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February 15, 2008
Friday
 
 
I beg to differ
Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy)  Education

I was rather surprised to find my own alma mater, CMU, listed at number five on the ugly list referenced by the previous article. So surprised in fact that I wonder if any of the list is valid. If the rest of the photos were as carefully selected to back up the story as his closeup of a small section of Wean Hall in the rain...


Wean Hall

Wean Hall is far from the best looking building on the CMU campus but as you can see it is no where near as bad as the photo in the article made it look. I might add that my office was on the back side of this building, facing the parking lot and the old Bureau of Mines.

Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I will let the campus speak for itself. It may not be in the top ten most beautiful, but it most certainly is not among the ten ugliest.

CMU
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
CMU
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
CMU
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
CMU
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
CMU
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
CMU
We definitely have the prettiest robots!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
CMU
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
CMU
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
CMU
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Comments

Hey have you been following the bruha about having a president of CU who has ONLY a Bachelor's?

Of course he's a "conservative" or worse?

I can get you a link


Posted by RRS at February 15, 2008 01:56 AM

OOPs that was CU not CMU


Posted by RRS at February 15, 2008 02:01 AM

And you had me skimming through the last couple issues of the Alumni magazine to see how I'd missed the news! As far as I know we've had the same prez for most of the decade.


Posted by Dale Amon at February 15, 2008 02:04 AM

Sorry!

But the CU thing is a hoot!

Of course CU has 3 Chancellors (one for each campus), but a guy with only a BSc for Prez! Never mind what he really is and has done.


Posted by RRS at February 15, 2008 03:03 AM

Pittsburg can be a little grey in the winter, but most cities are like that. I liked the CMU campus when I visited several times.

On the other hand, while there's much to be said for the University of Cincinnati, the architecture isn't on the list. There wasn't much there to begin with, but in recent years they've gone out of their way to make it worse...

Ironically the Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning building has to be the very worst:
DAAP(Link)

That image (and panorama) is right on their own website, but it really doesn't quite do the thing justice for sheer awfulness. It somehow manages to suggest the inside of an institutional bathroom circa 1972. I'm told the interior is wonderful, but unfortunately you can't get inside without seeing the outside... (In that panorama you can also see Crosley Tower which probably needs some sort of runner-up prize...)


Posted by John at February 15, 2008 05:54 AM

Some truly beautiful buildings there, Dale, (although not including the top one, unfortunately). Very far from ugly, indeed.


Posted by Alisa at February 15, 2008 10:55 AM

It looks like the Fuhrerbunker, or worse, the National Theatre. That is one seriously ugly brutalist building, from the "Sod You" school of architecture.


Posted by John K at February 15, 2008 02:00 PM

I haven't seen that many campuses, but the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison is pretty effin' ugly, with the exception of the oldest handful of buildings.

My undergraduate alma mater (the University of Richmond), by contrast, is a lovely campus, as it has quite a few buildings in the classic "campus gothic" style, and even the newer buildings, while plainer, are at least consistent in style.


Posted by R C Dean at February 15, 2008 04:59 PM

John, be real. Pittsburgh isn't "a little grey in the winter" it's very gray (US spelling!) 90% of the time, winter and summer. (I've read that it averages fewer sunny days a year than Seattle.) You get used to it, of course, as you do with most anything, but it is still depressing in a subliminal kind of way. I lived there for a decade, and the first thing I noticed when I moved to South Carolina was the endless procession of sunny, cloudless days. Pittsburgh is a great city, and a nice place to live, but the weather is a real downer.


Posted by Laird at February 15, 2008 08:59 PM
John, be real. Pittsburgh isn't "a little grey in the winter" it's very gray (US spelling!) 90% of the time, winter and summer.

News to me and I live in Pittsburgh.


Posted by dre at February 15, 2008 10:27 PM

Then your weather must have changed radically in the last 10 years or so. Must be that Global Warming!


Posted by Laird at February 15, 2008 11:07 PM
Then your weather must have changed radically in the last 10 years or so. Must be that Global Warming!

Posted by Laird at February 15, 2008 11:07 PM

No. It is the weather you get from being on the western side of a mountain range. But the clouds are a key part in any Global Warming scam. AlGore should invest here.


Posted by dre at February 15, 2008 11:57 PM
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