The Diamond looks like something Banksy might build as a joke

Sheffield University invested £81,000,000 to secure runner-up position in an ugliest building competition. They deserved first place.

The Diamond's design is weird and obnoxious, like something Banksy might build ironically. Its ground floor is an airport departure lounge to nowhere. People tolerate actual departure lounges because they lead to respite from the dreariness of British life. The Diamond leads to a cafe.

The place's vast emptiness is especially annoying to Sheffield students because it could be occupied by computers. It's disheartening for attendees who come from student flats styled after Norwegian prison cells to see masses of gratuitous space.

When astronauts ponder the vastness of the universe, they see the potential for awesome discovery; new planets, bizarre cosmic anomalies and maybe even new life. When I explored the vastness of The Diamond, I found an out of order sign on the downstairs toilet.

Silver lining: all the trekking required to use this building means that University of Sheffield students will be simply too athletic to ever lose Varsity again.

But there's more to The Diamond than its deserted airport aesthetic. Its upper floors are behind card access gates which invariably refuse to respond to your insistent swiping whenever receptionists are watching, no doubt prompting them to think 'nowadays they let anyone into uni' at you. Nowadays they let anyone build £81,000,000 student facilities.

Space is wasted more creatively on the upper floors. There are sofa booths that occupants feel selfish using alone, but most people like their friends too much to bring them along for The Diamond experience. If someone does invite you then you know your relationship is at best ambivalent.

But with so much space reserved for emptiness, other areas feel cramped. One of the busier IT suites sits on a raised platform, overlooking the lower floors. It quickly becomes crowded and stuffy. Using it is reminiscent of that time David Blaine lived in a tiny glass box above the Thames – but David Blaine wasn't trying to pass a degree.

D avid Blaine once lasted seventeen minutes underwater. That he hasn't even tried to last five in The Diamond really says it all.

There's little in The Diamond to foster positivity. Students wander its floors with the jaded expressions of state bureaucrats in an oppressive Soviet dystopia. Trying to eat your lunch in this place sucks.

Yet presumably architects care about buildings, maybe the way veterinary students care about animals or economics students only care about money. The Diamond's architect must wake up in night sweats, like a man reliving a terrible atrocity from his younger days.

Sure, there are probably worse buildings elsewhere. There’s the ‘Walkie-Talkie’ skyscraper in London that once reflected the sun and melted a Jaguar. But to liberally-minded students, a skyscraper that melts the gaudy cars of the metropolitan elite is working as intended.

The Diamond is too coldly unwelcoming to melt anything. It is a very expensive and mostly empty box. One day the architect will probably suffer a particularly vivid fever dream about drifting endlessly through its space. He will revisit in search of closure – and when he does he should install more computers.