I went down to Corus Quay for the fourth time last night since Sugar Beach began to open. I've been pretty critical of this building since the first renderings were shown. Seeing it up close and essentially finished has softened me on some points, but solidly and sometimes negatively re-confirmed others.
I think the strengths of this building lie in its extremely well-tailored finishes, the high level of attention paid to inventive and continuous detailing throughout, and it's well-assigned accomodation of variously divergent functionalities.
The detailing is just about the only way to make this building intriguing - you have to get your eye right up to it. Thank goodness for small mercies. The curtain wall, for example, deceptively looks far more boring and commonplace from afar than it does close up. When you get up to it, though, you cam see how incredibly fine and intricate the machining process has been in assembling it. It's beautifully and subtly carried out. From even a short distant back, though, it looks as banal and uninspired as the most on-spec suburban office plot.
Ditto for plenty of other details - finely tuned and well-carried out of close, balky and dull from afar. The complex is well-bred bore, unwieldy and surprisingly inarticulate. There's little sense of entrance, exit, arrival, flow or place on show. Sugar beach works as the anchor here, not the architecture.
The bits and pieces of fun being installed inside are nifty, but feel a bit forced and unlikely against the relentlessly restrained backdrop of the structure. As a cool, considered piece of functionalism, I think it is better suited to being an academic building or piece of urban infill than attempting to be an engaging waterfront ingénue with a song on her lips.