I sit in my office and look at this ugly, aesthetically bankrupt monstrosity of brown-and-black “architecture” all day long:
The Multifoods Tower and City Center
I, of course, am in the beautiful Art Deco Wells Fargo Center, which you can see peeking between the two ass-ugly buildings flanking it.
The University of South Florida’s Sun Dome, Here and here.
The entire campus is pretty egregious – it was built mostly in the '60s in a post-Stalinist Soviet apartment block style. Witness also the library, and the Rec Center. More of these monstrosities can be seen here, although if I were in charge, I wouldn’t put a tour online.
It’s slowly being updated with newer buildings, but they’re in that soon-to-be-dated red brick and square green roof style of the early '90s.
I was all set to declare CalMeacham’s entry the winner, and then I mistakenly clicked on the link provided by criminalcatalog. I can only thank the stars that my eyes don’t have to be assaulted by either of those atrocities in person. <shudder>
For submission, but not nearly as bad as those (though perfectly awful in its own right), I present the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. (Click the picture for a larger/better view of this giant outdoor toilet.)
And apparently the Guggenheim is going for some kind of Architectural Horror Award worldwide, as is evidenced by the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain and the proposed structure along the East River in New York (which was tanked this past January, due to budget constraints. Boo hoo.)
Then there’s this lovely Gehry “Project”, Der Neue Zollhof, in Düsseldorf, Germany. (Click the first image to be truly amazed.)
The mind boggles.
OK, first controversy of the thread: I think I have diametrically opposed taste to Shayna - I think all 3 Guggenheim museum designs are absolutely fantastic, and I love Der Neue Zollhof.
I’ve got to admit, that’s pretty damn ugly.
I give you The Reed McDonald Building, home to the Journalism Department at Texas A&M University. I spent many hours in that ugly building. Why would you even want to click on the “Select for larger photograph” link?
Well, it seems we have two different definitions of “ugly” competing here. On the one hand, we have the Frank Gehry/Daniel Leibskind Dr-Seuss-on-acid school of architectural assault on the senses. On the other hand, there’s the stalinist architecture-as-a-means-of-depressing-the-soul school. Interesting thing to me is that while the second grew out of taking the Bauhaus function-as-form aesthetic to its logical end, the first grew out of the reactions to it.
That said, I still don’t know why Gehry keeps getting major comissions. In thirty years he’s going to be seen in much the same way we regard the architects of Three Rivers Statium and all those other multi-purpose monstrosities. Even worse, I think, because those things are designed with no regard for maintainability.
Just to keep in the spirit of the OP, I nominate the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. And yes, it’s a Gehry.
Those buildings are all very, very ugly.
But out of personal preference, I give you The Mosse Humanities Building!
Rumored to have been specially built during our fair city’s tumultuous period in the late 1960s so that tanks could drive onto the second and third floors (note the walls that, for some reason, are shaped like ramps!) Marvel at the top three floors, which appear to mysteriously stay elevated above the rest of the building, instead of crashing down like a carelessly arranged sandwich!
Just wait, there’s more! Take a tour inside, and wonder why the first floor is in the basement, why on certain floors you must leave the actual building to reach the other side of the same floor, the rooms that appear to have been assigned room numbers by the extremely scientific Six Beers and Three Dice Method, and the Magical Disappearing Auditoriums!
As I’m fond of saying, “It looks like M.C. Escher got a hold of some bad acid.” That, and the first time I visited the campus, I got completely butt-lost in it very late at night.
In fact, LOTS of people get lost in it. The words “Sorry, Humanities Building” are an accepted excuse to showing up late to any class.
I think some of your Canadians might have overlooked the extension to the Ontario College of Art and Design.
I work less than a block from this pile. I have to admit I like the Gehry Bilbao Guggenheim, but I think he is getting more derivative with each building he designs. Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam discussed his MIT building a few weeks back.
I have to say, though, that this isn’t even the ugliest building in Greater Boston…that would be Boston City Hall and its accompanying plaza. Cold, windswept and bleak in the winter, parched and treeless in the summer, the plaza is the setting for the brutalist, dehumanizing mistake you can feast your eyes on in the above link. Here is another view: http://www.culturageneral.net/arquitectura/arquitec/bostciha.htm
You may want to put on some protective eyewear.
Wow. I think we have a winner.
Heh… it just got uglier. I was down for the Utah game a few weeks back and a chunk of that orange shite trim about 10 feet long spalled off between the 2nd and 3rd floors right behind the snack bar facing the chemistry building.
This is a proposal, right? It looks photoshopped. If it has actually been built, I agree with mblackwell, this is the worst of the worst. It justifies nuclear war.
That is not a city hall. That is Stalin’s tomb.
Hideous, ain’t it?
That College of Art and Design thing is indeed an abomination. Please tell us it hasn’t actually been built.
OK, the new “Bullring” in Birmingham. It is hideous
When it was first unveiled, they called Boston City Hall an “Aztec tomb”. But, all of its shortcomings duly noted and agreed aupon, I still think it can’t hold a candle to the ugliness of the Stata Center. And I have to admit that the Experience Music Center that criminal catalog is at least as ugly as the Stata Center.
It’ll (OCAD) go nicely with Robarts library. The only pic I can find online makes it look kind of cool, but it was built to resemble a Canada goose.
I’m not joking. it looks like an enormous concrete turkey. Let’s see if I can find a truthful pic… nope. I’ll try later when I have more time. It’s hideous.
You win.
