in one of those rooms has a view of a brick wall three feet from their window and zero sunlight. In most countries this would be seen as a violation of human rights if it was done in a prison.
The monthly rent of more than $1100 also deserves comment but vitriol tires me out (this is a recent development, I used to find it energizing). The rest of the building is just as hideous as that part shown in the photo for what seems to be the firm's hallmark of random massing, miserly use of materials, and violations of building codes and civic regulations about minimum standards of living.
The same firm (Stephen George and Partners) won a Carbuncle Cup a few years ago for an even more hideous student residence. Here's a picture:
Somewhat obviously, it's the one in the back. The building in front is Regent College. It was designed at some point in our history when people gave a shit.
I'm not sure which of Stephen George and Partner's two Carbuncle Cup winners is worse. Probably the latest. The residence mocking Regent College is so dreadfully, soul-sickeningly, spirit-wrenchingly terrible if I saw it on a student's drafting board I would tell that student to consider another program and them mock them horribly. The Caledonian Road residence is bad (criminally so) but it is also indicative of a global condition in architecture and something we are suffering from in Toronto. The idea historic preservation should consist of nothing more than propping up one face of a building is a terrible to me as the idea of preserving a person by the same means (ripping his or her face off and sticking it somewhere it doesn't belong).
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