Here’s a link to the Original Story complete with pictures.
I was surprised to not see The Thompson Center in Chicago not on the list, it’s usually on every list of ugliest buildings. These pics don’t really do it justice because you don’t notice how truly awful the color panels look and how bleak the interior lighting feels.
Brutalist architecture! HAH!
Real Brutalist architecture is this, the Volkelschlachtdenkmal in Leipzig, dedicated to the German dead of 1913, built 100 years later. Do your googling for closer shots, and pics of the ghastly interior.
For hideous modern architecture (sometimes called Brutalist) have a go at Paul Rudolph’s eminently shitty Art & Architecture Building at at Yale.
(bolding mine)
Wait, so it won’t be built for another 5 years? Do you have a time camera or something? 
Modernism was the style of architecture devised in the 1920s by Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus and a few other European architects. It ran its course by the 1950s and was obsolete by the 1970s.
Postmodernism was the period that followed that. It was not it the least bit meaningless. In several of the worlds of art, most especially architecture, it was distinct and identifiable.
That also means postmodernism is more than a generation old. It too has run its course, and is being abandoned. A new general term hasn’t emerged yet, but Beyond Postmodernism tells anyone who is familiar with architecture what the subject is. Complaining about it is like complaining that a headline over a physics article that reads Beyond String Theory is ridiculous. It’s not. Or shouldn’t be to anyone who’s paying proper attention.
A lot of people (with no taste) think that if you make a “cool” or “striking” building, it is good. Unfortunately, architects are no more immune to this idiocy than anyone else, and so we have I. M. Pei and Gehry. Pei learned how to make a building something like a post-nuclear-holocaust bunker and decided to go with it. Gehry decided that tossing random glassy blobs around was architecture. Pei’s works are brutal, ugly, and unlivable. Gehry’s are hideous from the outside, ridiculously expensive, and impossible to maintain. Neither of them knows a thing about archievture, but they know a lot about sculpture.
In the 80s, we started naming things not for what they were, but for what they weren’t. I blame the yuppies, who could tell that their movements were being abandoned, but still had the influence to name what they couldn’t appreciate. This was also the beginning of “generation X” and “alternative music”.
By the same token, I’ve always had repect for the foresight of the Pre-Raphaelites.
But now, this is our chance to name the next artistic movement. (I’m pretty sure “beyond-post-modernist” won’t stick.) May I humbly suggest “pre-futurist”.
“Post-critical” has some traction (and probably applies to Gehry pretty well). “Performative” was also a contender.
In each case I think the idea is that “what it does” (aesthetically) is more important than “what it means” (‘it’ being a work of art or architecture).
Did I sleep through the “critical” movement? When was it?
I think what we find appealing is balance and grace.
Boston’s City Hall is a disgrace; it is not interesting, graceful, convenient, or anything good. It was just different when it was built, and is now trite.
That abomination does not belong in the city graced by the Boston Public Library (both wings) and the Christian Science Reflection pool.
I must be warped somehow. I find all those buildings on the list visually appealing. There’s better architecture out there, certainly, but I have no problem with those at all.
Not even close.
Thanks to the SDMB, I can think of 10 uglier buildings off the top of my head. Some of the ones on the list are merely uninteresting. None of them make you want to jump back in fear or recoil in horror.
In this context “critical” would refer to any earlier period (postmodern, neo-classical, etc.) when “meaning” was consciously inscribed and meant to be read.
I didn’t say the style was meaningless. I said the name was ridiculous when you break it down to its component parts. “Beyond postmodernist” would have to be set sometime in the future.
Silly nomenclature. Not (necessarily) silly architecture.
You know what is worse, they just spent a fortune restoring that piece of shit to “the artist’s original intent.” There have been a bunch of apologist articles in the papers around here blaming the building’s failure on all of us unsophisticated hicks who can’t appreciate Rudolph’s “genius.” :rolleyes: Does anyone know where Rudolph is buried? I think I’m adding him to my list of people whose graves I want to piss on.
That building reminds me of the NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) building in Boulder, Colorado. I wonder who designed that one?
Sorry, incorrect. “Modernism” was a legitimate art movement. You can’t deny the term simply because its root is still in modern usage. And “Postmodernism” is a legitimate art movement that was largely a response to Modernism, so post + Modernism is perfectly valid.
And needless to say, though we’ve been mired in postmodernism since, what, the 50s? 60s? Eventually there will be a movement that comes after Postmodernism. So “Beyond Postmodernism” is a pretty dry, informative title; it’s not even a play on words or anything.
Anyway.
Of the buildings mentioned, the Boston City Hall is the only one I’ve been in. I even waited in a long line there. It’s not the ugliest. I’d say the ugliest on that list is that horrid pomo monstrosity in Spain, although I fail to come up with any defense for the Scottish Parliament Building.
(And FYI, Gehry–whom I mostly love, even in the examples linked above–did his worst to Seattle.)
The Port Authority Bus Terminal is not the ugliest building in NYC. Not even close.
I cannot believe the University of Phoenix Stadium is not on the list. I curse and pound the steering wheel and avert my eyes every time I drive by that pox on our landscape. To say it looks like a giant iron elephant took a dump would be far too kind. I want heads to roll for approving that thing.
Yep, the boston city hall is the worst! The late Francis Russell described it as “an upended airconditioner, left out for the trash”. The inside is even worse (of course, the corrupt city government makes it worse by not doing any maintainence).
The mentally retarded mayor of Boston (Thomas Menino) wants to tear it down and replace it…that is probably the most sensible thing to do.
It’s definitely up there, and gets even worse when you go inside. Across the street, the New York Times Building is just as bad - two people have already climbed it! Of course, assuming the current plan ever gets off the ground, Freedom Tower is going to totally ruin the NYC skyline.
For now, I pick Trump World Plaza as the ugliest building in NYC. It’s a slightly smaller version of that Paris monolith.
