Regrettable Architecture

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About Regrettable Architecture

Architecture that goes beyond the aesthetic qualities of ugliness. To be regrettable, it must have a certain air of depression and despair to it. Architecture to unite our feelings about our own capacity to fail.

I am not interested in simply ugly architecture, like the many examples of nasty PoMo garbage that dot the landscape of affluent middle-class towns. I want council planning disasters, compromise situations of the worst sort, socialist nightmares, barely functioning hospitals.

The most successfully regrettable building is one that is hideous but is fully functional and indeed essential to the neighborhood or city. In effect, a building that cannot be easily disposed of.
The prime candidates are usually things like decrepit modernist city halls.

This is a kind of emotion that can only be expressed through failure. This is a very human quality and is perhaps not such a bad thing.

I am interested in the projects of Modernism and their subsequent failures, but even more interested in the failure of urban gentrification. Every big capital in North America features at least one neighborhood in its downtown like this. I want to see your examples!

Geotags greatly appreciated.