Ten of the World’s Ugliest Buildings

开篇：润墨网以专业的文秘视角，为您筛选了一篇Ten of the World’s Ugliest Buildings范文，如需获取更多写作素材，在线客服老师一对一协助。欢迎您的阅读与分享！

全球十大最丑建筑

近日，美国CNN评出“全球十大最丑建筑”，榜单一出外界一片哗然，支持与反对声此起彼伏。而由知名华人建筑师李祖原设计、位于中国沈阳的方圆大厦也不幸入围。那就让我们一起来看看这份名单上的建筑吧。

Ugliness, like beauty, is in the eye of everyone, and that is something we have taken into account in our list of some of the planet’s most controversial architectural creations. Recently, CNN has listed ten ungliest buildings in the world. Although it’s not so official, but it has some representativeness.

1. Ryugyong Hotel, Pyongyang, North Korea

Located in Pyongyang, the capital of DPRK, Ryugyong Hotel is 330 meters high. Its construction began in 1987. However, the project was put off in 1992 due to financial problems and restarted in 2008. It is expected to be completed in 2013.

2. Atlantis Hotel, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

The hotel opened with great fanfare and eye-wateringly wasteful expense at the end of 2008. The hotel boasts some quality restaurants and an admittedly great water park.

The display that launched the hotel used 100,000 fireworks. The anount is around seven times more than that at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

3. Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest, Romania

The building has over 1,100 rooms, is 12 stories tall and has several underground levels. Impressive undoubtedly, it’s just a shame that much of Bucharest’s historic center including 30,000 residences and 28 churches had to make way for the project.

4. Zizkov Television Tower, Prague, Czech Republic

The trouble with this 216-meter towers is that they tend to be noticed. You would be forgiven then for wondering why the architect tasked with designing a giant transmitter tower in one of Europe’s most picturesque cities, but didn’t come up with something better than this replica of a space-shuttle launch.

5. Experience Music Project, Seattle, United States

The architect supposedly used the anarchy of “smashed-up Fender Stratocaster guitars” into his design. The fact is that the building costs astronomical fee, but only resulted in something more akin to Technicolor open heart surgery. The project founder Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen may not want to see this result.

Jimi Hendrix, a prominent Seattleite, inspired the museum’s name and design. A voracious consumer of LSD, the guitarist might have appreciated Gehry’s design more than its modern audience.

6. Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Hanoi, Vietnam

The structure itself is apparently meant to attract Vietnamese traditions including a communal house and a lotus flower. But people wonder how the two can be combined in one building.

7. Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool, England

Far from the images of heavenly rest, the church is more like to a giant concrete tent. So its local nickname “Paddy’s Wigwam”（Paddy is pejorative for Catholics of Irish descent）.

The Cathedral project was ill-starred from the off. Designs by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Adrian Gilbert Scott were rejected for being, in the case of the former, too expensive, and in the case of the latter, not good enough. The task eventually fell to Sir Frederick Gibberd and it is his finished product that stands to this day.

The cathedral authority sued Gibberd for ￡1.3million when the aluminum roof started to leak and defects were noted in the mosaic tiles. Strangely they seem to have been happy enough with the building’s actual design.

8. The Portland Building, Portland, United States

It is an accepted fact that the 1980s was the decade where taste went mad and decided to start donning pattern sweaters and shoulder pads. However, that still doesn’t explain why judges went with Michael Graves’ design for a new civic building in the US state of Oregon.

9. The Fang Yuan Building, Shenyang, China

Like most of the buildings on our list, this effort is distinctive but not distinguished. Architect CY Lee―who did a much better job with his Taipei 101 skyscraper over in Taiwan―wanted to fuse cultures by merging an old Chinese coin, complete with square cut-out, with a contemporary modern office block.

10. Petrobras Headquarters, Rio De Janiero, Brazil

In a way you have to admire Petrobras for its audacity. After all, it is not every leading multi-national firm（the energy company is the biggest in Latin America） that chooses to house its showpiece headquarters in a building that’s as awful as this.

The building is at least in good company. Its next door neighbor is Rio De Janeiro Cathedral, an equally controversial example of concrete brutalism.

Notes：

DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea朝鲜民主主义人民共和国

be akin to 与……相似的 例如：International law treats outer space as a global common, akin to the high seas. 国际法规定，外层空间与公海类似，是全球共有的。

pejorative adj. 轻蔑的

ill-starred adj. 运气不佳的 例如：He thought he was always ill-starred. 他总觉得自己运气不佳。

from the off [俚语]从头开始 aluminum n. 铝

leak vi. 渗漏 civic building 民用住宅

distinctive adj. 有特色的 例如：Beer has a very distinctive smell. 啤酒有一股特别的味道。

distinguished adj. 著名的，卓越的 例如：She is a distinguished singer. 她是位著名的歌手。

fuse vt. 使融合 例如：He skillfully fuses these fragments into a cohesive whole. 他巧妙地把这些片断合并成连贯的整体。

contemporary adj. 当代的 audacity n. 大胆

headquarters n. 总部