World’s Top Ten Ugly Houses
We spend an inordinate amount of time pouring over images of beautiful homes. We thought we'd do something different and bring you 10 of the ugliest houses we've ever seen and, I’m glad to say, not one of them is anywhere near our patches in East and South East London.
We spend an inordinate amount of time pouring over images of beautiful homes. We thought we'd do something different and bring you 10 of the ugliest houses we've ever seen and, I’m glad to say, not one of them is anywhere near our patches in East and South East London.
1: This little, ahem, gem, is part of a group of buildings known as Sanzhi UFO Houses in in New Taipei, Taiwan. They were said to be cursed as a result of being built on top of an ancient burial ground. Never completed, they were demolished in 2010.
2: Sometimes, all you need to make a house ugly is some paint. This pink beauty is known as the Emoji House. It's in a prime spot in Manhattan Beach, California and recently went on the market for a whopping $1.749 million. If it makes you feel as queasy as it makes me, you could always change the colour scheme, but it might be a few years before you could get the image of the old version out of your head.
3: Not sure where this next little stunner came from, but the paint job is so awful we thought it just had to be included on the list.
4: This desres is the perfect example of how we have taken the idea the 'car is king' about as far as it can go. I do sincerely hope the owners' vehicle is worth it as you would have to pay me to live in the flat above. Mind you, at least rolling out of bed on a Monday morning would be considerably easier than it is at my place.
5: As a journalist, I am not often lost for words, but all I can say about this place is - yeuch. I've always had a dislike of things like stone cladding - this takes it into a whole new stratosphere. It's not even as if it looks like a naturally occurring pile of wood, which would at least have made a weird kind of sense. No, someone has gone to a lot of trouble arranging all the timber on the same jaunty angle. I say it again - yeuch.
6: With this house, I can't help wondering, did someone actually design it? If so, they really should be asking themselves whether they've chosen the right career. Whoever lives there is proud of their house, though. Take a look at how neatly they've trimmed the hedge. And there are flowers on the corner pillar too!
7: This is actually a hotel - Hotel Spirit, Bratislava - but it's so unusual we had to add it to include it. It looks like a pile of brightly coloured rubbish and is so ugly it's actually rather cool. The rooms are equally mad. You can stay there from just 39 Euros a night - http://hotel-galeria.bratislavacheaphotel.com
8: This house, on the other hand, is definitely not cool. Located somewhere in Belgium (you don't want to know where), it has to be the most depressing pad I've ever seen. Not sure who the neighbours are. Could be the Belgian equivalent of Homebase, or maybe just a big shed. Be interesting to find which of the buildings came first!
9: Staying with Belgium - this house looks like it was designed for a hobbit who'd taken too much acid. Just looking at it makes you feel woozy. I can't imagine how bad it would make you feel if you had a hangover. And those brightly coloured shutters? Oh dear.
10: And finally, what do you do with any unwanted houses? You take them down to the local refuse tip, of course. Oops, silly me, this is actually a block of flats in Amsterdam.
Well that's quite enough of that. I think I'll go and stick my head into a copy of Architect's Journal for a while. Hopefully it will make me feel better.
If, like me, when buying or renting somewhere you want somewhere altogether more desirable, Oliver Jaques can help find a new home in all these areas:
Brockley SE4
Canada Water SE16
Canary Wharf E14
Deptford SE8
Greenwich SE10
Lewisham SE13
New Cross SE14
Rotherhithe SE16
St Johns SE8
Stratford E15
Surrey Quays SE16
Telegraph Hill SE14
Victoria Park E9
Wapping E1
Many thanks, by the way to the brilliant Belgian site Ugly Belgian Homes - www.instagram.com/uglybelgianhouses