Coventry is a bit of a shit hole. It was bombed to buggery and back in WW2 and then rebuilt out of concrete in the 50s and 60s. There’s a lot of ugliness there. But I do have a real soft spot for the Sports and Leisure Centre:
Basically, Coventry’s coat of arms has, for reasons lost in the mists of time (although there are theories relating to dragons), got an elephant on it. That’s why Coventry City’s mascot, Sky Blue Sam is an elephant. It also explains why their sports centre looks an elephant, in a weird sixties architecture sort of way.
This thread needs to be zombied for its absolutely egregious omission of the Geisel Library at the University of San Diego. (heh - essentially the first building you see when entering “brutalist architecture” in google)
Especially some of the earlier photos where the concrete is more pronounced - oh to see that on a totally cloudy day. (heh - a guy can dream, can’t he?)
That is architectural bliss to the max for me (albeit also a big moderne fan).
The Casa Del Portuale in Naples…
Technically the CCTV building is “deconstructivist”, but I like to think there are easily enough brutalist characteristics to it to warrant a place here…
The following link is, for me, sheer residential pornography:
the Toronto School of Arts and Design is a building so ugly (and out of place for its surroundings) that only a School of Design could create it.
Bizarre as hell, and I wouldn’t wanna be associated with the place.
But it is kinda cool.
(sorry about the funny-looking link, but it works. Just click on it, and be ready to cringe. Or else wait for the aliens to emerge.)
That building looks like nothing Dr. Seuss ever drew. If they’re going to name it after him it ought to be rounded, sloppy, and organic-looking, as if it grew somehow and then got left out in the sun and softened and melted.
This is too small and local to be of broad interest but I submit the Lorain County (Ohio) Visitor’s Center. It won the most beautiful new building award (or some such award) the year it was dedicated. The award was given by - the Lorain County Visitor’s Center.
I’m not sure how much activity is left at that building. An Internet search turns up a photo of the building and that the “Lorain County Visitors Bureau” is permanently closed.
More embarrassingly, the county missed a deadline to make a $17.99 payment to maintain the domain name for VisitLorainCounty.com, leading to it being cybersquatted by an Indonesian poker website.
Universities have a history of adding modern additions to the old libraries. The Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington is a stupendously ugly building built in 1923 but looking like it plopped down out of the 14th century. Naturally they immediately needed more space and built a modernistic addition off the back. (Scroll down the linked page to Suzzallo 1961-63 Addition.) When I spent a summer there we called it the cyborg library.
That looks like Lorain county’s Dad got the building unassembled in a box on Christmas Eve and had to put it together in a hurry while recovering from the office Christmas Party, and finally said “The Hell with it. It’s all together in one piece. Who cares if I got it right?”
Heh, watching Bochum in the Bundesliga today, and their stadium, to my pleasant surprise, was totally right up my alley!
Impractical - probably not. Probably perfectly suits its use.
Beautiful - yes.
The CN Tower wasn’t built as a viewing station. It’s a huge antenna. Until it was built, tv, radio and other communications in Toronto were not good, which is a bit of a drawback for a city that bills itself as the commercial and banking centre of Canada, with the country’s major stock exchange.
