Home Architecture Talk

Why are most modern buildings such ugly disgusting blights on Britain's urban landscape?

Anything built in the 60's, 70's, 80's are ugly and the majority since then have been ugly too there are a few nice modern buildings but it's like 1%... Compare to Victorian, Edwardian, Georgian, Tudor, Renaissance, Norman, buildings and it's like WTF? Has architecture went mad? Even Art Deco in the early 20th century was nice but then after that it was just madness, all the other styles mingle beautifully from Norman to Art Deco and then comes the 1960's and it's like :/ WTF?

Public Comments

1. it has.. style changed and I think some of them are decent but there are so many that are horrible. style really peoples opinions change on what is good or not.
2. I'm with on this 100%
3. Because your taste isn't architecture, but nostalgia. You like old buildings. This is coupled with the fact that a lot of ugly buildings get torn down every year. If something isn't beautiful or extremely ugly it doesn't get saved. Personally I find Victorian and Edwardian architecture to be even uglier than the Mcmansion of today. I hate that machine detail masquerading as hand work. At least the Mcmansion is honestly ugly, unlike the faux tudors and victorians you see.
4. I agree with you 100%... modern buildings have ruined Princess Street in Edinburgh, completely ruined it, they look disgusting and don't match the other buildings at all. Smells like New Screen Names sounds like one of those guys who hates the past, those are the types of guys who ran Britain after the war, hence the disgusting cities we have now... destroyed all the beautiful hand crafted Victorian civic buildings and replaced them with shopping centres and car parks. EDIT: Edinburgh is fine apart from Princess Street, the Old Town is very nice and the New Town is nice apart from Princess Street, good pictures of the street and you will see... but Edinburgh is still nice so still come :P
5. There were a lot of concrete monstrosoties put up in the 50's and 60's in particular, largely because they were cheap and we were still poor after World War 2. Thankfully these are gradually being torn down and replaced bit by bit, or at least they are where I live. Most modern buildings now are the vanity projects of architechts. They don't want their buildings to fit in, they want them to stand out so we get big glass and steel buildings which don't fit in at all but hey if the architecht wins some whack award at a self congratulating architechts convention then all is rosy for them. Not for us who have to see them every day though. There's still quite a few nice buildings going up where I live in Bath though, might have something to do with strict planning guidelines for a world heritage city. EDIT: Although judging by Dude's answer it seems like being a world heritage city doesn't actually mean that much if what you say about Edinburgh is true... must remember to visit Edinburgh sometime.
6. With hindsight, we would have been better off rebuilding London the way Poland rebuilt Warsaw... ie by the book (a few Soviet-style monstrosities notwithstanding). I have to disagree with you about Victorian architecture though. Particularly steel mills and other industrial buildings which have aged horribly in my opinion. Also the way tthe would alter medieval and early modern buildings to suit their tastes. The Victorians were vandals.
7. The Jobcentre buildings are the worst. The buildings emulate their evil socialist agenda. Sneering down their noses at fellow countrymen. The other nasty building is the bank of england. A nasty rip off of the panthenon, where the Rothschild owners see themselves as false gods enslaving the people of england through debt ridden paper money. The other atrocity is the bank of Rothschild. These 3 examples and their occupants would be best removed from this country and freedom handed back to we the majority.
8. I agree to an extent. For example round here they created a highrise created of well, I don't know. It just looks like a big building of orange rust.
9. cost.everything now is cheap and inferior.
10. Even worse, some of these horrific building are now being given protected/listed building status, so we can't even have them pulled down and replaced with something nice! They didn't look good in the 80s, and they look even worse now. Why some of these buildings were ever allowed in the first place is beyond me. I suppose they were a cheap and easy way of housing people, especially in the 50s/60s, but still. What's wrong with a nice brick building (obviously not for tower blocks and the like, but normal buildings), rather than a concrete monstrosity?