Ugly

It’s not a useful word, ugly. The word is unattractive enough, an odd collection of letters that manage to be both awkward and diminutive. But there is a certain pleasure to saying it, too— ugly. The pleasure is in the word itself, it’s the selfish enjoyment of judgment and it’s in the sneer that is an almost essential part of contorting our mouths around its letters. We may love beautiful things, but we like even better to call something ugly— the louder the better.

Left behind however in all of this shouting is the thing being described. As forceful as it is, ugly is empty. It’s power is self-contained. It describes nothing. To call something ugly depends upon a listener to understand. It requires an unspoken agreement about what makes something ugly. Or else it requires follow-up. Ugly either depends on nodded assent or else starts an argument. It ends the conversation or else it is just its beginning.

When applied to architecture, ugly assumes and too often gets that consensus— “Concrete is ugly!” For some buildings, like Boston’s City Hall, little more than that is expected to be said. That simple and absolutely empty statement, once voiced, is immediately tied to ideas about the failures of modern architecture, the imposition of monumental public buildings on traditionally-scaled cities, and the reactions to industrialized materials and construction practices. Ugly, here, has got cultural back-up. It’s got subtext, yes, but the assumptions are too heavy for those four letters. It makes me want more words.

Build me a city, but make sure it’s not ugly.

With such consensus, where does this ugliness, then, come from? Is it a perversion to design ugly buildings or to enjoy them? Or is consensus an illusion and ugliness just descriptive of our own need to divide the things we like from those we don’t?

Cold. Hard. Unlike ugly, these words don’t presuppose judgement. They describe. And yet, if the topic is modern architecture. If the topic is concrete, they are said with similar inflection. Ugly. Cold. Hard. To be continued.