We had a brief discussion of ugly science buildings in another thread, which got me to remembering my college science building at Wellesley. We called it the human habitrail. It was painted some awful colors and it was jarringly different in style from the rest of the campus. I ran across a picture of it recently and felt a burst of fondness for the classes I had taken inside. However I still think it’s ugly. I’m still debating whether it’s the ugliest I’ve ever seen, though.
PLEASE NOTE:
Thinking a building is ugly does not mean you dislike a school or dislike the work done inside. The winner of an ugly dog contest is still loveable.
Also, just because I think something is ugly does not mean I am attacking anyone who thinks it’s beautiful. I could think a building is hideous, you could admire its clean modern sleek lines and bold colors. I could admire mellow federal style and you could say the building looks like an abandoned bank. I admit that we are both right.
That being said, please tell me about particularly hideous architectural bloopers on college campuses. They don’t have to be science buildings, though in my experience science buildings seem susceptible to regrettable architectural choices.
Drexel University has several hideous buildings. They were gifted a bunch of orange brick way back when and have a few orange brick buildings. The school paper gives out Orange Brick awards at the end of the school year for notorious acts by administration and students/student groups. They’ve tried to come up with ways to get rid of them including painstakingly painting the bricks a nice reddish on one building but I assume it cost too much so they didn’t do any other buildings.
The Stata Building at MIT. I know Frank Gehry is a famous architect and all, but that building is a joke, and the joke’s on us. Pretending to admire that trainwreck of a building has a distinct Emperor’s New Clothes aspect to it.
Well, the UnderGraduate LIbrary at Michigan is called The UGLI and was definitely one of the least attractive and most out-of-place buildings while I was there. I think it’s had a makeover since, but it’s still The UGLI.
Max P dorm at University of Chicago is jarringly, aggressively ugly - a striking contrast to the surrounding beautiful campus.
When new admits were asking existing students for recommendations on which dorm to pick, many of them were railing about how ugly Max P is. The best reply was that if you live in Max P, you don’t have to look at it.
I’ll have a lot more to say on this later, but the ugliest combination of outside and inside, especially given the school, is the Stanford real estate services building. Now it isn’t a classroom building but everyone needs to go there at some point to pick up parking permits and the like.
Berkeley does have some ugly dorm buildings. The Units all look like jail cells and Foothill looks like a run-down apartment complex. Strangely, the new Blackwell dorm looks pretty ugly so far too, they seem to have the wrong color of yellow/gold on the building.
UCSD, UCSB, and UCD could all use upgrades on many of their buildings, a lot was 50’s architecture that never got upgraded. I’ll give UCLA a pass for now since there always seems to be some construction going on. Santa Clara U was major fugly until they went on an upgrade spree starting in the 90’s. Same goes for SJSU.
Oh - I got one! George L. Mosse Humanities Building at UW Madison
Truly hideous inside and out. And when you’re in there, it’s like being in a concrete matrix. Stairs in each corner. Maybe there’s an elevator, but I never saw it. I’m pretty sure I did 30 flights of stairs when we were visiting the school of music there. Restrooms? Overrated! Mercifully, a new music building is under construction
