The Filigree, a new residential building in Lewisham, has been voted the UK’s “worst” new building.
The award, called the Carbuncle Cup, is run by The Fence Magazine and endeavours to identify Britain’s most offensive construction of the past two years.
Buildings were nominated by the public and judged by a panel of six experts.
“Ugliness was not enough to secure a place on the short list,” read the statement on the magazine’s website. “They need to offend something deeper, more egregious, in their design and execution.”
The Filigree is a cluster of five high-rise residential buildings with a geometric, zigzag façade. The Pinnacle Tower, at 29 storeys, is the development’s highest —and most pictured— with a concrete spine of glass windows up the centre and yellow balconies branching off either side.
It contains 649 rental apartments and is marketed as “quality apartments neighbouring nature” and a “vibrant new London neighbourhood”.
The Filigree, though, was not just chosen for its polarising looks. The building opened in the summer of 2024, but in February the following year, the development’s energy centre was flooded, which cut water and power and forced more than 400 residents to evacuate their new homes and move into temporary accommodation.
In November last year, the Filigree wrote that key equipment and materials needed to be replaced so that the energy centre could be rebuilt, which will “take some time to complete”.
There have been further delays in reopening the development, with the promised shops and public spaces below the flats still to come to fruition too. Get Living, which owns and manages the development, told Lewisham council earlier this month that the site was expected to reopen by October.
“Lewisham Council granted planning permission on the clear understanding that this development would be completed and functioning as a neighbourhood by now, but that has not happened,” wrote Councillor James-J Walsh in a statement.
“Nearly a year on, progress has been too fragmented and too slow and we need the issues resolved and the site brought back to life as soon as possible.”
A spokesperson for Get Living said: “When The Filigree reopens, it will bring meaningful and lasting benefits to Lewisham, including more than 100 much needed affordable homes.
“In the meantime, while remediation works get underway following the catastrophic flood of the energy centre last year, we continue to provide homes for impacted residents in our other neighbourhoods at no extra cost.”
The Filigree was crowned joint winner of the Carbuncle Cup last week, alongside the Astley Warehouses in Greater Manchester.
The four grey warehouses —comprising some 350,000 sq ft— have come under fire for disrupting the lives of local residents and failing to provide adequate public consultation.
At the planning stage, the warehouses attracted more than 90 objections. Since then, a community-led opposition group called Astley Warehouses Action has been formed to “protect residents, families and local schools from the devastating impact of monster distribution warehouses being built in the heart of our neighbourhood.” The group now has 11,000 members.
“So, while appearance is an obvious criterion, the winners are also emblematic of something much more rotten and disturbing in terms of how these buildings were procured, sited, scaled, built and operated,” wrote architecture writer and jury chair Cath Slessor.
“At the heart of this darkness is simple greed: building big and cheaply, ruthlessly value engineering and riding roughshod over neighbours and users. And then onto the next monstrosity.”
The developers of the Filigree and the Astley Warehouses have been contacted for comment.
