Red October
Senior Member
This is an atrocity to the old building..
Your posts are negative yet uninformative, Archie. Welcome to my world!
Jocularity aside, 'atrocity' is a ridiculously hyperbolic choice of word here. I'll grant you this is not the most gorgeous modern addition to an older building that KPMB are responsible for, but most of it will be hidden by the Goldring Athletic Centre, and at worst it could be labelled 'unfortunate', and only because of the middling precast. Atrocity? Not at all.
There's the cladding, but also the inattentiveness to balance and symmetry. Even the actual glazed entrance to the addition as seen from the street looks messy and just tacked onto the heritage building. I only hope they saved every piece of stone that they cut from the facade for this addition so that when it's inevitably demolished, the old building will be completely restorable.
It's not pretty, though, as mentioned, it's a functional addition that only blocks the largely unseen rear facade. "That said, "almost symmetrical" is not symmetrical, and US has a point that the addition balances the visual weight of the overall facility (on paper anyway). However, it's pretty clear that in execution the addition mostly fails. They got the colours right with the precast, but sadly the smooth and soulless finish fails to provide an engaging contrast to the beautifully textured stone. The overall result is a clunky mess of an addition that is merely "there". In the end though, considering how tucked away it is, I prefer the failed attempt at modern contrast than if they'd gone with the historicist match-the-original-building approach.
Ah, but it's still not the "historicist match-the-original-building approach".