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 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 medal of the award uses a sketch of Casson which is a self-portrait.[1]
| Year | Building | City | Architect | Comment | Reference | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | London | "lumpishness, banality, repetitiveness and repulsiveness of texture" | Eye 549 p. 7 | |||
| 1983 | London | "It is tawdry fancy-dress architecture, without life or imagination" | Eye 575 p. 7 | |||
| 1984 | Swindon | "You can tell the Renault Centre is a whizzy High-Tech building because it is painted bright yellow" | Eye 602 p. 9 | |||
| 1985 | London | "a great glazed grey warehouse ... how astonishingly naive it is as architecture" | Eye 627 p. 7 | |||
| 1986 | London | "a vast hole-in-the-wall entrance, a gratuitous neo-Constructivist unsupported corner" | Eye 653 p. 9 | |||
| 1987 | London | "ugly, obtrusive, insensitive, banal" | Eye 679 p. 7 | |||
| 1988 | Skylines Village, Isle of Dogs | London | "a 45-degree triangle on its side ... hyped-up mediocrity" | Eye 706 p. 9 | ||
| 1989 | The Mound[2] | Edinburgh | "a series of pointless, pretentious structures" | Eye 733 p. 9 | ||
| 1990 | Glasgow | "a building which looks as if it was designed in 1950 in, say, Bulgaria" | Eye 757 p. 9 | |||
| 1991 | London | "the elaborate and expensive camp joke" | Eye 784 p. 9 | |||
| 1992 | United Kingdom pavilion, Expo '92[3] | Seville | "a showy, pretentious exterior with nothing behind it" | Eye 810 p. 11 | ||
| 1993 | Cambridge | "a gauche and vulgar essay in misunderstood Greek Classicism" | Eye 836 p. 7 | |||
| 1994 | Oxford | Peter Yiangou | "illiterate red-brick neo-Georgian" | Eye 862 p. 9 | ||
| 1995 | Cambridge | "a long extruded half-cylinder of glass and stainless steel" | Eye 888 p. 7 | |||
| 1996 | Glasgow | "[an] unreal design by [a] long dead architect" | Eye 914 p. 12 | |||
| 1997 | Glasgow | "a triumphant betrayal of all that modern architecture was meant to stand for" | Eye 940 p. 9 | |||
| 1998 | Buchanan Galleries | Glasgow | Legge Ericsson, Jenkins and Marr | "a triumph of barbarism, vulgarity, ineptitude" | Eye 967 p. 9 | |
| 1999 | London | "a huge circular plastic tent ... [an] extravagant, vapid toy" | Eye 992 p. 17 | |||
| 2000 | 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. 9 | |
| 2001 | Norwich | "all entrance ... a huge and crude building" | Eye 1045 p. 12 | |||
| 2002 | Manchester | "the splendid and really beautiful interiors of the original building .. have been gratuitously spoiled" | Eye 1070 p. 12 | |||
| 2003 | London | "an overdone embarrassing compromise, a dog's dinner" | Eye 1097 p. 15 | |||
| 2004 | Scottish Parliament Building[4] | Edinburgh | "confused and confusing mish-mash of upturned boats and leaflike forms" | Eye 1122 p. 12 | ||
| 2005 | London | "crude and inept ... from a distance, the memorial becomes an incoherent dark lump, formless and inelegant" | Eye 1149 p. 14 | |||
| 2006 | London | "a giant gimmick that is also plain ugly" | Eye 1174 p. 14 | |||
| 2007 | The Meeting Place statue, St Pancras station | London | "this tasteless creation" | Eye 1200 p. 14 | ||
| 2008 | West Bromwich | "a big box ... with no obvious entrances" | Eye 1226 p. 12 | |||
| 2009 | One Hyde Park[5] | London | "an overweening (half-empty) ... masterpiece" | Eye 1252 p. 15 | ||
| 2010 | London | "on this crucial, prominent site, Nouvel's incoherent, solipsistic glazed lump is an insult to St Paul's" | Eye 1278 p. 14 | |||
| 2011 | Liverpool | 3XN and AEW Architects | "a cheap rip-off of [[[Zaha Hadid]]'s ] Deconstructivist style" | Eye 1304 p. 12 | ||
| 2012 | London | Liam O'Connor | "pompous, self-regarding and triumphalist" | Eye 1330 p. 12 | ||
| 2013[6] | London | "as incoherent as it is expressionistic" | Eye 1356 p. 8 | |||
| 2014 | Glasgow | "crude and insufferably arrogant essay in minimalist neo-modernism"[7] | Eye 1382 p. 18 | |||
| 2015 | Investcorp Building, St Antony's College, Oxford[8] | Oxford | "a long, curved, metallic thing like a big shiny slug" | Eye 1408 p. 21 | ||
| 2016 | London | "ragged, discordant and rather incoherent in both surface modelling and overall form", "new, discordant brickwork" | Eye 1434 p. 20 | |||
| 2017 | London | "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 |