|Forum|Ugly Chch buildings - Have your say

I was amazed to see that City Mall had become one of the good developments in the central city. Should you take a closer look you'd probably feel that the rubbish bins are totally impractical as they're so small and most deffinately arn't sufficent for the quantity of rubbish that goes into them on any given day, have you ever been past at perhaps 3am seeing all the rubbish piled sky high around the bins from KFC and other fast food outlets. Also I feel they should have been placed closer to the seating!

Whilst I am aware of modern design trends, all of the new furniture, planter boxes and rubbish bins are in brushed aluminium I feel that there should be more color in our central city! Its all too gray!

Even the crazy christmas decorations in the cathedral precint are now gray brushed aluminium christmas is a time for brightly colored decorations not gray to match the rest of the city. There are however some deciations in other parts of the central business district that are bright colors and these look great deffinately much more exciting than the gray/silver bows.

Countdown supermarkets are just as ugly as PaknSaves. In fact all supermarkets in Christchurch and for that matter nationwide are ugly, dull, boring boxes. For about the same money, and a bit of imagination and a lick of paint more interesting designs and appearances could have been done. ===================== lewis

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King - Your commment say more about you than those you think are prissy. The environment you live in should matter to you. If you don't care about what your eyes tell you as you walk around town I'm interested in what is important to you?

The Boat sheds is ugly along with the monstrosity on the corner of Manchester and Kilmore

Not like anything will be done about them lol

The Boat Shed needs upgrading it is old and ugly

Yeah those concrete boxes are so cheap to put up and should be kept out of the cbd, Rebel Sport is a shocker, that quirky seventies one is great. In my opinion the north west of the square is an eyesore, lets hope the vacant site can breakup those boxes and wish they had done more with the new bland hotel on Hereford St.

I think the aesthetics of a city can really define its character. Do you think somewhere like Paris would be as renowned as it is if it consisted of grey tilt slab 70's eastern European tower blocks?

Warsaw is a great example of that, prior to 1939 it was known as the Paris of the East. It still has amazing people, amazing culture, fantastic and interesting history, but a lot of drab architecture. The city was pretty much wiped out in WW2 and rebuilt by Communist Russia, with grey functional drab buildings everywhere.

Contemporary or classic, old or new it doesn't matter, as long as a building has some kind of presence and identity. To me the greatest crime is a building without personality, e.g. Pack n slave or Rebel sport for example.

I don't know how the Crowne Plaza got onto the ugly list. As far as hotels go it has to be one of the better ones around visually. Who are these so called experts making these lists?

The ugliest building for me is the old pub on the corner of Moorhouse and Madras - on the CPIT corner. Well actually it's probably just masking the ugliness of CPIT as well. I've heard it's heritage protected... who knows why because it's damn hideous!

Buildings are functional form of art, and should be more than just functional. However, beauty and appreciation of functional form are often hard to aggregate across society and communities. Local stakeholders (neighbouring residents/owners) might prefer something lesser towering and dominating, as opposed to those 'new uglys' such as C1 tower and Ferrymead apartments. Truth is, Christchurch city needs these rejuvenations and breakthrough. The best way forward for this great city, is to acknowledge the need for increase of density (hence, high rise), but to build them beautifully.

Beautifully: 1) Trengrove & Blunt-designed Apartment on 24, Oxford Terrace. 2) New IRD building on Cashel St 3) Queen Victoria apartments - under construction

Ugly: 1) all Pak&Save, Countdown, supermarkets square boxes 2) C1 tower's square plain facade

I wonder why the panels choose the 101 Victoria square apartments....that's a pretty decent building.

Build a bridge people! They are BUILDINGS. They function as BUILDINGS!Get over it!