What is the ugliest building you’ve seen at a college/university?

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.

Ironically, the ugliest building at UC Berkeley is the architecture building.

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.

Oh, wow, that Berkeley building is fugly. What were they thinking?

The pictures I saw of Drexel orange didn’t look that bad online but they’re probably more oppressive in person.

Uris Hall at Cornell. Awful inside and out but I got a great education ; )

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.

Erdman Hall at Bryn Mawr Is supposed to be a modern take on a Scottish castle. Bleak and ugly inside and out.

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.

The school of communications at BU.

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

https://badgerherald.com/banter/2015/12/05/debunking-the-bunker-is-the-humanities-building-riot-proof/

The Humanities Building at Wisconsin. All kinds of rumors about it. It was built upside down. The architect killed himself. It is riot proof.

It is a huge eyesore on a beautiful campus.

The DAAP building at the University of Cincinnati. I’m sure it’s cool and all, but it is an eyesore to me.

https://jmileswolf.photoshelter.com/image/I00000oYFOf5Ti5k

Gee, I’m getting a feeling a lot of you don’t like Brutalist architecture…

I always though Taylor Dorm at Lehigh was unattractive. Kinda creepy looking when it’s foggy or rainy outside.

norris hall at grinnell… what happened? lmao

University of North Texas concert hall looks like an armadillo on the outside. Very ugly. But oh the inside is fabulous!

These are the three buildings where I spent the most time in college:

William James Hall at Harvard:

https://www.emporis.com/buildings/130381/william-james-hall-cambridge-ma-usa

Leverett Towers (but oh, was I happy living inside!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverett_House#/media/File:Leverett_House.JPG

And @ciervo, I lived in Erdman Hall for two years! It was great having a single, but what an isolating, anti-human building.

Another vote for the Humanities Building at UW-Madison.