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Book review:
Ugliness and Judgment: On Architecture in the 
Public Eye 
by Timothy Hyde
Princeton Architectural Press, 2019
223 pages, Hardcover $35.00

reviewed by Mark Jensen

      Ugliness and Judgment is a delightful and 
frustrating book. Timothy Hyde’s project lies at 
the intersection of history, architecture, aesthetics, 
and public policy. By focusing on Britain, or more 
specifically on a series of ugly moments in British 
architectural history, Hyde goes part of the way 
toward narrowing what would otherwise be an 
unwieldy project. His aim is to answer the question, 
“…how does architecture participate in societal 
judgment?” especially judgments of ugliness (2). 
Along these lines, he explains: 

…architectural ugliness must be explored not 
along a philosophical plane, but along the 
horizon that composes the difficult reality 
of architecture, which is not necessarily the 
material reality of buildings…but the realities 
of the norms, institutions, and standards of 
expectation that precede architecture. (8)

In other words, Hyde supposes that judgments 
of ugliness in architecture are not made from 
the standpoint of the dispassionate art critic, but 
instead from the standpoint of the people who must 
live, work, and play in and around the structures in 
question.
       Organizationally, the book is divided into two 

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parts: (i) Stones and (ii) Persons. The three chapters that concern Stones are 
“Improvement,” “Nuisance,” and “Irritation,” wherein Hyde works through 
a set of structures—one prominent structure per chapter—in which he 
explores judgments of ugliness as these judgments attach to specific types 
of socio-political engagement with architecture. “Improvement” concerns 
the architect John Woods’s attempt to improve the aesthetics of the city of 
Bath using neo-classical elements; “Nuisance” concerns the reconstruction 
of Parliament with building materials that were becoming tarnished by 
pollution before the project was complete; and “Irritation” concerns the 
South Bank Arts Centre—a reviled example of 20th century brutalism 
in central London. Together, these three chapters present a picture of 
interplay between buildings, architects, clients, and the public, where this 
interplay includes judgments of ugliness as well as attempts by parties to 
respond to these judgments.
       In Persons, Hyde takes up the topics of “Incongruity,” “The Architect,” 
and “The Profession.” Here, he is focused primarily on the persons rather 
than the buildings, especially the interrelations between architects, city 
planners, and society at large. “Incongruity” is concerned principally 
with libel: criticisms of architecture in 18th and 19th century Britain 
were met with libel suits by the architects, which only emboldened 
public engagement with aesthetic judgments of the architects work. 
“The Profession,” concerns the relationship between particular architects, 
e.g., Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, organizations like the Royal Institute 
of British Architects, and the public. “The Monarch” focuses on Prince 
Charles’ interventions, presumptively (on his part) on behalf of the public 
and in rendering judgments on architectural projects that he (speaking for 
the people) took to be especially ugly. 
        The delight of the book is its engagement with very specific episodes 
in the history of architecture and the social and political consequences 
of architecture in Britain, especially London. It seems to me that when 
the literature and philosophy of architecture abstracts from context—and 
not just the context of buildings, but also the social, political, geographic, 
and historical contexts in which buildings are built—it quickly becomes 
dry, unengaging, and boring. Hyde’s book avoids these interest-killing 
abstractions: the discussion is immersed in the details of buildings, 
episodes, architects, commissions, courts, etc., that serve not only to bring 
ugly buildings into hideous life, but also to establish the context in which 
their hideousness can be put on full display.
       The English themselves are half of the delight, being at once both 
earnest and silly: earnest in their legal actions to protect buildings, in 



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their legal defenses of the reputation of professional 
architects, and in the attempt of the royals to 
prevent the construction of ugly buildings. They 
are silly in the architectural and planning choices 
that public officials and professionals make, in 
the juxtaposition of diverse architectural styles 
that span centuries, in the variety of social, civic, 
and political organizations who intervene in these 
affairs, and even in the names that they have given 
to their organizations, places and buildings: “Ugly 
Face Club, “Consistory Court,” “Mansion House 
Square, “Isle of Dogs,” and “No. 1 Poultry.”  
       The delights of the book give way to a bit 
of a worry, which is this. It might be that the 
episodes in question fail to serve as paradigmatic 
examples or key representatives of broader trends 
in architecture, politics, and history. It may be 
instead that Britain is unique: it is characterized by 
a deep-seated conservative culture and it lacks an 
overall architectural style. When parts of London 
were destroyed in WWII, large-scale rebuilding was 
required, which put these two characteristics into 
conflict. As a result, it may be especially difficult to 
draw any overall lessons from the history of ugliness 
in British architecture. To be sure: Hyde is careful 
to point out that he is not undertaking an analysis 
of ugliness or ugly buildings or even judgments of 
ugliness as we find them in British cases. But one has 
a sense that Hyde is attempting to draw overarching 
conclusions about way ugliness shows up in public 
discourse. At the end of the book, he writes:

the judgment of ugliness signals the 
participation of architecture in a social 
circumstance in which resolution is not 
achieved by aesthetic means; instead, the 
aesthetic dimension of architecture, precisely 
because of its insufficiency, is transferred into 
other instruments of social consequence. 
Ugliness, therefore, is the judgment of 
an irresolution and an insufficiency, but 

the discussion 
is immersed in 

the details 
of buildings, 

episodes, 
architects, 

commissions, 
courts, etc., 

that serve not 
only to bring 

ugly buildings 
into hideous 

life, but also 
to establish 
the context 

in which their 
hideousness 

can be put on 
full display.

“

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additionally is the instantiation of that insufficiency into social 
technologies, into concrete processes, customs, and institutions. 
(184) 

What he means to say, I think, is that the judgment that a building is 
ugly is a composite reflection of the aesthetic qualities of the building, 
the broader social and political context in which the building is built, and 
the background assumptions of the people making the judgment. But as 
noted above, it is far from clear that he has a sample of the size and type 
that would justify this judgment. Perhaps insufficiency and irresolution are 
features of British culture that spillover into its architecture, rather than 
intrinsic features of architecture itself.
       Another frustrating aspect of the book, evident in the quotation above, 
is Hyde’s prose, especially when he attempts to draw broader conclusions. 
He tends toward a kind of theory-speak that obfuscates the points that 
he wants to make. This is frustrating not only because he will scare away 
educated but non-technical readers interested in the concept of the ‘ugly’ in 
architecture, but also because he is clearly on the right track—despite the 
idiosyncratic nature of his evidence—in thinking that the judgment that 
a building is ugly serves multiple aesthetic, social, and political purposes. 
He is also right in refusing to be caught up in the ideological or reductivist 
games of providing the definition of ugly architecture and then justifying 
this definition through cherry-picked examples. 
       Admirably, Hyde instead uses his examples to demonstrate the enormous 
conceptual, social, and political range of the judgment of ugliness. Some 
clarity about the concept of ugliness emerges in the discussion of specific 
buildings, such as his description of the ugliness of the South Bank Arts 
Centre:

…the ugliness of the South Bank Arts Centre consists of an 
intrusive, situated dissonance. This dissonance results not merely 
from infelicities of function, from a building not adequately serving 
its programmatic demands, or from insufficiencies of symbolic or 
associational legibility. It manifests from a third register of ugliness, 
not within the shape or material of architecture, but that consists of 
the relation between the architecture and the person who encounters 
it... (80)

As he goes on to explain, the third register is one of feeling: ugly architecture 
can evoke disgust, irritation, or antipathy.
       This passage is as close as Hyde comes to stating succinctly that 
judgments of ugliness in architecture are matters of form, function, and 



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feeling. However, when properly qualified by 
individual, social, and political contexts, one will 
find that this is the view that he defends in the 
book. We might forgive Hyde’s lack of concision 
in light of two broader truths. One is the old 
Aristotelian proverb that we can only expect as 
much precision as the subject allows. Given the 
range of disciplines in view, it would be a mistake 
to expect much here. But second, the British case, 
with its unique dispositions and history, invites 
hosts of qualifications. This is a nation-state lacking 
a distinctive, unique, and celebrated architectural 
style. Its architecture is a bit like its cuisine, but 
quite the opposite of its music and literature and 
theater. In other words, it is easier to write about 
Shakespeare and the Beatles than it is to write about 
British architecture.


