James Howard Kunstler, best-known for his rants about the evils of suburbia and oil-based companies, has a cool feature on his website called ‘Eyesore of the Month‘. His pictures and acerbic commentary are wonderful for those of us who tend to think that modernism and postmodernism were unmitigated disasters in architecture. Here are my favourite examples that I’ve stolen from his site:
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto:
Peter B. Lewis Building for Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management — a Frank Gehry piece:
Another Gehry piece — this one at MIT:
And the new Ontario College of Art & Design:
Feel free to comment and tell me what a philistine I am.
Sydney
Alan Schmierer
That first one is absolutely nausiating! And “College of Crt and Design”???? Come on!
i saw the Stata Center at MIT while it was being built. the picture can’t truly capture its hideousness. it is a scar on the surface of the earth.
I walked by the Stata center earlier this week. I can confirm its ugliness, although I think the others are worse.
It’s amusing to note that all of those pictures look kind of like a normal building being attacked by some alien creature. Coincidence?
-L
I think “artists” prefer ugly buildings to lower the aesthetic standard so that their work looks better by contrast. The Wexner Center at OSU, while not especially revolting, certainly lacks–appeal? Maybe it’s because art has become synonymous with self-expression and originality. Syd, if your opinions are philistine, I must have some ancestors from Gath.
An attack by alien creatures? That sounds about right. The other possibility that comes to mind is grossly swollen tumours.
-Sydney
Yes, but highly futuristic tumors. 🙂
-L
Though I agree with the attacked by aliens description, I must say I can actually live with organized disaster such as this with some sense of identification. I know, I know, I am twisted beyond hope. But the last building looks like it feared that attacked by the aliens and it overcompensated its protection, that truly is hideous. It is definitely the very ugliest of these four.