Ugly Norwich

Get the prozac ready: As dreary as the grey skies that sometimes hang over Norwich
("Heck!" said the architect, "there's not enough room for a door and a window, so I'll just make a little lean-to like so...")

What makes a building ugly? In this facebook album of pictures taken in Norwich it seems that one of the problems is context – buildings that would otherwise be passable become ugly blots in an inappropriate setting and this is certainly true in Norwich with its sometimes dissonant mix of old and new buildings: Modernism, functionality, and the hardnosed practical world of office and factory don’t sit well with the romantic, the quaint, the arcadian cottage, and the homely; we like to keep these two worlds apart (except solicitors). Other buildings however (see my picture above) would have a struggle looking anything but ugly in any context.

 I suspect that the overriding factor in determining ugliness is one’s mental context and the associations triggered by the building. Viz: What does the building signify to you? Does it trigger a sense of boredom? Does it look run down, neglected and dirty? Is it threatening in some way? Is it associated with danger? Does it signify either values or a life style you dislike? Get the mental associations right and a building can look beautiful: Perhaps even the building  I have pictured above, if rendered in brilliant shinning white and with flamboyant canopied windows, could look exciting and beautiful on a summer’s day; but it wouldn't be "Norwich".

City Office Block vs. Bucolic Cottage: Norwich is not well known for getting its building contrasts right

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For centuries, perhaps since the rise of the merchant classes and gentry toward the end of fourteenth century,   the attitude to building in Norwich has been "Let's just do it guys!". In the doing we have been left a hotch-potch of monuments typical of an Anglo-Saxon market free for all. And yet unplanned and unsystematic though it is the net result of many architectural foibles can often be unconsciously quaint and charming. But sometimes, as we see above, this outcome is hilarious.