James Morris

Tricorn

The Tricorn Centre was a ‘New Brutalist’ shopping centre, night club and car park complex in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England.  During planning the project was known as the “Casbah Centre”, Portsmouth’s “Market in the Sky”.   In the original planning brief the sense of nineteen sixties post war optimism was evident – it’s design included 38 small and large shops, a nursery, toilets, restaurant, bowling alley and public house. It had a new wholesale fruit and vegetable market at first floor level with vehicular access by means of spiral ramps. Over the market there were to be three or four floors of parking, for over 400 cars. It would also have residential accommodation.  Designed by Owen Luder, it was opened in 1966 at the cost of £2million.In 1967 it won a Civic Trust award for its exciting visual composition.  In 1968 it was voted Britain’s fourth ugliest building by a poll of 500 designers.  In 1989, in an Observer newspaper poll, it was voted the 5th ugliest building in Britain. In 2001, in a BBC radio 4 poll, it was voted the ugliest building in Britain. Prince Charles called it ‘a mildewed lump of elephant droppings’. A campaign to have the building listed was unsuccessful and it was demolished over 9 months in 2004.