adma
Superstar
I'm inclined to be more flexible: if only because, at the c2000 time the Prince Arthur was built, it wasn't yet so clear that this was that dreaded "bloated monstrosity" type architecture. A decade before, in fact, when full-blown Postmodern Retro still seemed a novel and piquant counter-avant-garde urban concept, it might have been welcomed as genuinely "lively" and "different". By 2000, the backlash was starting to show...but still with kudos under the wire through the archway winning a municipal urban award. Today it's verboten according to the stylemongers, but a bit of an old shoe regardless.
Still, it together with its early-80s-WZMHish predecessor to the north (and the speedway width of Avenue Road) does form an overbearing Chinese Wall effect--maybe that's the more objectionable part, or at least it compounds what's objectionable about it. (At least Hazelton Lanes across the way--both the 70s and c1990 part--doesn't loom like that.)
Still, it together with its early-80s-WZMHish predecessor to the north (and the speedway width of Avenue Road) does form an overbearing Chinese Wall effect--maybe that's the more objectionable part, or at least it compounds what's objectionable about it. (At least Hazelton Lanes across the way--both the 70s and c1990 part--doesn't loom like that.)
It's pinkish brown more than real red brick. When I think red brick I think of all those red brick Victorian houses in the Annex/Hazelton Ave and warehouses. As for high quality? It looks like very cheap precast finishes pretending to be high class. In other words, phony. The worst architectural crime: pretension.