What are the ugliest buildings you have seen (not just in St. Louis)?

STLCardsBlues1989 wrote:What are the ugliest buildings you have seen (not just in St. Louis)?

Neat topic, probably lots of healthy disagreement.



2 Columbus Circle in NYC. Disgusting.



City Hall in Boston



Anything by Le Corbusier



Not a specific building, for Forum des Halles, Paris. An abomination.



Sorry, but La Sagrada Familia. Not to say it's not bizarre and amazing, just not a place I'd spend any contemplative or worship time for which it was ostensibly designed.



Too many Soviet-era concrete buildings to name in Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and so on.

There are so many....



I'd have to agree with Boston City Hall,



How aboutDenver Public Library....



or Ryugyong Hotel (unfinished) North Korea....



or the most ironicThe Yale School of Art and Architecture Building....

Looks like most people dislike the poured concrete/maximum security prison look.

bprop wrote:




Sorry, but La Sagrada Familia. Not to say it's not bizarre and amazing, just not a place I'd spend any contemplative or worship time for which it was ostensibly designed.

Blasphemy! I don't think I could put any Gaudi structures on this list.

Here's another I had forgotten about.



And from our local past.



I am no fan of most anything mid-century modern. Interesting to the architect (maybe) but not to someone who has to 'be' there.

It saddens me that none of you have given proper (dis)respect to the Olive Corporate Center on Olive Blvd in....Creve Coeur or Olivette?







That's all I could find....within a 5 second image search on Google.

Wash U's modern buildings. The good, the bad, and the really ugly.



Busch III Laboratory 1957





Steinberg Hall 1960





Gaylord Music Library 1960





Olin Library 1962





Remaining 60's dorms:

Lee



Umrath



Rublemann



Beaumont



Rutledge



Dauten



Myers



Hitzeman



Hurd







Mallinckrodt Student Center 1973





Eliot Hall 1974. Likely the worst, though it may be worth keeping for that reason alone. Demolition rumors abound.





Some recent gems.



Mudd House 1990 (not kidding)





Park 1991 (welcome to your freshmen dorm/hospital)





Walker Hall 2006 (ok, this angle looks cool, but has anyone else gotten a cold sterile feeling from the facade on Skinker?)





Mildred Kemper Museum 2006

^ Oh come on, none of those Wash U buildings are 1/10th as hideous as the Boston City Hall. (OK, the Malincrodkt S.C. comes closer, but still maybe only half as bad.)

Yea, but I had no idea there were so many ugly buildings on that campus. The fact that a school known for architecture (right?) turned out so many is remarkable. It's amazing to me that architects during that period elevated themselves above everyone else and produced so many buildings that are just so unlikeable to anyone but maybe the architect himself.

Almost none of those buildings are ugly; it's just that most of them have eschewed any urban context. At least modernism used, for the time, cutting edge materials and tried to make a statement. Don't conflate the actual building with its poor surroundings (e.g., that awful plaza for Boston's City Hall). If you merely have a bias against mid-century modernism, then the "ugliest buildings in America" list would be pretty damn extensive!



The post-modernism of today is simply about tacking reflective glass and adding bright colors to (much more poorly constructed) traditional designs.



Worse, the "deconstructionist" architecture acts as if the built environment is an art gallery with no rules, letting a computer turn buildings into outdoor sculptures that have so little respect for the urban environment as to shun it all together. I am so glad Gehry's BPV story by the RFT was just a joke.

I would argue that the buildings include their context and can be criticized as such. Would Le Corbusier have put any of his buildings on a normal city block? Or a suburban street?



Plus when you say "none of the buildings are ugly", it's subjective of course. Many of us find the ribbon windows (or lack of windows), stilts, materials, shapes, and interiors hideous, regardless of the surrounds. But I agree, most of these "places" make you not want to get anywhere near the building. ALso, I have a bias against the MCM architecture because it was all about the architect. That doesn't make our lists any less relevant. It just means there's a lot of architecture that many of us view as ugly.



I don't recall anyone praising postmodernist or deconstructionist architecture, but as far as

... turn buildings into outdoor sculptures that have so little respect for the urban environment as to shun it all together...

..then there are many guilty parties:

Boston seems to have more than it's share of ugly buildings.



I can't find a definitive answer as to exactly what this building is, I just know it is ergly:







Federal Reserve Bank o' Boston:

Forbes list: http://www.forbes.com/2002/05/03/0503home.html



There's a building in Baltimore on this page (scroll down).

http://www.city-data.com/forum/general- ... ial-3.html

someone else described it as a monstrocity.

I can't just post the picture, but you can see it there.

STLCardsBlues1989 wrote:


There's a building in Baltimore on this page (scroll down).

http://www.city-data.com/forum/general- ... ial-3.html

someone else described it as a monstrocity.

I can't just post the picture, but you can see it there.

Wow!

Looks like this McMansion, on steroids:

Parkway Tower Office Building

225 S Meramec Ave

Saint Louis, MO 63105

I can't find a picture of it, but it's about 7 stories on meramec at Forest Park Parkway. Hands down the ugliest building in St. Louis.

The ugliest house in st. louis sits between the Bogey Club and the Deer Creek Club on Clayton road. The biggest McMansion Monstrosity that I'm shocked was allowed to be built in Ladue. The owners, Im sure, probably think it's best house in stl. sad.

City property - yours for only $325K!!!











-RBB

Dubai is building the tallest, ugliest skyline on the planet.

^ LOL!!! That's hilarity.

Growing up in Georgia, I can tell you that Atlanta's got a bunch of ass, including



Atlanta Marriott Marquis:







Atlanta Bellsouth:







and of course Georgia Pacific:







the heinous University Tower in Durham







And the late, great, ass-ugly Get Carter car park: