Plook on the Plinth: Why Carbuncle Award no longer has a place in today's cash-strapped Scotland
With little public money available, the rationale for this contentious award – that it would prompt investment and renewal – was difficult to justify
Even the most stubborn of plooks will burst in the end, so it is cheering to learn that the much-maligned centrepiece of the annual Carbuncle awards is to be no more. For the best part of a quarter century, the Plook on the Plinth – a prize rarely acknowledged, let alone accepted, by its winners – has been conferred on a succession of post-industrial Scottish towns, providing some cheap publicity for its organisers, the architecture and design magazine, Urban Realm.
Having lain dormant for a few years, the award, which officially recognises the nation’s “most dismal town”, was recently revived and presented to Port Glasgow, prompting an angry backlash from the Inverclyde community’s civic leaders, who dismissed it out of hand as a “poverty safari”.
Some previous recipients of the award, such as Denny, near Falkirk, took the opposite view, expressing barely concealed delight at the recognition, on the basis that it would shine a light on local woes and expedite redevelopment. That, certainly, was a key argument advanced by Urban Realm over the years, which suggested that the award offered a springboard for investment and renewal.
Punching down on troubled communities
There may have been a time when that was indeed the case, and there is no doubt that previous winners, such as John o’Groats, have embarked on a journey of renewal. But it would be a stretch to suggest that such a process was entirely down to the Carbuncles.
In any case, in an age when public finances are in dire straits, public realms are stuck in a holding pattern of managed decline, and private investment is hamstrung by regulatory constraints, the logic that the award can serve as a catalyst for positive change rings increasingly hollow. Far from sparking regeneration, it feels like punching down on communities which do not have their woes to seek.
There is also the age-old argument that beauty is in the eye of the beholder to consider. Cumbernauld, the only two-time winner of the prize, was repeatedly derided for its ailing 1960s shopping centre, described variously as a “rabbit warren on stilts” and the “Kabul of the north”.
There is no doubt the town’s ambitious if flawed civic centre invites scorn, but I happen to be fond of its faded brutalist glory, and agreed with the assessment of experts from the influential Bauhaus College, who lauded it as “probably the best example of a new town in Europe”.
To Urban Realm’s credit, it has announced that the plook prize is being replaced with the ‘heart on your sleeve award’, designed to recognise untapped potential and community spirit. “We're not deaf to criticism," explained the magazine’s editor, John Glenday. “We do appreciate that it's a very different world that we inhabit now from a decade ago.”
All of which would be welcome, were it not for the fact that Urban Realm has made similar promises in the past. Back in 2017, Mr Glenday said the Carbuncle awards would make way for a “more productive campaign”. No such scheme came to pass; perhaps Mr Glenday realised it is harder to gain column inches when not simply putting the boot in.
But let us hope that the plook’s replacement sets its sights a little higher, and recognises that a place is so much more than the sum of its architectural parts.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.