The Sir Hugh Casson Award for the worst new building of the year was awarded annually from 1982 to 2017 by the "Nooks and Corners" column of the British satirical magazine Private Eye. The name ironically honours British architect Sir Hugh Casson. Column author Gavin Stamp (who wrote under the pseudonym "Piloti") explained in 2015 that "he [Casson] would turn up – take a fee – for giving evidence at public inquiries to recommend the demolition of buildings: a trade I despise". Stamp noted that Casson would sometimes mention his office as Vice-Chairman of The Victorian Society when arguing for the demolition of Victorian buildings. The drawing of the "medal" of the award uses a sketch of Casson which is a self-portrait.

Following Stamp's death in December 2017, although the "Nooks and Corners" column continued under a new author, the Sir Hugh Casson Award was discontinued.

Winners

Year Building City Architect Comment Reference 1982 Ismaili Centre London Casson, Conder and Partners "lumpishness, banality, repetitiveness and repulsiveness of texture" Eye 549 p. 71983 Fire Station, Shaftesbury Avenue London Richard Seifert and Partners "It is tawdry fancy-dress architecture, without life or imagination" Eye 575 p. 71984 Renault Centre Swindon Foster and Associates "You can tell the Renault Centre is a whizzy High-Tech building because it is painted bright yellow" Eye 602 p. 91985 Lloyd's building London Richard Rogers and Partners "a great glazed grey warehouse ... how astonishingly naive it is as architecture" Eye 627 p. 71986 Clore Gallery, Tate Britain London James Stirling "a vast hole-in-the-wall entrance, a gratuitous neo-Constructivist unsupported corner" Eye 653 p. 91987 Police Station at Buckingham Palace London Property Services Agency "ugly, obtrusive, insensitive, banal" Eye 679 p. 71988 Skylines Village, Isle of Dogs London Maxwell Hutchinson "a 45-degree triangle on its side ... hyped-up mediocrity" Eye 706 p. 91989 The MoundThe award was for the remodelling of The Mound, to make a new public square. Edinburgh Allies and Morrison "a series of pointless, pretentious structures" Eye 733 p. 91990 Concert Hall Glasgow Sir Leslie Martin "a building which looks as if it was designed in 1950 in, say, Bulgaria" Eye 757 p. 91991 Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery London Robert Venturi "the elaborate and expensive camp joke" Eye 784 p. 91992 United Kingdom pavilion, Expo '92A temporary building, demolished in the year it was built. Seville Nicholas Grimshaw "a showy, pretentious exterior with nothing behind it" Eye 810 p. 111993 Maitland Robinson Library, Downing College Cambridge Quinlan Terry "a gauche and vulgar essay in misunderstood Greek Classicism" Eye 836 p. 71994 Principal's Lodgings, Harris Manchester College Oxford Peter Yiangou "illiterate red-brick neo-Georgian" Eye 862 p. 91995 Faculty of Law Cambridge Foster and Partners "a long extruded half-cylinder of glass and stainless steel" Eye 888 p. 71996 House for an Art Lover Glasgow Charles Rennie Mackintosh "[an] unreal design by [a] long dead architect" Eye 914 p. 121997 Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre Glasgow Foster and Partners "a triumphant betrayal of all that modern architecture was meant to stand for" Eye 940 p. 91998 Buchanan Galleries Glasgow Legge Ericsson, Jenkins and Marr "a triumph of barbarism, vulgarity, ineptitude" Eye 967 p. 91999 Millennium Dome London Richard Rogers and Partners "a huge circular plastic tent ... [an] extravagant, vapid toy" Eye 992 p. 172000 Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel, Pangbourne College Pangbourne Crispin Wride Architectural Design Studio "so very like the Ruskin Library that its 'architects' are obviously shameless" Eye 1018 p. 92001 The Forum Norwich Michael Hopkins and Partners "all entrance ... a huge and crude building" Eye 1045 p. 122002 Extension to City Art Gallery Manchester Michael Hopkins and Partners "the splendid and really beautiful interiors of the original building .. have been gratuitously spoiled" Eye 1070 p. 122003 Juxon House, Paternoster Square London William Whitfield "an overdone embarrassing compromise, a dog's dinner" Eye 1097 p. 152004 Scottish Parliament BuildingThis building uniquely won the Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture in the same year. Edinburgh Enric Miralles "confused and confusing mish-mash of upturned boats and leaflike forms" Eye 1122 p. 122005 Monument to the Women of World War II London John W. Mills "crude and inept ... from a distance, the memorial becomes an incoherent dark lump, formless and inelegant" Eye 1149 p. 142006 Palestra, Blackfriars Road London SMC Alsop "a giant gimmick that is also plain ugly" Eye 1174 p. 142007 The Meeting Place statue, St Pancras station London Paul Day "this tasteless creation" Eye 1200 p. 142008 The Public West Bromwich Will Alsop "a big box ... with no obvious entrances" Eye 1226 p. 122009 One Hyde ParkShortlisted for Building Design magazine's Carbuncle Cup in 2011. London Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners "an overweening (half-empty) ... masterpiece" Eye 1252 p. 152010 One New Change London Jean Nouvel "on this crucial, prominent site, Nouvel's incoherent, solipsistic glazed lump is an insult to St Paul's" Eye 1278 p. 142011 Museum of Liverpool Liverpool 3XN and AEW Architects "a cheap rip-off of [ Zaha Hadid's ] Deconstructivist style" Eye 1304 p. 122012 RAF Bomber Command Memorial London Liam O'Connor "pompous, self-regarding and triumphalist" Eye 1330 p. 122013The column notes that there were two "conspicuous front-runners" for the award, mentioning first the "Walkie-Talkie" (20 Fenchurch Street, by Rafael Viñoly). Column author Gavin Stamp subsequently said that the Walkie-Talkie was the winner of the award for 2013, as for instance in Eye 1408 p. 21; however the column in 2013 states "The winner this year, however, must be ... the restaurant attached to the new Serpentine Sackler Gallery". Restaurant at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery London Zaha Hadid Architects "as incoherent as it is exhibitionistic" Eye 1356 p. 82014 Reid Building, Glasgow School of Art Glasgow Steven Holl Architects "crude and insufferably arrogant essay in minimalist neo-modernism" Eye 1382 p. 182015 Investcorp Building, St Antony's College, Oxford Oxford Zaha Hadid Architects "a long, curved, metallic thing like a big shiny slug" Eye 1408 p. 212016 NEO Bankside and The Switch House London Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and Herzog & de Meuron "ragged, discordant and rather incoherent in both surface modelling and overall form", "new, discordant brickwork" Eye 1434 p. 202017 Statue of George Orwell, Broadcasting House London Martin Jennings "The great man is depicted holding a fag, dressed in a crumpled suit and standing like a music hall artist about to crack a joke. The plinth is pathetic" Eye 1460 p. 20

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