Conservative peer David Maclean, a shadow DEFRA minister, condemned both the appearance and location of the controversial Holocaust memorial plans, as well as dismissing its architect David Adjaye.The design for Victoria Tower Gardens, which is being drawn up with architect Ron Arad, was also slammed for resembling an earlier cast-off competition entry by Adjaye for a National Holocaust Monument in Canada.Speaking during the Holocaust Memorial Bills first committee stage in the Lords on Monday (3 March), Maclean said: [The design] is grotesquely ugly and is designed by a discredited architect whose previous iterations of this were rejected by Ottawa. It does nothing to properly commemorate the evils of the Holocaust nor the ongoing threat of a new one.AdvertisementAdjaye personally stepped back from the project in 2023 following allegations of sexual misconduct published by the Financial Times. He strongly denied those claims, adding: I am ashamed to say that I entered into relationships which, though entirely consensual, blurred the boundaries between my professional and personal lives.The Holocaust Memorial Bill has been introduced to allow the buildings construction by disapplying sections of a 125-year-old law that forbids building in the park.During the House of the Lords debate on the bill, Maclean said of the architect: The government never mention Adjaye now. In the press release announcing that his bid had been accepted, he was named 12 times as the greatest architect in history. Now, he is wiped out from the memory, and the name is given to the rest of his firm, but not to Adjaye.Maclean, who has submitted several amendments to the Holocaust Memorial Bill, went on to argue that the fin-shaped proposals by Adjaye and Arad failed to meet the original requirements set out by the Holocaust Memorial Commission in 2015. The design was symbolically refused by Westminster City Council in 2020 before being approved by then-housing minister Christopher Pincher in 2021 on the recommendation of a planning inspector.The commission, Maclean pointed out, had called for the learning centre to include facilities to host lectures and seminars and to run educational courses and workshops, as well as the opportunity for Holocaust organisations to locate their offices, or set up satellite offices, within the wider physical campus.AdvertisementMaclean told the Lords: This Adjaye design fails that requirement. Source:Adjaye Associates and Ron AradAdjaye Associates and Ron Arad's submitted Holocaust Memorial proposals (2018)But fellow Conservative peer Eric Pickles, a key supporter of the 2015 proposals, disagreed with Macleans assessment of the design and location.Pickles, a former communities secretary and a trustee of the memorials fundraising committee, compared the designs to making a Picasso painting.'This design won an international competition among top international architects, he said. Frankly, saying it looked like something that somebody in Canada objected to is wrong.Pickles, who did not mention Adjaye, continued: That is the style of the architect, Ron Arad. It would be a bit like saying to Picasso, when he was going through his blue period, Thats enough, Pablo. Too much blue. That is the nature of Ron Arads work.Clare Annamalai, of the Save Victoria Tower Gardens campaign, told the AJ that she welcomed Macleans intervention. She said in a statement: The [memorial] design is meaningless to an uninformed observer, the purpose of the project has changed again and again since its inception, the public still have no idea what the contents will be, nor how and why the location next to Parliament was chosen.She continued: What we do know is that a huge chunk of the 139 million budget will be spent on excavating a park next to a river and floodproofing the resulting bunker, at a time when construction costs are escalating.On the architects name on the memorial, Annamalai said: We thought we knew that the lead designer was Sir David Adjaye, but since the latter was accused of sexual impropriety, the projects supporters have been denying this, without actually clarifying whether Adjaye still has a design contract for it or not.Adjaye Associates, which is understood to have made some design changes to the proposals, did not respond to the AJs request for comment. Source:Adjaye Associates and Ron AradAdjaye Associates and Ron Arad's submitted Holocaust Memorial proposals (2018)In January, the governments infrastructure watchdog, the Infrastructure Projects Authority (IPA), named the UK Holocaust Memorial as one of several major projects which appear unachievable, alongside HS2 and the New Hospitals Programme.The red IPA rating was the third consecutive year the warning had been issued against the UK Holocaust Memorial, which the government reintroduced to Parliament in July last year in the form of a hybrid bill. Meanwhile, estimates of the cost of the project have reached as high as 150 million, according to the Holocaust Memorial Bill Select Committee's special report on the bill last summer.In 2022, the High Court upheld the unanimous decision by Westminster Council to reject the plans two years earlier, citing the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900, which holds that the Victoria Tower Gardens site cannot be built on.The Holocaust Memorial Bill is due to be debated again next week before it moves to the report stage. However, there is no timeline on when MPs will again vote on any amendments made by the Lords.Amendments withdrawn or not carried at the first round of the committee stage include redesigning the scheme by separating the above-ground memorial and the below-ground learning centre, and another which would have capped the cost of the project at 138.8 million, with a reasonable 15 per cent contingency.The Lords committee on the Holocaust Memorial Bill will debate amendments that call for the scheme to go back to Westminster City Council for determination, and for a public consultation on the designs.The Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government said it could not comment on the Lords debate when approached by the AJ.Adjaye Associates declined to comment.