(Bloomberg) -- Nova, a pair of London office buildings developed by Land Securities Group Plc and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, is the worst new property in Britain, according to a panel assembled by architectural website Building Design.
The 480,000 square-foot (44,600 square-meter) buildings were designed by PLP Architecture Ltd. and tenants include BHP Billiton Plc and Egon Zehnder. It's the second time in three years that a project involving the U.K.'s largest real estate investment trust has won the so-called Carbuncle Cup. The 2015 award was bestowed on the Walkie Talkie, the skyscraper that Land Securities jointly developed at 20 Fenchurch Street.
“The architect appears to have been inspired by the fractured, angular shapes beloved of stararchitects like Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind and applied these to a run-of-the-mill spec office development,” Thomas Lane, editor of the website for architects, said in a statement on Wednesday. “The result is two large blocks sliced and diced to create a series of angular volumes drunkenly leaning on each other.”
Nova was selected by the judges ahead of a shortlist that included an apartment block at Battersea Power Station and the Park Plaza London Waterloo hotel. Entries for the award are submitted by readers.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jack Sidders in London at jsidders@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Neil Callanan at ncallanan@bloomberg.net, Andrew Blackman
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