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Hall of Shame
Empty
Unsafe
Dysfunctional
Uninviting
Disorienting
Unaccessable
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Your search for "Hall of Shame" produced 57 results.
Click on a name or image for more information.
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- UN Plaza
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San Francisco, CA, USA
- The major entranceway to San Francisco’s vast but terribly underperforming civic center.
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- City Centre
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Mississauga, Ont, Canada
- The central district of Canada's fifth largest city is dominated by a gigantic shopping center.
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- Exchange Square
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Manchester, UK
- Fancy paving, sweeping design statements and hidden water leave the user with no place to go and nothing to do in this inflexible square.
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- Schouwburgplein
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Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- A perfect example of how a design statement does not make a great square.
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- Dupont Circle (Hall of Shame)
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Washington, DC, USA
- Many think Dupont Circle is the best destination in Washington, but it is performing at just 30% of its potential.
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- Occidental Square
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Seattle, WA, USA
- This place is ideally located, attractive and uniquely Seattle - but a lack of activities makes it more a thoroughfare than a true place.
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- Market Square
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Houston, TX, USA
- A park with a design that does nothing but keep people away.
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- Logan Circle
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Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Home to probably the best fountain in the United States, but very hard to reach, the major public institutions around the Circle have no presence in it.
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- Parque de la Memoria
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Buenos Aires, Argentina
- This plaza is a windswept photo-op and a barren wasteland.
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- Teardrop Park
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New York, NY, USA
- A $17 Million public park that serves primarily as a private courtyard arboretum to the surrounding high-rise development.
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- Lombard Square
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Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
- This intersection of the most famous streets in Winnipeg is completed blockaded by concrete barriers that force pedestrians into a dark underground concourse.
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- Toronto Waterfront
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Toronto, ON, Canada
- Development led by private investment threatens to turn Toronto's great waterfront into a tourist spectacle worthy of the Hall of Shame.
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- Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
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Bilbao, Spain
- One of the world’s most famous buildings, this museum is in many ways an attractive and impressive piece of architecture. Unfortunately, as a public space it is extremely unsuccessful -- even dangerous.
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- Roads along the Seine
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Paris, France
- Expressways that severely diminish riverfront access in Paris.
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- Place de l'Opéra
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Paris, France
- A traffic-dominated circle that renders one of Paris's cultural and architectural landmarks much less accessible than it should be.
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- Pershing Square
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Los Angeles, CA, USA
- This open plaza that sits on top of an underground parking garage is rarely used.
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- Empire State Plaza
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Albany, NY, USA
- This plaza is so out of scale it could *almost* make Boston's City Hall & Plaza look good.
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- Public Square
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Cleveland, OH, USA
- The roads that carve up this downtown square make it nearly impossible to reach by foot, squandering its prime location.
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- National Mall
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Washington, DC, USA
- A civic space of immense significance, the National Mall lacks the strong management necessary to coordinate events, partner with neighboring institutions, and add amenities that draw people in.
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- Forum des Halles
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Paris, France
- An underground shopping mall in the heart of Paris, topped by a failed park.
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- Place de la Madeleine
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Paris, France
- A traffic-congested plaza surrounding an outsized 19th-century monument.
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- Place de la Concorde
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Paris, France
- A public plaza that has degenerated into a giant traffic funnel.
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- Parc André Citröen
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Paris, France
- A 35-acre park that is barely more hospitable than the car factory it replaced.
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- L'Arc de Triomphe
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Paris, France
- A monumental arch set in the midst of an enormous traffic circle.
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- Love Park
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Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Love Park was once a national destination for skateboarders, before the city started confiscating skate boards and shooing away anyone who is not sitting quietly on a bench.
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- Old Street
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London, United Kingdom
- Traffic was the only consideration when this road was improved, limiting its potential to become a great street.
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- British Museum Entranceway
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London, United Kingdom
- This feels like the entranceway to a building that doesn't want visitors.
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- GLA Building (City Hall) and Plaza
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London, United Kingdom
- A dreary, dull building not worthy of being the City Hall of a great city.
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- Shell Center
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London, United Kingdom
- Corporate headquarters that chooses not to participate in city life.
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- The South Bank Centre: National Theatre, Royal Festival Hall, and Queen Elizabeth Hall
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London, United Kingdom
- An uninviting complex of arts and performance spaces along the South Bank of the Thames.
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- ABN AMRO Headquarters
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London, United Kingdom
- The brutal design of this building is indifferent to the interesting neighborhood that is next to it.
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- Canary Wharf
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London, United Kingdom
- Four stark outdoor public spaces and a maze of underground shops that are hidden from view.
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- Tate Modern
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London, United Kingdom
- One of the most aggravating public spaces in London, it controls and limits the visitor.
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[no picture]
- Main Street
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Middletown, CT, USA
- A typical American Main Street, once bustling with pedestrian activity, it is now desolate and depressing.
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- Diagonal Mar
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Barcelona, Spain
- Lauded as "urban regeneration", this development makes many of the same mistakes of urban renewal.
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- Placa Paisos Catalans
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Barcelona, Spain
- An empty, useless disaster of a space.
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- Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
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Barcelona, Spain
- This art museum is a terrifically successful skateboard park that draws skaters from all over Catalonia.
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- Hotel Arts Barcelona
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Barcelona, Spain
- With isolated amenities, this hotel seems designed for people who are afraid of setting foot in a real city.
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- Bryant Park (Hall of Shame)
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New York, NY, USA
- This park is becoming ever more privatized at the expense of thousands of everyday users.
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- Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels
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Los Angeles, CA, USA
- One wonders if it's possible to make it across the expanse of this cathedral's positively desert-like plaza without a bottle of water.
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- Plaza at the Bradley Center
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Milwaukee, WI, USA
- The City of Milwaukee classifies this in the category of institution, educational, public and quasi-public space. It appears that its intended use is downtown public space.
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- Parc de la Villette
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Paris, France
- One of Paris's modern parks, built in 1987 on the site of a disused industrial site -- at 86 acres this is the largest green space in Paris.
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- French National Library
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Paris, France
- This library is at best a carefully constructed void, and at worst a notoriously expensive project that "designs out" not only people, but books.
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- PPG Plaza
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Pittsburgh, PA, USA
- "PPG Plaza is nothing more than a sidewalk on steroids."
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- Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts
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Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Is this 2001 building a downtown gem - or "the first great architectural mistake of the 21st century"?
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- Columbus Park Pavilion
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New York, NY, USA
- This park pavilion in the midst of a dense neighborhood could provide sorely needed public space, but it's locked up, accessible only to pigeons.
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- Fairfax County Government Center
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Fairfax, VA, USA
- This building is HQ for Fairfax County, the most populous and wealthy locality in both the state of Virginia and metropolitan Washington D.C.
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- Keiner Plaza
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St. Louis , MO, USA
- Empty, uninviting, under-utilized... this plaza has all the hallmarks of a failed space.
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- Quarry Market Shopping Center
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San Antonio, TX, USA
- A giant retail complex whose elements are so spread out that shoppers might as well drive between them.
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[no picture]
- Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building
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New York, NY, USA
- This "killer building" from the urban renewal era is a highrise attack on the surrounding historic lowrise neighborhood.
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- Boeddeker Park
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San Francisco, CA, USA
- 2.6-acre park in a low-income neighborhood with a reliance on defensive design and a primary focus on use by children and families - factors that unintentionally turned the place into a battlefield
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- City Hall Plaza
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Boston, MA, USA
- This notorious product of late-'60s "urban renewal" is over 30 years old - can a renovation solve its deep-rooted problems?
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- Grace Plaza
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New York, NY, USA
- Built in 1974 by Gordon Bunschaft, the plaza is formed from the base of the 50-story WR Grace building in Midtown Manhattan.
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- HUD Plaza
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Washington, DC, USA
- The old plaza exhibited the worst of Modernism's frosty attitude toward accommodating humans - its late-'90s redesign is no better.
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- McArthurGlen Designer Outlet
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Ashford, Kent, United Kingdom
- World-renowned architect Richard Rogers creates the largest continuous tented structure in the world - for a megamall.
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- San Antonio Central Library
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San Antonio, TX, USA
- Built by an award-winning architect, this place exemplifies the type of object-focused architecture that is unconnected to anything around it.
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- Skyline Park
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Denver, CO, USA
- Skyline runs for three blocks through the heart of downtown Denver, but it is a place without a heart.
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