The 50 Ugliest College Campuses

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Complex Original

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Perfect buildings lining lush lawns serve as backdrop in (almost) every film that celebrates the American college experience. Idyllic quads are, for most, the collegiate dream. We all, regardless of our respective alma mater, have a vision what a university campus should look like.

Of course, not all colleges and universities manage reflect this essential conception. Ugly campuses come in all different incarnations. Some suffer the fate of poor planning. Others, sadly, fail thanks to an unpleasant setting. Here we pinpoint the former, shedding light on places where the buildings could be better and the mood lightened if only a touch more thought had found way to the construction of academic space.

Did your school make the list? We sure hope not.

The 50 Ugliest College Campuses

The College of New Jersey

Location: Ewing, New Jersey

Key Architects: Unknown

It is almost hilarious how the parking lot tries to look like one of the more important buildings (dressed, like the others, in some adaptation of Collegiate Georgian) on the campus, with its end pavilions. Step down, parking lot.

Florida State University

Location: Tallahassee, Florida

Key Architects: Unknown

There is a time and place for collegiate gothic architecture. The middle of Florida, surrounded by palm trees, is not that place. For some reason, Dodd Hall (built in 1925) and one of the campuses most prominent building is recognized as on of Florida's 10 most popular structures. Why? We couldn't say. Apparently some folks like the Gatsby-era designs and care little that the look isn't befitting of the environment.

New Technical College

Location: Armagh, Ireland

Key Architects: Shanks Leighton Kennedy Fitzgerald

Balancing huge masses of concrete on skinny columns of concrete does not make you like Le Corbusier, a true modernist pioneer. It makes you like every other mediocre architect of the 1960's. Pick New Technical College and say good bye to dreams of a beautiful semester abroad.

McGill University

Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Key Architects: Percy Erskine Nobbs

The actual architecture of this campus is not too bad — the downtown campus is a park-like design in which buildings are built from a unified grey limestone. What puts it over the top are those horrendous green roofs.

Shipping and Transport College

Location: Rotterdam

Key Architects: Neutelings Riedijk

The checkerboard pattern is a pretty specific pattern to start off with. Then, when you cover a periscope shaped building with it, you start to challenge normal aesthetic standards. Negatively. This is an eyesore. Upside, few would ever chose Rotterdam as a place to escape the US for a semester.

Churchill College

Location: Cambridge, England

Key Architects: Richard Sheppard

The ugliness of Churchill College, like that of St. Anne's in Oxford, is underscored by the beautiful surroundings of the other colleges in Cambridge, England. What envy its students must have for the other students at Cambridge.

Jacob K. Javits Lecture Center, Stony Brook Univeristy

Stony Brook University

Location: Stony Brook, New York

Key Architects: Bertrand Goldberg

The winner of this group of pictures is the Stony Brook hospital, or the cube connected to a black circular tower. How scared would you be to admit yourself to that hospital?

CUNY Lehman College

Location: New York, New York

Key Architects: Unknown

The Lehaman campus is disjointed. There is a mix of modern and collegiate gothic-esque buildings, which don't interact with each other in any way. They simply clash. Despite current fashion trends suggesting otherwise, clashing doesn't make for an attractive whole.

Fordham University, Lincoln Center

Location: New York, New York

Key Architects: Unknown

The Fordham Lincoln Center campus falls into every trap a city campus could. It is in a generic building, surrounded by concrete, totally anonymous in its position on the landscape. Even the entryway is scrubbed clean of any scholastic warmth.

Thankfully, architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners have envisioned a more lively future for the campus. Ground for new construction was broken in 2011, so look for this campus to rise from the rubble of lists like this in the future.

University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Key Architects: Johnstone, Newcomer and Valentour

The Barco Law Building, which makes up Pittsburgh Law School, rises out of the ground into a top-heavy creation lined in strip windows. Did nobody think that a flat roof like that would yield a water damage? Let alone damage our eyes?

Fairfield Univeristy

Fairfield University

Location: Fairfield, Connecticut

Key Architects: Unknown

Having an abundance of clean lines and modern buildings carefully arranged into a quad fails to conjure the charming idea of an idyllic New England college. Institutional, rather than awesome institution.

Not everything is bleak, however. The campus is home to Gray Organschi Architecture's Jesuit House, noted by The American Institute of Architect's as one of the 10 best houses of 2012.

Health Sciences Center, LSU

Location: Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Key Architects: Huey Long, commissioner

The windows in this building are so small, you would think that it housed inmates rather than the doctors of tomorrow.

Alaska Pacific University

Alaska Pacific Univeristy

Location: Anchorage, Alaska

Key Architects: Rim Architects

Undulating buildings, which terminate in funnels next to square, boxy buildings with lots of windows next to buildings with polygonal roofs. Not the best for a cohesive campus, but at least they all let the light in.

City College of New York

Location: New York, New York

Key Architects: George Browne Post

Collegiate Gothic gone wrong again. The ornamentation is so over the top, made worse by the high contrast of brick and stonework.

Regis College

Location: Weston, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Harold S. Graves

It's almost appropriate that the architect is unknown here. This campus is the definition of anonymous.

University of St. Thomas

Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Key Architects: Unknown

The University of St. Thomas attempted a tricky thing — a fresh take on classic collegiate gothic architecture. What they ended up with was something so sterile that the charm of the style didn't return from winter break.

Brandeis University

Location: Waltham, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Eero Saarinen

Saarinen designed some beautiful buildings during his career, but there is a reason why you don't hear about Brandeis University. Planes of brick that slice into glass walls never really stuck gold as an architectural trend.

U Mass Boston

U Mass, Boston

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Harry Mohr Weese

What intensifies the visual offensiveness of this collection of buildings is that they are isolated on what seems to be an island. There's nothing around it to dilute the abundance of brick and strip window — attributable to (perhaps) the fact that many of the campuses architects were more familiar with prisons than schools... save for Harry Mohr Weese, who designed the school's library.

University Library

Northwestern University, University Libraries

Location: Evanston, Illinois

Key Architects: Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill

The University Library's forms zoom in and out of space in a way that constant movement. Once again, though, there's the abundance of heavy concrete without very much in the way of windows. Large planes of concrete don't do much to dazzle the eyes. Or inspire study.

Macquarie University

Location: Sydney, Australia

Key Architects: Walter Abraham (planner)

This Australian campus is thoroughly contemporary. So contemporary, you wonder if the architects had any consideration for the beautiful nature which surrounds its buildings. Nature, students, is good.

Leeds University

Leeds Univeristy

Location: Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK

Key Architects: Alfred Waterhouse R.A (responsible only for Gothic Revival buildigns)

Not only is the Leeds campus a product of Brutalism and its signature, the concrete has extended from the buildings and has completely paved the campus. There aren't even trees to soften the impact the buildings have on the eyes.

Bennington College

Location: Bennington, Vermont

Key Architects: Robertson Ward, Pietro Belluschi and Carl Koch, and Kyu Sung Woo

The Bennington College campus seem to be iteration after iteration of poor imitation Robert Venturi. Venturi, students, pushed a "less is bore" postmodernism that brought a refined sense of humor to American architecture. At least Bennington's location is pretty enough to detract from the abundance of unfortunate white buildings with really tall chimneys.

Some conclude that it is a campus with great buildings. Individually, this may be true. In sum, we're sticking to our clear stance.

St. John's Univeristy

St. John's University

Location: Queens, New York

Key Architects: Unknown

The symmetry of this grey, blocky building possesses none of the calm harmony of those of the Italian Renaissance. Instead of a nuanced piece of architecture, the buildings are austere and foreboding. In short, St. John's University is a sad space in Queens.

Aoyama Technical College

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Key Architects: Makoto Sei Watanabe

The Aoyama Technical College looks like a robot that is being strapped down by the black cords extending from the building into its surrounding area. Kind of awesome! Except, students sort of have to leap over the cords to get into the building.

Ave Maria Univeristy

Location: Ave Maria, Florida

Key Architects: Harry L. Warren, AIA

The Ave Maria University is like what would happen if Toll Brothers decided to build a university in Florida. There is a Stepford gloss to the town that is simply unsettling. Worth mentioning also that Ave Maria is a planned community, founded by Domino's pizza mastermind Tom Monaghan, located 17 miles from Naples, Florida.

SUNY Buffalo

Location: Buffalo, New York

Key Architects: Milstein, Wittek, Davis Associates

The strip windows, block forms of the buildings, and flat, planar facades are not doing much for the aesthetic integrity of the SUNY Buffalo architectural scheme. Luckily, none of the graduates will understand why that is an insult.

Robarts Library, University of Toronto

Location:Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Key Architects: Mathers & Haldenby

The Robarts Library on the University of Toronto campus looks like a dormant transformer, as though it's about to come to life and wreak havoc on the surrounding city, and campus. Everybody, stay alert.

One Western Ave, Harvard

One Western Ave, Harvard Univeristy

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Machado and Silvetti

This graduate housing dorm for Harvard University has received much criticism since it has opened. We think it has something to do with the crazy patterns, blocky construction, abstract sculptural facades, and strange fenestration.

Dorms, Boston University

Location:Boston, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Josep Lluís Sert

You can just tell that what lies inside of these dorms are the worst cliches of bad college dormitories (think about all the rooms you've seen while checking College Rules). The red brick building is ok — but that's only because it terminates in a hexagonal end.

Spanish architect Josep Lluís Sert designed the school's library and law school. A minor upgrade to the dorms. But not enough to lift this campus into anything even remotely beautiful.

Sawyer Library, Williams College

Location: Williamstown, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Harry Weese and Associates

It's not hard to imagine why this library made it on our list of ugly college campuses. The red brick, asymmetric fenestration, and pier supports were supposed to mesh in a (Brutalist) way that was to make ugly beautiful. Instead, this is just ugly. The only saving grace? It's scheduled for razing in a few years.

Carnegie Mellon University

Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Key Architects: Henry Hornbostel

The architecture at Carnegie Mellon makes promises toward the edgy and innovative, with different materials and sharp angles to the buildings. What they end up becoming, though, is confusing. Why raise a building onto a pediment only to cleave it down the middle? Why angle a green building in such an acute way as to almost make it seem unstable? Luckily, the students are bright, so they can probably answer those questions.

Drexel University

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Key Architects: Wilson Brothers; Diamond & Schmitt

These buildings are masses of brick and concrete. Even the fenestration is downplayed as though to suggest there is none, which, when dealing with this style of building, is a pretty scary thought. An example of urban institutional architecture at its worst.

North Carolina State University

Location: Raleigh, North Carolina

Key Architects: William Henry Deacy

These buildings are little more than simple locations for classes. They are incredibly plain and utilitarian. No creativity has gone into the architecture here. (Can you see the connection to the dry text we've written?).

University of California, San Diego

Location: San Diego, California

Key Architects: William L. Pereira

The UC San Diego campus will never bore you with it's architecture, that's certain. Some of the buildings are simply baffling — how does one even get into the library, with its elevated, windowed floors? Why are there little corrugations on the concrete buildings? Only Dr. Seuss knows... the building is, after all, named after him.

Skidmore College

Location: Saratoga Springs, New York

Key Architects: Antoine Predock, Ewing Cole, and Lo-Yi Chan

Most of the Skidmore campus was built after 1960, which is generally never a good thing. All of the buildings are connected to each other, which we are sure the students appreciate in the middle of the winter. It's also good that they don't see the failure of brick and stucco outside.

University of Maryland-College Park

Location: College Park, Maryland

Key Architects: Henry Powell

The University of Maryland College Park campus may initially strike as idyllic. Red brick colonial buildings on a green lawn. Stop to look at the actual buildings, though — they are nothing more than brick boxes with a couple of columns and a pediment glued on the front. Smoke. And. Mirrors.

Harvey Mudd College

Location: Claremont, California

Key Architects: Edward Durell Stone

These buildings seem to have one thing in common: they all present a a strong emphasis on the horizontal with a huge cornice. The tension that results between the two dueling architectural concepts becomes ultimately distracting.

University of Texas at Dallas

University of Texas, Dallas

Location: Dallas, Texas

Key Architects: Page Southerland Page

We applaud at least the consistency of the architecture throughout the campus. Too bad that it seems to be a modern take on Brutalism, one of the least popular, short lived architectural movements in history.

Larry Speck, of Page Southerland Page, designed the Visitor Center and University Bookstore, which has won an award for metal (2012 Metal Architecture Design Award). Props due there... we guess.

University of Illinois, Chicago

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Key Architects: Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.

Who approved the high density of concrete lamp posts next to the concrete buildings and interwoven with the steel sculpture? What are those lamps even pointed at? Netsch's original plan, a modernist masterpiece of sorts, has gone to pot over time.

University of Massachusetts – Amherst

U Mass Amherst

Location: Amherst, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Marcel Breuer, Gordan Bunshaft, and Kevin Roche.

The University of Massachusetts, Amherst campus appears to be a sea of concrete facades. The blocky, geometric forms of the buildings, with their small windows do nothing but prepare you for what will probably be a depressing experience once you actually enter them.

Nerds will argue that the team assembled to design the campus includes some of the greatest architects of all time. Yes, that is true. However, great architecture doesn't always lend itself to productive students nor benefit the users.

MIT

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Steven Holl, Frank Gehry

When you look at a school known for its engineering and technological feats, you know you're going to encounter some innovative designs. Perhaps these designs will make more sense in 15 to 20 years.

St. Anne's

Location: Oxford, England

Key Architects: Howell, Killick, Partridge and Amis

This Brutalist nightmare is only set into higher relief by the incredibly gorgeous Gothic buildings of the other colleges at Oxford. Some may applaud the campus as a modernist gem. We think it is an affront to tradition.

SUNY Purchase

Location: Purchase, New York

Key Architects: Edward Larrabee Barnes, Philip Johnson, John Burgee, Paul Rudolph, Venturi & Rauch, and Gwathmey Siegel & Henderson.

This place reminds of a Brutalist fortress, with those brick turret-like forms devoid of windows. It suggests locking students down as the main pedagogical approach. we'll be transferring before our first day.

When Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller commissioned the campus in the 1960s, the world still believed modernist architecture could change society. The collected architects read like a whose who from a 101 class. Sadly, they failed to produce anything that even remotely idyllic.

Rutgers, State University of New Jersey

Location: Newark, New Jersey

Key Architects: John McComb, Jr.

The Rutgers Newark campus has little cohesion. The buildings do not seem to relate to each other at all. First there is a brick and sand stone building, which hits you over the head with geometry. Then there are Brutalist buildings, and glass facades inspired by Walter Gropius. We don't know which decade to apologize to first.

At least we can say that John McComb, Jr.'s Old Queens hall, a fine example of Federal architecture, is a hidden gem in a sea of mysterious building choices.

Rochester Institute of Technology

Location: Rochester, New York

Key Architects: Hugh Stubbins & Associates, Roche Dinkeloo and Associates, Edward Larabee Barnes, and Harry Weese and Associates.

Everything about this campus says cold and austere. The buildings and windows are boxy and everything looks the same. Must not be fun finding your way to class as a first year.

Another failure of Modernism as collegiate solution.

University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth

U Mass, Dartmouth

Location: Dartmouth, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Paul Rudolph

Paul Rudolph was a good architect working during an unfortunate time for architecture. His design for the U Mass Dartmouth campus is cohesive. But it is also busy with forms zooming in and out of the building. Covering the entire building in concrete doesn't help much either.

Oral Roberts University

Location: Tulsa, Oklahoma

Key Architects: Stanfield, Imel, and Walton

Oral Robert's University reminds us of what the 1960's thought the future would look like. This architecture is better suited in a galaxy far, far away. Far away from us.

SUNY Albany

Location: Albany, New York

Key Architects: Edward Durell Stone

The main quad — if we want to call it that — here is baffling. A sea of skinny columns leap up from the ground to terminate in shallow arches, which support a large, flat roof. A large smokestack-looking object rises from behind this colonnade, and there are fountains in front of the structure. We don't know whether to take a dip or wear a smoke mask.

Hampshire College

Location: Northampton, Massachusetts

Key Architects: Norton Juster

Thank god the students of Hampshire College spend most of their time outside. These buildings are drab, dingy, and dark — nothing you want when you are looking for a place to learn, live, and eat.

Southern Arkansas University

Location: Magnolia, Arkansas

Key Architects: Randall Scott Architects

This seems like it should be called "Fort Southern Arkansas." Its all just a bunch of white walls, topped by a red roofs. The buildings look like large monopoly pieces.