Here’s an award, your designs are rubbish

February 25, 2009

: Image by wallyg via Flickr

Boris doled out this year’s London Planning Awards last night, managing to rubbish the winning design company More London Developments before giving them a Best Built Project award.

More London Developments helped develop the More London site, on which City Hall (known as The Great Big Pickled Onion by Boris, and The Glass Testicle by previous mayor Ken Livingstone) stands. What are Boris’s thoughts on the Onion’s design, specifically the huge circular staircase and wall-to-wall windows? Let us tell you, in full detail – it deserves nothing less.

Welcome to this fantastic event in one of the worst-designed buildings in London. Above me you can see a staircase that is almost entirely unused but nonetheless occupies most of the volume.

[The building has] windows which do not open but are almost impossible to see through because they are constantly covered with guano or other substances and are impossible to clean. And whoever knows the secret of cleaning the windows in City Hall has either died or crept away to South America and there’s nothing we can do about it.

If the man responsible for creating these windows – the architect – is still in this city then I would be delighted if he would make himself known to me.

And with that, the award was announced. Wrapping up the ceremony, Johnson billed his earlier “various disobliging remarks�? as “a measure of our broadmindedness�? in selecting the winners.

All of which make us awfully sad we weren’t there…