Anonymous wrote:So what is it about libraries? I haven't read every post but right off the bat it seems like a lot of these ugly buildings are libraries.

Sun is bad for books, so libraries tend not to have much glass.

- signed, I survived working at CRS in the Library of Congress’ Madison Building

Anonymous wrote:The library at UMass Amherst is pretty rough on the eyes given the surrounding beauty of the Berkshires. It had such potential.

https://www.library.umass.edu/about-the-libraries/visiting/

That, and it wasn’t designed to take the weight of lots of books, so it’s partly empty.

Someone pointed out the UofC library, but I think the winner is Pick Hall.

Anonymous wrote:https://media.architecturaldigest.com/photos/59ba9b1ee15bac42ea9a932e/master/w_1600,c_limit/John%2520and%2520Frances%2520Angelos%2520Law%2520Center%2520via%2520Flickr%2520Roland%2520Krebs.jpg

John and Frances Angelos Law Center, University of Baltimore School of Law

chaos, it hurt my eyes

On every liberal arts campus we've visited, ugliest is always the Sci-Li!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, Brutalism ruins everything. I can't believe anyone ever thought it was a good idea.

I quite like the idea in theory and in the arts. It’s interesting.

But with buildings, people need pretty, because life is hard and draining and we don’t want to consider the implications of a stripped-down philosophy when we are walking from point a to point b. It’s a shame that people lost sight is that in pursuit of the artistic. These buildings are just awful.

Well said. This is why I actually quite like the Hirschhorn (where the artistic philosophy is the point and the whole goal of the building is to expose people to modern art and architecture) but hate most brutalist architecture. It is not a style that is conducive to people living and working, and thus has no place in college dorms or libraries, or government office buildings. And yet, this is where it has most commonly been deployed!

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, Brutalism ruins everything. I can't believe anyone ever thought it was a good idea.

I quite like the idea in theory and in the arts. It’s interesting.

But with buildings, people need pretty, because life is hard and draining and we don’t want to consider the implications of a stripped-down philosophy when we are walking from point a to point b. It’s a shame that people lost sight is that in pursuit of the artistic. These buildings are just awful.

The UC Davis Humanities complex, known locally as the Death Star. In addition to looking like a prison (complete with grated walkways four stories up) it's impossible to navigate. Supposedly this was intentional, to force human interaction among lost people trying to reach a destination.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/askpang/489394900/in/photostream

Anonymous wrote:The engineering center at CU Boulder

I agree it's not beautiful (especially on a campus pretty well known for being very attractive and having a very consistent architectural style) but I don't think it's as bad as some of the other examples. At least they tried to marry the roof lines to the mountain view, and those brick facades and tile roofs do tie it to the rest of campus, but overall I agree it was a failed effort to modernize the Italianate architecture on the rest of the campus.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Nope, that one’s a classic.

Signed, Native Arlingtonian

That ugly blue gives me the shakes. My mom used to work at state psychiatric hospitals, and that blue was everywhere.

Ugh, Brutalism ruins everything. I can't believe anyone ever thought it was a good idea.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bryn Mawr’s Erdman. The only thing uglier and more depressing than the outside…


…is the inside:

+1

This looks like something my kid built on Minecraft.

Hahaha omg yes and it even has the red couches!! It's so true!

Brandeis. Wow. Bad architecture.

I can see if a college is financially challenged, but there's something deeply sad when a rich colleges pollutes their campus with a monstrosity.

UChicago's gorgeous neo-gothic campus...



Yet this huge hideous soul-sucking brutalist eyesore is their main library. And it looks 100x worse and more depressing in person.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The main library at UC San Diego.

Let's try again.

I like this one too! Would want to explore inside.

The UCSD Library is the opposite of ugly. The inside is no great shakes, though, but (at least when I went there in the '80's) there were desks set up all around next to the windows and it was my favorite place to study.