Liverpool ferry terminal ugliest building

LIVERPOOL, England, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- A new ferry terminal in Liverpool has won the Carbuncle Cup for this year's ugliest building in Britain.

The winners were announced Thursday by Building Design, a Web site for architects. The runners-up were both university buildings, the Make's Amenity Building at the University of Nottingham and the Queen Margaret University campus in Lothian, Scotland.

The Pier Head Ferry Terminal, which incorporates a Beatles museum, won because the judges regarded it as a blot on its site, a waterfront designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a trio of early 20th-century buildings nicknamed The Three Graces.

"It is such an amazing site, directly in front of the Three Graces, but the architects seem barely to have noticed," the judges said. "It is like letting a bad second-year student build next to St Peter's."

One candidate that did not make the top three is a new fire station in Poundbury, the model village in Dorset created under the patronage of Prince Charles. The prince has long been a critic of modern architecture.