City Gateway Halls nominated for 'ugliest new building' award

The brand new City Gateway Halls complex has been given the dubious honour of being shortlisted as one of the ugliest buildings constructed in the last year.

The ‘Carbuncle Cup’, given out by architecture trade mag Building Design, has seen the building deemed an “eyesore”, just weeks before its first intake of student residents.

Locals have even taken to calling it the “fag butt”, in reference to its prominent beige shaft.

The complex is located on Thomas Lewis Way in the Swaythling district, just minutes from Montefiore and Connaught Halls.

The £23.5m development included numerous significant delays, resulting in the first intake of students being held back from 2014 to this academic year.

A University spokesman said “We have taken occupation of City Gateway and are currently preparing the building for the first intake in September.

“There are over 350 bedrooms available. The main intake weekend is September 19 and 20 but we anticipating phasing arrivals with some pre-sessional and international students arriving on or around September 8 with the remainder on the main intake weekend.”

Building Design editor Thomas Lane said “Frequently examples of gross overdevelopment, rather than mitigating their impact too many of these buildings stick two fingers up to their context,”

“Some buildings are unforgivably bad and deserve to be named and shamed which is where the Carbuncle Cup comes in.”

The winner will be announced later this year.

A Soton Tab survey in 2013 found that students think the Maths tower is the ugliest on campus.

One commenter said “As a maths student I like the maths block; we look at the beautiful buildings and green areas from the maths block whilst everyone else looks at the monstrosity that is the maths block”.

One student suggested that City Gateway is not even the ugliest building in Southampton, citing the horrifying “brutalist masterpiece” Wyndham Court, shown below.

What do you think of City Gateway? Horrible eyesore or a nice change from Southampton’s usual bland anonymity? Let us know in the comments below!