There's an amusing feature on the travel information website VirtualTourist.com that you may be interested in reading: The World’s Top 10 Ugliest Buildings.
The introduction to the list says:
The great thing about travel may be seeing the world through a different lens, but that doesn’t mean the view is always pretty. With this in mind, the travel experts at VirtualTourist.com have come up with a list of “The World’s Top 10 Ugliest Buildings and Monument.” General manager, Giampiero Ambrosi talks about the selections: “Some of these picks have all the charm of a bag of nails while others are just jaw-dropping in their complexity. Love them or hate them, the list is certainly entertaining.”The list:
- Boston City Hall - Boston, Massachusetts
- Montparnasse Tower - Paris, France
- LuckyShoe Monument - Tuuri, Finland
- Metropolitan Cathedral - Liverpool, England
- Port Authority Bus Terminal - New York City, New York
- Torres de Colón - Madrid, Spain
- Liechtenstein Museum of Fine Arts - Vaduz, Liechtenstein
- Scottish Parliament Building - Edinburgh, Scotland
- Birmingham Central Library - Birmingham, England
- Peter the Great Statue - Moscow, Russia
Ugly buildings are amazing when you think about it. Someone had to think up the design, develop it, commit it to paper, and present it to the people who commissioned it. Then those people had to approve the design and authorize its construction, and fund it. Did they like the design? Did they actually think it was beautiful?
One can only imagine that perhaps there were practical, utilitarian, political and economic considerations that trumped aesthetics.
[Photo Source]
2 comments:
The thing about Boston's City Hall, is that you don't actually have to look at it, because there's plenty of other stuff to enjoy, including the big spaces in front of it that people fill.
Besides, I sometimes think the seventies get too much of a bad rap. Maybe someday we'll like these things. At least they were distinctive, which I can't say for a lot of stuff going up now.
Hi Mark - Thanks for your observations. Perhaps we just need a new cultural Renaissance. (I know that's redundant, but you know what I mean!)
Bobbie
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