[QUOTE=Pullet]
is that the site of the protagonist’s apartment (that he shared with his parents, a snake, and several loose women) from the movie Clockwork Orange?
[/QUOTE]
There’s a protagonist in A Clockwork Orange?
I submit for your approval University Hall on the campus of UIC.
It brings you Ugly, Boring, Inefficient, and Glaring Contrast with the otherwise impressive architecture of Chicago…all in one upside down Pyongyong Tower package.
[QUOTE=Spoons]
Help me out here. Is this Boot on top of the O’Keefe Centre*? Or beside it? I gotta say, that in the angles these pictures show it at, it’s hard to tell. Unless, of course, it’s humping the O’Keefe, which looks to be a distinct possibility…
[/quote]
It overlaps, but is mostly to the southwest of the O’Keefe.
Sony is not a small company. 
(It’s the Sony Centre now. No idea what happened to Hummingbird. Maybe they got bought out.)
[QUOTE=drm]
A while back The Ontario Academy of Art and Design (OCAD) built this monstrosity in Downtown Toronto. Another angle
I cringe every time I look at the damn thing.
[/QUOTE]
That’s Will Alsop, I think. You should see the place he’s doing for Filmport down on the East Bayfront. Looks like a breaking red wave with a tumour (scroll down–the third and fourth pic). Actually, I think I could get used to it.
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
No, Kallman, McKinnell and Knowles. Got some major prizes for it, too. IM Pei did the Hancock, though.
It was, to make room for [Boston] City Hall and the surrounding brick-tundra “plaza”. Planning to move or replace the building, and restore Scollay Square, are chestnuts of architecture/urban planning students’ theses, but don’t expect anything to come from them.
[/QUOTE]
It’s the plaza that really does it. Crammed in with a bunch of other buildings City Hall would probably be merely an eyesore, but being perched in the center of a complete wasteland has elevated it to the rank of soul-sucking monstrosity. You leave the T and come aboveground only to find yourself face to face with death itself, staring directly at you from across the wind-swept void. (Enough to drain the Christmas spirit right out of any Faneuil Hall-bound shoppers, I tells ya.)
Behold - The Butterdome!
This is the University of Alberta’s rec facility.
Another look. (Please use proper eye protection).
.
Ugly, you say?
It looks like a drawing by a 5 year old that was into the ‘War of the Worlds’ and had a thing for polka dots.
You win. Good GOD. I understand that art students want to push the envelope, but that’s not eclectic, it’s just plain ugly. I gotta wonder what the engineers where saying. “Yeah (snicker) we can do it….. but um…… Are you REALLY sure you want too?”
http://www.hughpearman.com/illustrations5/toronto%20OCAD1b.jpg
eta link
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
It was, to make room for City Hall and the surrounding brick-tundra “plaza”. Planning to move or replace the building, and restore Scollay Square, are chestnuts of architecture/urban planning students’ theses, but don’t expect anything to come from them.
[/QUOTE]
You know, one of the proverbial Montreal architectural monstrosities (the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec) was recently completely reclad without being demolished. It at least looks kind of better now and certainly less oppressive. I wonder if something like that could work in other cases of dreadful brutalism.
Boston City Hall is quite inefficiently laid out inside as well. Like so much of modern architecture, it was designed to win the firm a prestigious prize, not for its actual utility. pasunejen is right, the brick tundra around it is a far worse problem, and no amount of cladding or ivy on the building itself will hide its inhospitability.
That is what the late Boston historian Francis Russell called it. He is right-the building is ugly, poorly designed and grossly energy inefficient. My question: do we REALLY need big city halls anymore? Most stuff is done online now-so how many people ACTUALLY trek downtown to wait in some bureaucrat’s office? Take the Boston City council-they meet like once amonth-who the hell needs all of the empty office space anymore? Let’s move to virtual city halls-and let the hacks stay home!
[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
You know, one of the proverbial Montreal architectural monstrosities (the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec) was recently completely reclad without being demolished. It at least looks kind of better now and certainly less oppressive. I wonder if something like that could work in other cases of dreadful brutalism.
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Your first link is broken. Do you know of another picture of that place in all its original hideousness?
[QUOTE=Diceman]
Your first link is broken. Do you know of another picture of that place in all its original hideousness?
[/QUOTE]
We’ve been through this before, but for sheer inappropriateness this one rates mentioning again: in a fairly drab, staid, Victorian-era city, in the state of Victoria, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Australia’s founding in 1901 - the last year of the Victorian Era (have I said “Victoria” enough yet?)- they plonked Melbourne’s Federation Square.
Mind you, the bright yellow garishness of Jackson’s Landing rising above the warm low-rise sandstone buildings of Pyrmont is pretty vile, too.
Gaaaaah! “Vibrant Lemon” indeed.
Federation Square looks sort of interesting, though, in a Children’s Museum sort of way. My 1959-era kitchen counter has some of those same patterns.
[QUOTE=InLucemEdita]
I submit for your approval University Hall on the campus of UIC.
It brings you Ugly, Boring, Inefficient, and Glaring Contrast with the otherwise impressive architecture of Chicago…all in one upside down Pyongyong Tower package.
[/QUOTE]
Hey, don’t knock the upside-down buliding. I love the upside-down building.
Drunk architects have to work too.
[QUOTE=Ro Carter]
The Pyongyang Hotel reminds me of the headquarters for an evil government/dictator, or a mad scientist’s lair before it blasts into space. Either way, not giving off friendly, welcoming vibes, at least IMHO.
[/QUOTE]
You watched that video, didn’t you?
I actually like most of the buildings in this thread - especially the Soviet style ones… A building I don’t like, however, is Hall 6 at the Pragati Maidan conference area in New Delhi. The rest of the area is dotted with similar eyesores.
Well, I have to say, Sagrada Familia looks very good for a sand castle that was fused in place by the heat of a thermonuclear flash.
(Heh, I’m just messin’ with you. At least it looks creative-weird instead of just “ooh, look at me! I’m all post-moderne and avant-garde and made of concrete slabs that look like they just smell like piss and tears!” weird. 
)
This is a cathedral under construction in downtown Oakland, next to Lake Merritt.