Travel + Leisure recently unveiled what they consider to be The World’s Ugliest Buildings, including the Ryugyong Hotel, Pyongyang, and Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral. My response: those two are prom queens compared to some of the architectural monstrosities I’ve had the misfortune to lay eyes on.

Come on, people – don’t be shy. I know there are buildings uglier than even this eye-watering lot.

I’m sure all you fine readers out there have also witnessed your share of brick and mortar horrors, so let’s put our fiendish intellects together to come up with the definitive list of horrendous constructions. I’m talking eyesores to give you cataracts.

I’ll kick things off with a few proposals of my own:

1)   The Hilton, Springfield Illinois

This thing looks like an obelisk left behind by an alien race hell-bent on making people ill through the power of bad architecture. H.P. Lovecraft liked to use the word “non-Euclidean” to describe such unearthly monoliths. I don’t know what that means but I think it somehow fits the bill here.

2)   Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa

Take one big box. Put a smaller one on top. Congratulations, you’ve just designed a rough scale model of the Ottawa city library and archives. Paint on some windows to amuse yourself and then do the decent thing: a scale demolition.

3)   City Hall, London

Somehow this monstrosity reminds me of W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

It’s a beast all right, and it’s definitely slouching towards something, you have to admit.

Come on, people – don’t be shy. I know there are buildings uglier than even this eye-watering lot. I want to see architectural dogs only a short-sighted architect with a bad case of the shakes could come up with!