Photographer: Ji Dong/China News Service/Getty Images
Design
China’s Now Spurning ‘Ugliest Buildings’ That Symbolized Its Meteoric Rise
An infatuation with infrastructure has spawned extravagant, bizarre showpieces, but the people and the government want to change the way China builds.
A Shanghai mall that mimics the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. A museum in Anhui province with a giant seated figure resembling a toilet built into its side. An opera house in Guangxi shaped like a metallic osmanthus flower.
These are some of the most extravagant — and visible — symbols of China’s meteoric economic rise in the last few decades. But they are also among the 2022 winners of the annual Ugliest Buildings Survey, an online poll started by Beijing-based architecture website Archcy.com that’s now in its 13th year.