The World's Best Buildings

Earlier this month, Travel + Leisure (T+L) released what they consider to be the 15 "Ugliest Buildings in the World." Today, we would like to release a list of our choices for "Most Beautiful Buildings in the World." The two lists are included below:

Travel + Leisure's Ugliest Buildings in the World:

1. The Ryugyong Hotel, Pyongyang, North Korea

2. Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Building, London

3. Harold Washington Library, Chicago, Illinois, USA

4. The Obelisk, Puerto Maldonado, Peru

5. Longaberger Home Office, Newark, Ohio, USA

6. Portland Building, Portland, Oregon, USA

7. The Fang Yuan Building, Shenyang, China

8. Bolwoningen Houses, Hertogenbosch, Netherlands

9. National Library, Minsk, Belarus

10. The UFO House, Sanjhih, Taiwan

11. The Ideal Palace, Hauterives, France

12. Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool, England

13. The Experience Music Project, Seattle

Mockitecture's Most Beautiful Buildings in the World:

1. The Ryugyong Hotel, Pyongyang, North Korea

2. Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Building, London

3. Harold Washington Library, Chicago, Illinois, USA

4. The Obelisk, Puerto Maldonado, Peru

5. Longaberger Home Office, Newark, Ohio, USA

6. Portland Building, Portland, Oregon, USA

7. The Fang Yuan Building, Shenyang, China

8. Bolwoningen Houses, Hertogenbosch, Netherlands

9. National Library, Minsk, Belarus

10. The UFO House, Sanjhih, Taiwan

11. The Ideal Palace, Hauterives, France

12. Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool, England

13. The Experience Music Project, Seattle

Upon further consideration, you will notice that T+L's list tends to be an assault on (overly-hated) postmodernism. What good does it do to reinforce a grudge that has lasted nearly twenty years!? Nothing like kicking someone when they're down.

T+L's "Worst" list has treaded into the dangerous category of architectural taste and may not come out alive! Comments left by angry readers of the article include titles such as "Author needs to travel more," "Is this a joke?" and "World's Dumbest Author." Contradictorily, the Mockitecture WebLog team fully pardons the author because of his/her name, which happens to be Bunny Wong!

Why are so many people offended with Wong's accusation that these PM buildings are ugly? Perhaps pop architecture - which became too popular to be cool in the 1980's-1990's - has become cool again? ...Or at least enough time has passed for everyone to realize that a select number of buildings on T+L's list are actually stunning examples of innovation, creativity, and ambition.

Take the Longaberger Home Office Building in midwestern America. This classic example of a duck building puts the Longaberger basket company on the map with an iconic headquarters that defines & advertises the company while attracting costumers and providing a memorable sense of place (not to mention an award-winning construction method). If it were not for this building, none of us would know about the Longaberger basket.

Also featured is the Fang Yuan Building in China which successfully merges the eastern and western world with a capitalist/corporate office tower in the distinctive shape of an ancient Chinese coin (another Duck building, for those of you keeping count).

All in all, it turns out the World's Ugliest Buildings are actually rare examples of iconic architecture that dares onlookers to see beyond a hard-to-digest facade of gaudy blue glazing and stylized classical elements. If you indeed succeed at that, you will discover architecture at it's most authentic and aspirational state. I, for one, am looking forward to discovering more "bad" architecture in the near future. By the way, who wants to design a 10-story sofa for Crate & Barrel's headquarters? (Thanks for the tip, Wong).

N_O_R_T_O_N