A lot of good stuff came out of the 1960s: Paul Newman, smiley face t-shirts and Tang, to name a few. But while the aforementioned have all aged with style and grace, there’s one product of the ’60s that’s left a stain in cities everywhere: big, fat, ugly brown buildings.
The baddest one of them all is the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in downtown D.C. — and it’s so atrocious it recently made the list of the world’s ugliest buildings tourists visit by the travel website Trippy.com’s travelers and staff.
The unfortunate result of the briefly popular ‘brutalist architecture’ period of the ’60s and ’70s, the FBI building is a model of unfriendliness with concrete textures and darkened windows. Yes, we know there are national security issues here, but a coat of paint wouldn’t kill it, would it? We imagine if the building had a doormat, it would say ‘Go Away.’
Other eyesores to make Tippy’s list include the Sharpe Center for Design at the Ontario College of Art & Design and the Elephant Tower in Bangkok.
