Eddie Pensier writes:
Melbourne has a justified reputation as one of Australia’s most cosmopolitan cities. The dining, drinking, shopping, and culture scenes can hold their own among any in the world. It’s frequently rated amongst the “most livable” cities, whatever you make of such things.
However, there’s a plague on Melbourne: really, really ugly architecture. I may not be an architecture connoisseur like my fellow Uncouth bloggers, but I know hideous when it bangs me over the head and grinds my nose into the sidewalk.
Photos after the break. Neither I nor the management of Uncouth Reflections will be held liable for retinal damage inflicted by the following horrors.
Federation Square. I vomit a little every time I see this.
RMIT Storey Hall. I nicknamed this the “snot building”. It looks like Shrek sneezed on it.
Storey Hall from another angle, possibly even worse.
The Pixel Building. This particular eyesore has been rated among the world’s ugliest a few times, but you’ll be pleased to know that it’s “carbon neutral”, for all that.
Melbourne Central, the CBD’s hippest shopping centre.
The LaTrobe Institute for Molecular Science. I guess it does look sort of molecule-ish.
Victoria College of Arts Drama School.
Another RMIT excretion, Building 8. Somewhat incredibly, this houses the School of Architecture and Design.
Swanston Academic Building (RMIT again, I’m starting to pity the students)
And as a balm after all that violence, feast on the heroic beauty of the Flinders Street train station.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Wow, those are some serious disgraces. Playpen environments for adults who are still clinging to childhood, or something like that. Does anyone denounce or laugh at or push back on these new buildings?
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One of the funnier things that happens in architecture debates is the way that the establishment-chic crowd will call out in horror “Disneyland!!!” when they’re confronted by a new-traditionalist development. Yet what could be more idiotically amusement-park, Saturday-morning-kiddie-TV than their own work?
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I will give them this; at least they’re mostly more colourful than many North American architectural atrocities. But they are still mostly pretty bad…
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man if they only included some slides and a jungle gym those buildings would be perfect. lacking those their kind of anticlimactic though.
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Pingback: Melbourne Has the Ugliest Architecture in the World
Will, that is only the beginning of the series of horrors. The average is bad. The worst are awful, and the biggest offenders are the universities.
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Ah. Not surprised about the universities; in my experience, any university here in Canada that isn’t itself old enough for most of its main buildings to be fairly old, before modernist architecture, tends to have mostly fairly ugly, utilitarian buildings.
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If Sasha Castel comes across this post, I’d love to hear her discuss if Canberra is much different than Melbourne, architecturally speaking.
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Hi Will 🙂
Camberra is just this year turning 100 years old, so most of the architecture is mid-20th century grim utilitarian. There are fewer of the ghastly things that Eddie points out, but at the same time there are fewer pretty buildings like the train station. The only old buildings really remaining in Canberra are Federation-era farmhouses and shacks.
I’m out of town at the moment and on my phone so links are hard, but Google “Lanyon Homestead” for an example. I think that is one one of the oldest, if not the oldest, building in town.
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Thanks Sasha!
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