UGLY ARCHITECTURE

Architects are meant to be drawers of dreams, but alas, there are those who ended up creating veritable eyesores. From their design studios emerged structures that have gone down as inspirations to revolting architecture. Their mused monstrosities caused protests from residents, spurred resentment from visitors and elicited relenting calls to knock them down. Ultimately, these dehumanized buildings without any semblance of aesthetic pretensions became examples of how never to do it. Of course, the criteria of what is structurally appealing might differ, but ugly buildings boast designs that seem to have been arbitrary creationsand for the sake of it. The worlds ugliest are cemented with several bricks in common: they swallowed obscene budgets while attempting to create futuristic styles only to bestow the world with regrettable architecture. Welcome to the real howlers; the type that takes the concrete biscuit for being creations for any ones viewing displeasure. One such is Paul Allens Experience Music Project [EMP] building in Seattle USA, Allen, the cofounder bachelor of Microsoft Corporation, forked out $100 million for this museum of rock music, the effort of architect Frank Gehry. But, according to www.forbes.com in consultation with leading architects and design experts, this is the ugliest of all buildings. From a distance, notes Forbes, the EMP looks like an overgrown titanium blemish on the landscape, even though Gehrys intention was to create a building that represented the energy and fluidity in music that celebrates the creativity and innovation of American popular music and culture. In the end, Gehry ended up with a 140,000 square-feet building in glimmering purple, powder blue, aluminium, steel and smashed guitars resembling a scene from an open-heart surgery. But, without a family at 57, Allen can afford to chip part of his $13.5 billion fortune, according to Forbes, on projects such as the EMP. However, if good architecture is like a piece of beautifully composed music crystallised in space, then Gehrys Experience Music Project, which opened in 2000, was a solid failure as they come. The Two Columbus Circle is another ugly feature of New York. It seems to disobey the unwritten rule that a building should appear like a flowering of geometry. The Two Columbus Circle was built as a gallery to house the art collection of Huntington Hartford II, heir to the A&P American supermarket fortune. Hartford, who died at 97 in 2008, squandered $90 million on the Lollipop building. Few buildings in New York history have been greeted with a higher decibel of jeers than this white trapezoidal elephant of marble clad Venetian motifs and a curved facade that made it resemble a large windowless box with a vaguely Moorish air.

Wonders of the world

The Barbican Centre, London, was described by Queen Elizabeth II as one of the wonders of the world when it opened in 1982. Simplicity is said to the ultimate sophistication, but the sprawling arts and conference complex has a labyrinth of tunnels that make it hard to navigate. Visitors have to follow the yellow line not to get lost in the dreary and unimaginative centre that has been [in]famous for the quality of its ugliness outside as it is for the quality of performances and exhibitions inside it. The Barbican Centre houses one concert hall, two theatres, three cinemas, two art galleries, one conservancy, one public library, conference suites, two exhibition halls and numerous private function rooms, and is the largest multi-arts and conference venue in Europe. But it was voted Englands ugliest building in a 2003 BBC poll and remains an awkward mishmash of architecture which the Sunday Telegraph once called a stern place of massive pillars, rough-tooled concrete arches and counter arches. Buildings and monuments can define a placeNairobi and the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, the effort of Norwegian architect Karl Henrik Nostririk; New York and the Tower of Liberty; Paris and the Eiffel Tower; Sydney and the Sydney Opera Housebut a negative perception if a building resembles a torture chamber instead of a haven for shopaholics. Like the Bull Ring Shopping Centre in Birmingham City, which was voted as Englands ugliest building in another BBC poll in 2008. Although the Bull Ring was designed to keep people circulating and thus spending within the centre and not exploring outside, the Birmingham City Council thought it wise to redesign this simulacrum of glitzy facades concealing a nether world of non-architecture and desolate back-lots. After all, the materials of city planning are sky, space, trees, steel and cement...in that order. Another building that takes the Golden Cement for ugliness is the Portland Building in downtown Portland, Oregon. The imposing 15-storey edifice is an offensive medley of columns, ineffectual decorative elements comprising gloomy colour schemes and small prison-like windows if tacky blue glass. Inside one of the most despised building in the US is dark and claustrophobic, and its all gaudy imagery with no tie to the location. The trendsetter of post-modernism style in the 80s was designed by Michael Graves, also the architect of the Denver Public Library. Graves completed the 540,000 square-foot facility in 1995 and piped that his creation would be one of his finest. Lovely inside, architects have, however, termed its exterior as unnecessarily flamboyant for the $91 million spent on it.

Largest public library

But thats small figure compared to the $144 million poured to build the Chicago Public Library, dubbed as the worlds largest public library when it opened in 1991. But the collision of

Neoclassical approach with glass, steel, red brick, granite, aluminium and a bad sense of scale led the Chicago Tribune to describe Thomas Beebys design as a heavy, lacklustre statement. Architecture is a continuing dialogue between generations which creates an environment across time. And one learns that in the architecture class. But the Yale School of Art and Architecture building looks like a salt shaker covered in pale soot for its oppressive monumentality of its concrete columns.

Affect happiness
In his book, The Architecture of Happiness, Scottish-born British author Alain de Botton contends that there is a block and mortar between the way we think, the structure of buildingsbe they architectural cuties or calamitiesand how they affect our happiness. Beauty, he told CNN, has a huge role to play in altering our mood. When we call a chair or a house beautiful, really what were saying is that we like the way of life its suggesting to us. It has an attitude were attracted to: if it was magically turned into a person, wed like who it was. He added: ...its effectiveness could be compared to the weather: a fine day can substantially change our state of mind and people may be willing to make great sacrifices to be near a sunny climate. In his book, Botton suggested that buildings speak of democracy, aristocracy, openness, arrogance, welcome or threat; a sympathy for the future or a hankering for the past. And there are thousands of ugly buildings which could possibly force a negative, saddening or even potential anger upon us. Botton, like Forbes, singles out Paul Allens Experience Music Project building and Londons Millennium Dome, as examples of sights that could destroy ones day.