Ugly to the Bone

Someone once said that beauty is skin-deep but ugly goes all the way to the bone.

While I didn't say it explicitly, I hope I certainly implied (or should that be inferred? no, I think "implied" is correct)...I hope I implied that the Louisville 61-story building ensemble designed by the Rem Koolhaas firm was freakin' ugly. Or as Dena in comments said using shorthand, "God, that's fugly." You did understand that was my intent, too, right? I just couldn't find the words that came so easily to Dena.

Now to the meat of the matter: What makes something ugly? Or even worse -- fugly?

One architecture professor of mine from 20 years back said -- and I'm sure he was plagiarizing someone else as architects have no original ideas of their own -- that ugly is just shorthand for "unfamiliar". The best example of this principle in action, he said, was demonstrated by the reception to the design for Paris's Eiffel Tower.

Immediately upon publically announcing the design for the Eiffel Tower, it was widely and snidely panned by artists, architects, and their belovedly crotchety critics. It was considered ugly, crude, and clumsily proportioned -- everything Parisians despise and live to condescend to.

Despite the horrible reception, the Tower was completed in March 1889 for the "Universal Exposition" to celebrate France's 100th Anniversary of the French revolution. Designed and built by Gustave Eiffel, the only reason it was tolerated by the public during planning was because the Exposition Committee promised that it would be torn down immediately following the Exposition's conclusion. Instead, by the completion of construction, the criticism had burnt itself out as the grace and beauty of the Gothically-inspired and groundbreaking system of "Expression of Structure" became obvious for all to see. And yes, nearly all did see it as over two million visitors visited the Eiffel Tower in 1889. An immediate success, the Eiffel Tower survived the wrecking ball and went on to become the architectural centerpiece for the World's Fair of 1900 (pictured above).

The point was -- as the architecture prof said, gently returning to his thesis -- that the Eiffel Tower was initially considered to be ugly because it was such an unfamiliar design in an unfamiliar aesthetic style and form of expression.

Ugly's just another word for nothing left to compare to. Or something like that.

And then about a decade ago, my wife's parents gave me a book for my birthday that had as its central thesis the scientific and objective assertion that beauty was based on a classic Greek-inspired biological proportioning system that can be perceived subconsciously by the mind's eye: You may have heard of the Fibonacci series and the Golden Section? Click on the link to figure out what the heck I'm talking about. Or don't. In the meantime, I need to find that book and re-read it.

So the bloggy question is: Is ugly, as the French demonstrated, a subjective matter of unfamiliarity determined individually by unsophisticated hicks like us who clearly don't know any better? Or is it a matter of the science of good and bad proportions, much the way a human face that is subtly (or grossly) asymmetrical is said by edumacated types to be considered ugly by objective though not yet fully understood standards?

And so we return full-circle to My Original Question: Is the new Louisville building as butt-ugly as I think it is, or is it as butt-ugly as it truly is, regardless of my personal opinion? Once we answer this, we'll be able to take on the "tree falls in the forest, but does it make a sound?" puzzle. Stay tuned.

P.S. Happy birthday dear Alex and Old Man!