The ugliest buildings in Bern
February 18, 2013, 9 Comments
Ugly Bern
Bern is beautiful but not all of its buildings are. Many are splendid, some are disasters. In among the gems are some really hideous examples of architectural failure, partly from the Swiss love of concrete and partly from the taste by-pass that happened between 1950 and 1990. Bern has some wonderful buildings, as this post shows, but sadly the town planners sometimes approve so true horrors. It’s quite a shock still for me sometimes to be walking down a normal street lined with 19th century villas or 1930s blocks of flats, only to find a monstrous block of concrete dumped in the middle of it all. Completely out of place and out of keeping with the other buildings. Such a shame.
The old town is protected from such calamities by being protected by Unesco Heritage status so luckily there are almost no examples of past mistakes. But walk a few streets away from the historic centre and you’ll easily spot an eyesore or two, ones that are bad enough to bring tears to your eyes. At least it proves that Switzerland isn’t always picture-postcard pretty.
Here are my candidates for the title of Ugliest Building in Bern, in no particular order and no particular part of town. A hotel, an embassy, a church, an office block and various flats. Which gets your vote as Bern’s worst building – the title picture or one of the ones below?
Ugly Bern #1
Ugly Bern #2
Ugly Bern #3
Ugly Bern #4
Ugly Bern #5
Ugly Bern #6
For more on the city, see Ten essential facts about Bern, from why the street signs are different colours to The Miracle of Bern.
Follow on Facebook
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe by RSS
Contact me directly
Global Solutions Inc.
9 Comments on "The ugliest buildings in Bern"
Ugly Bern #1 gets my vote. I have never found anything to recommend expanses of long vertical concrete slabs like those on the upper levels of the building. Just ugly.
I remember walking the streets of Bern with you when you kept pointing out ugly buildings… I’m very happy to see you have narrowed down the list to “only” six buildings! Having said this, the last one on the list is my favorite…
Ugly Bern #2, made worse by the addition of graffiti. After growing up in Geneva, I was saddened to return to Switzerland in recent years to see graffiti everywhere. Assaulted were my memories of the sparkling-clean country I remembered. And these grey, brutalist apartment buildings are deplorable!
I agree about the graffiti – and wrote about it in this post: http://www.dicconbewes.com.php56-22.dfw3-1.websitetestlink.com/2011/09/08/graffiti-the-swiss-disease/
You may think a lot of that is ugly… But I guess ugly is a matter of perspective because what I would call ugly is full of graffiti, in disrepair because people don’t care or people don’t have the money to rebuild, and disgusting because people have chosen to dump garbage all around. Although these buildings might not be beautiful, I still don’t think they are as bad as what things really could look like. I guess it’s all a matter or perspective.
I think #3 is the ugliest of your examples. It’s also in rather prominent location not far from the (also ugly) railway station, a building I see most of the times when I visit Bern, and I’m never happy to see it… I don’t deplore modern concrete-and-glass architecture as such and wouldn’t consider #1 or #5 as particularly ugly (#1 has even a touch of originality, I’d say, and #5 is just bland…), but to me, #3 has always seemed to be particularly convoluted and shabby. #2 is very ugly, too, of course.
I miss the locations. #4 looks like a brutal new block in an old town street. # 2 and # 6 are ugly, butare maybe bearable in their environment.
Vote #3 too. Why are the cities made so ugly especially at locations where you cann’t oversee it? There is nothing possible to make it a bit better, like the last building. However, only one family had a try to make it better.
I’ll vote for # 2 because of the graffiti and the casual way of the whited out graffiti that preceeded it.
it’s bizarre and surely must come as quite a shock to a 1st time traveller, I’ve been several times and it still shocks me why did the swiss do this ? it seems so out of character . do they have a secret admiration for soviet planed cities ? though to be fair at least they have respect for their heritage “heritage listed” means next to nothing here in Australia ,