You’d often see countries and regions boasting about their beauty and nature. Thousands and millions of lists and pretty posts about how they have the most beautiful forests, most beautiful beaches, most technologically advanced buildings and whatnot.
Seldom you’d see places try to list out some of their ugliest things since those are usually things to be hidden not shown around. Well, China as usual is going in a different direction with their ‘ugliest building competition’.
This is actually not a new thing since a Chinese architecture website has been running this competition for almost 11 years now where it asks people to vote on how ugly is a building from amongst several nominees. This time around 87 new designs have been added to the running including a violin-shaped church, ‘upside-down house’ and an Inner Mongolia hotel.
China’s Ugliest Building Competition?
The competition has been organised by the Chinese architecture website Archcy.com called the ‘Ugliest Building Survey’ and is in its 12th edition now.
Apparently, this is also in line with the Xi Jinping government’s directive to stop the creation of structures that are “oversized, xenocentric, weird”. Some of the buildings listed in it are skyscrapers, hotels, museums and more with “unusual shapes” and “tactless ornamentation”.
According to reports more than 30,000 votes have already come in for the various buildings nominated and currently, the top content for the title is the “five-arched gate at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou” which is followed by the glass bridge in Sichuan province.
The votings for this survey will last until December, once that is done a panel of architects, critics and academics will go over the results and give the final evaluation.
Based on nine factors like if the building is considered “inharmonious” with its surroundings, its design is thought to have been “plagiarised”, weird or vulgar design, unreasonable function, blindly worshipping foreign and antique and more the final top ten from the survey will be revealed to the public. The public voting is said to count for around 40% of the final result.
Here are some of the nominees for the tag of the ugliest building in China from among over 90 selections.
South Gate of Zijingang Campus, Zhejiang University
This gate which is the main entrance to the Zijingang Campus of Zhejiang University has really not impressed people since it ranks 1st right now with over 9,000 votes.
Glass Bridge Tower of Jiuhuangshan Mountain in Mianyang, Sichuan
This glass bridge has gotten over 3800 votes and ranks 2nd among the nominees. Apparently, it was voted since a lot of people think it is very scary to walk on.
Violin Church, Yanbu, Foshan, Guangdong
This strange violin-shaped church ranks 3rd among the nominees with around 1955 votes.
Xi’an International Children’s Art Museum, Shaanxi
It has around 1764 votes and ranks 4th.
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Inner Mongolia Manzhouli Matryoshka Hotel
It has gotten 1762 votes so far and ranks 5th.
Shanghai Jiading Design Industry 4.0 Demonstration Base
Considered to be too gray and giving a prison-like feel, it is right now at the 6th place with 1478 votes.
The G60 Science and Technology Cloud Gallery
The Xiangyang Science and Technology Museum
The Tianzi Hotel
Shanxi Taiyuan Museum
Although the inspiration for the structure was the Chinese red lanterns, however, they are more famously known as the noodle bowl buildings. They have around 978 votes and rank 10th.
Let us know in the comments below which of them you found the most bizarre and are there any that have not been noticed yet.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: The Indian Express, CNN, The Guardian
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This post is tagged under: China ugliest building, China ugliest building contest, ugly buildings, china weird architecture, weird architecture, unsightly architecture, China top 10 ugliest buildings, Tianzi Hotel
