Lewisham Gateway is joint-winner of Carbuncle Cup for worst UK building
Lewisham Gateway’s second phase has won the dubious honour of being the UK’s joint worst building according to judges awarding the annual Carbuncle Cup.
It shared the honour with a controversial large warehouse built beside housing at Astley Business Park in Greater Manchester.
Lewisham Gateway phase two is currently entirely unoccupied with not a single resident nor retail outlet in use after a flood last year knocked out all the building’s electrics.
Blocks on site – name The Filigree – are under the control of build to rent company Get Living. It was built by Balfour Beatty for developer Muse.
The Carbuncle Cup itself has come in for criticism itself as architecture and design if of course subjective. However the judges have attempted to place buildings within a wider context when deciding the worst developments across the country rather than rely on design alone.
History
At Lewisham the development took an age to get underway. Land sat vacant for many, many years even with planning permission. Not good, but far from unique.
Then when it was underway a contractor walked off the job.
When it did finally finish the clashes of various materials didn’t go down too well with many and for me the grey bands located on a block in the south eastern corner were straight out of the worst 2000s designs of twenty years ago.
The application of apparently randomised grey blocks resembles static on an old telly. Unfortunately you can’t give it a whack to produce something better. It’s not what appeared in earlier renders.
Nor is the cladding around the corner on the cinema building.
It appeared that a parts bin had been raided across the wider site and those blocks got the worst of it. That or the design was so old that by the time it was finally built they just stuck with what was half-fashionable back then without revising it.
The Rennell Street blocks are also pretty monolithic. Elegant it ain’t.
Benefits
Having said all that it’s not without merits. The overall site is far more permeable allowing cut-throughs on foot between the station and High Street, or at least it will when it isn’t blocked off as seen after the flood.
It does include a cinema which should help with the town’s night-time economy, and some of the blocks aren’t all bad.
A number of commercial spaces are located across the site though in the months between residents moving in and the flood, not a single one had opened.
Assuming many do find a tenant that’ll help add some places for people to visit, shop, east and socialise.
For now the priority is fixing the site’s electrics so people can finally move back and retail space becomes occupied.
Earlier this year it was stated the site may begin to reopen by October 2026. That update in January 2026 was depended on work starting quickly. Since then little updates have been given.
Sounds about right
What’s being judged here the work the building or both? 🤣Problem is council works have no clue about signing off work so when that day comes alot of things are overlooked, that is if the inspector even comes out…. I’ve worked on sites if things don’t get checked they don’t get done right everyone nowadays is constantly on their phone not working why do you expect them to do the work right if their not even motivated to work in the first place
Take this as an example I start at 7am people get there at 7 to talk until 8 then start work? What kind of morons exist these days it’s laughable
The Gateway development is a mass of ugly, disjointed buildings with no unifying design. By the way @J Smith, the current NatWest bank on the high street is due to close. I was under the impression that NatWest was leaving Lewisham completely, but I was told by a staff member that it will be relocating to one of the Gateway units. This is probably dependent, though, on when the flooding problem has been properly addressed.