Portland is Number One! W00t! In your FACE, Seattle!
I think the Harold Washington Library is pretty cool looking.
I think a lot of those look cool. But what gives with that building in Portland? It’s #1 AND #7? 
The Ryugyong Hotel has been called the worst building in the history of mankind.
I think a lot of those buildings are pretty spiffy. And only ONE was in Eastern Europe? That’s how I know this list is bullshit. Eastern Europe is chock full of buildings a hundred times uglier than anything on this list. Communists were shitty architects.
I vote for the PG&E building in Sacramento, CA, on Marconi and Watt. I’m looking for a photo but failing to find one.
Tolman Hall on the campus of UC Berkeley is also pretty dang ugly.
I kinda like some of those. I’d be interested in seeing a corresponding “prettiest buildings” list for comparison. I’ve read that Trinity Church in Boston is quite well thought of. (Of course, I saw those surveys at the church, so it may not be an unbiased sample.) To me, it’s nice, but not spectacularly so. The ugliest list really ought to include Boston City Hall.
I remember an episode of Nova (or something, pretty sure it was on PBS) about the competition to design that library. I think it came down to 4 finalists. There was one that I really liked, but it didn’t win.
I’ve seen the Longaberger “basket” building. Even knowing that I was near it, it was still rather off-putting to actually see it looming over the horizon. Even stranger was the entire town that’s dedicated to baskets. There were baskets and flowers and cutesy things everywhere; I felt like skipping through town.
Too bad the site included only one Frank Gehry building.
Frank Gehry is in a category all his own. I don’t understand how anybody can think any of his buildings are good.
Yeah, that’s a really odd choice. It not even close to being one of the ugliest buildings in Chicago. In fact, I’d say it’s certainly above average.
There are definitely some ugly-ass buildings there, but I thought the Secret Service bulding, the round ball-houses, the national library in Minsk, the bright yellow UFO houses and the palace some guy carved himself were pretty damn neat.
I’ve always wanted to level Georgetown University’s Lauinger Librarywith a large bomb. It’s right on the main quad, too, not tucked away out of sight. The horrible irony is that it was supposed to be a modernist interpretation of (and sits right next to) the lovely Healy Hall.
God, I’m pretty sure 95% of all college libraries can be on a “world’s ugliest building” list. They’re all modernistic, Frank Lloyd Wright wanna-be pieces of ass.
The Folsom library at my alma mater, RPI.
Ironically enough, it’s right next to what is easily the most beautiful building on campus, the Voorhees Computer Center. As you can see, it used to be a chapel.
The palais ideal? C’mon that’s… that’s not a building, it’s a sculpture. It’s one of those things that are so totally kitsch they’re cool, specially when you know its story.
I thought the Chinese coin building was kind of neat. I can think of like, 10 buildings off the top of my head much uglier than that.
I thought a lot of those buildings looked good, or at least interesting, too.
I probably would have put more brutalist buildings on the list—which is a little odd itself, as I actually like quite a few brutalist structures. Maybe half. The rest look like rats nests, or places where I’m going to get murdered by droogs.
I was wondering why the infamous Czech National Library wasn’t included but apparently it got scrapped. Good to know that common sense can sometimes prevail over “avant-garde” lunacy.
Some of those are both ugly and neat at the same time.
A lot of buildings are uglier, but these here are ugly in such an unusual way. Plus they are landmarks and important buildings, where at some level of the whole process somebody may have noticed something.
I do agree with bouv about uni and college libraries being ugly, and am glad he showed me one uglier than the one of my uni.
We laugh about how those jet engines are there to be able to take the library to safety with all the precious knowledge in times of turmoil.
(http://www.zgapa.pl/zgapedia/data_pictures/_uploads_wiki/b/Biblioteka_UG_30-04-2007.jpg)
That said, that secret service building looks like something from Atlantis. I can just imagine it being used in some sci-fi flick.
Tolman Hall is uninspired and a little hard on the eyes, but it’s far from the ugliest building on campus. That honor is claimed by the Brutalist Wurster Hall, which of course houses the architecture department.
You mean the AT&T building? That’s not even close to ugly. Just dated. (Be patient, and a street view will appear.)
I now present you a candidate for #1… from the days when I lived in Tbilisi and actually knew a guy that worked in this place:
(The roads are about as nice as the building).