Melbourne’s architectural icon has ranked as one of the world’s 10 ugliest buildings, in a member survey compiled by VirtualTourist.com.
Federation Square has been labelled “frenzied”, “over complicated” and “chaotic” in the 2nd Annual List of The World's Ugliest Buildings, beating off stiff competition from Prague’s Zizkov TV Tower and Centre Pompidou in Paris to come in at fifth place.
Despite winning awards from the Australian Institute of Architects, the Property Council of Australia and the Urban Land Institute, as well as a clutch of tourism awards, the square has failed to curry favour with VirtualTourist.com readers.
“Billed as “Melbourne’s Meeting Place,” we’re guessing that this is where city residents meet…to go somewhere else. Frenzied and overly complicated, the chaotic feel of the complex is made worse by a web of unsightly wires from which overhead lights dangle,” the website gripes.
Topping the hideous list is the Morris A. Mechanic Theater in Baltimore, Maryland, a “grim, impersonal façade” on which the curtain should have been drawn long ago.
While Wellington’s Parliament Building, known as The Beehive, was described as “a slide projector that fell on a wedding cake that fell on a waterwheel”.
