The buildings you love to hate

In the sixties and seventies, there were a lot of hormones floating around. Architects got all teenage and ran out of the room, slamming the door and shouting LEAVE ME ALONE I HATE YOU.

For most of us, our teenage embarrassments are buried in decent obscurity. Unfortunately, in Oxford they are very much still there. As the university expanded, most of the colleges felt they needed extra space and the architects felt the need to kick over the traces of the city’s medieval past. A plethora of grunge buildings appeared all over the city like a bad attack of acne – the architectural equivalent of refusing to wash and growing dreadlocks.

The Beehive building in St John’s college is by no means the worst of the buildings thrown up in this period. Somewhere else and made out of decent materials it would be interesting. Mathematical in its design with lighted “cupolas” above, this had the potential to be an intellectually stimulating; daringly different. What makes this building particularly beastly is its cheap and nasty building materials and its situation. Whilst most colleges have some concrete boxes secreted quietly away, the Beehive Building, sits right on the middle of the college’s stone-built quad, like the original turd in the punchbowl. Concrete isn’t pretty. It’s grey in every light; it sweats; it shows the damp; it’s depressing. And cheek by jowl with honey-coloured stone, it’s quite simply nasty.

This is a sister column to Must See Buildings of Britain. Beastly Buildings is dedicated to Architects and Planners everywhere who put up the tasteless edifices The Rest of Us have to put up with.

If you know a building which has elbowed its way onto the Nation’s hate list, email the editor, charlotte@donowdo.com