Ugliest Building in Ultimo Competition

One of Penultimo’s quirks is our enthusiasm for ugly buildings. More specifically, Penultimo harbours a passion for the sillier sides of modernism. We get such a kick out of modernism-gone-wrong, and Ultimo abounds with examples. They’re bold, blunt, unapologetic and illogical. This affection for clunky, heavy, ungraceful hulks has led us to run The Ugliest Building in Ultimo Competition.

The current candidates range from a) just plain terrible design that does not deserve the name “architecture”; and b) iconic examples of brutalist modernism, and c) a few other steel and masonry misadventures in the 1950s and 1960s.

Here are the current candidates (more to come):

- Citigate Hotel

- TAFE Duplo Block

- The pink glory of Building U

- UTS Building 1 also pictured here

- Another Glorious TAFE Clunker

- Meriton’s Casa Mia: Putting the STUPID in stupid design

- The Aspire Hotel

- The Old Fairfax Building(may have escaped candidature for the competition, but only by a whisker) (Another shot of the Fairfax building here)

- The former Government Printing Office

- Haymarket blob: Corner of Quay and Thomas streets

- The Ultimo Community Centre: it might be a great community centre, but it commits architectural offenses of the highest order