Hall of Shame

		Hall of Shame Empty Unsafe Dysfunctional Uninviting Disorienting Unaccessable

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Buffalo Waterfront: Buffalo, NY, USA; Cut off from the rest of the city, a large section of the Buffalo waterfront is isolated by industry and the threat of another section of elevated highway.
Quadracci Pavilion and Cudahy Gardens, Milwaukee Art Museum: Milwaukee, WI, USA; A marvelous feat of architecture, engineering and art that nonetheless fails miserably as a public space.
Cultural Centre Piazza: Hong Kong, Hong Kong; One of the only pedestrian public spaces along the harborfront is a huge disappointment.
Museum of Modern Art exterior: New York City, NY, USA; Despite a recent renovation of MoMA's interior spaces, the entrance and facade remain monotonous and impenetrable.
Federal Plaza / Foley Square: New York City, NY, USA; An awesomely bad complex so disjointed it boggles the mind.
Time Warner Center and Columbus Circle: New York City, Ny, USA; Columbus Circle is a transitory place that people pass through, while it could be a true destination.
Wall Street: New York City, NY, USA; Security measures have overwhelmed the public spaces of New York's financial district.
Astor Place: New York City, NY, USA; Nowhere else in New York offers more opportunity to create something out of nothing than Astor Place.
Brooklyn Bridge Park: Brooklyn, NY, USA; The downtown Brooklyn waterfront could become a world-class public space serving as one of the cities great public spaces. Instead it is on track to become a suburban-style park catering mainly to upscale residents of adjacent Brooklyn Heights and ceding control to new residents of the precendent setting, private, residential development inside the public park. The current plan simply does not match up to other world class waterfronts, nor does it display a sound grasp of the principles of good waterfronts.
Grand Army Plaza: Brooklyn, NY, USA; A plaza that links commercial Flatbush Avenue with Prospect Park, and which joins Park Slope and Prospect Heights neighborhoods.
UN Plaza: San Francisco, CA, USA; The major entranceway to San Francisco’s vast but terribly underperforming civic center.
Exchange Square: 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.
Schouwburgplein: Rotterdam, The Netherlands; A perfect example of how a design statement does not make a great square.
Dupont Circle (Hall of Shame): Washington, DC, USA; Many think Dupont Circle is the best destination in Washington, but it is performing at just 30% of its potential.
Parque de la Memoria: Buenos Aires, Argentina; This plaza is a windswept photo-op and a barren wasteland.
Teardrop Park: New York, NY, USA; A $17 Million public park that serves primarily as a private courtyard arboretum to the surrounding high-rise development.
Lombard Square: 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.
Toronto Waterfront: 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.
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: 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.
Roads along the Seine: Paris, France; Expressways that severely diminish riverfront access in Paris.
Place de l'Opéra: Paris, France; A traffic-dominated circle that renders one of Paris's cultural and architectural landmarks much less accessible than it should be.
Pershing Square: Los Angeles, CA, USA; This open plaza that sits on top of an underground parking garage is rarely used.
Empire State Plaza: Albany, NY, USA; This plaza is so out of scale it could *almost* make Boston's City Hall & Plaza look good.
Public Square: Cleveland, OH, USA; The roads that carve up this downtown square make it nearly impossible to reach by foot, squandering its prime location.
National Mall: 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.
Forum des Halles: Paris, France; An underground shopping mall in the heart of Paris, topped by a failed park.
Place de la Madeleine: Paris, France; A traffic-congested plaza surrounding an outsized 19th-century monument.
Place de la Concorde: Paris, France; A public plaza that has degenerated into a giant traffic funnel.
Parc André Citröen: Paris, France; A 35-acre park that is barely more hospitable than the car factory it replaced.
L'Arc de Triomphe: Paris, France; A monumental arch set in the midst of an enormous traffic circle.
Love Park: 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.
Old Street: London, United Kingdom; Traffic was the only consideration when this road was improved, limiting its potential to become a great street.
British Museum Entranceway: London, United Kingdom; This feels like the entranceway to a building that doesn't want visitors.
GLA Building (City Hall) and Plaza: London, United Kingdom; A dreary, dull building not worthy of being the City Hall of a great city.
Shell Center: London, United Kingdom; Corporate headquarters that chooses not to participate in city life.
The South Bank Centre: National Theatre, Royal Festival Hall, and Queen Elizabeth Hall: London, United Kingdom; An uninviting complex of arts and performance spaces along the South Bank of the Thames.
ABN AMRO Headquarters: London, United Kingdom; The brutal design of this building is indifferent to the interesting neighborhood that is next to it.
Canary Wharf: London, United Kingdom; Four stark outdoor public spaces and a maze of underground shops that are hidden from view.
Tate Modern: London, United Kingdom; One of the most aggravating public spaces in London, it controls and limits the visitor.; [no picture]
Main Street: Middletown, CT, USA; A typical American Main Street, once bustling with pedestrian activity, it is now desolate and depressing.
Diagonal Mar: Barcelona, Spain; Lauded as "urban regeneration", this development makes many of the same mistakes of urban renewal.
Placa Paisos Catalans: Barcelona, Spain; An empty, useless disaster of a space.
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona: Barcelona, Spain; This art museum is a terrifically successful skateboard park that draws skaters from all over Catalonia.
Hotel Arts Barcelona: Barcelona, Spain; With isolated amenities, this hotel seems designed for people who are afraid of setting foot in a real city.
Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels: 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.
Plaza at the Bradley Center: 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.
Parc de la Villette: 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.
French National Library: 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.
PPG Plaza: Pittsburgh, PA, USA; "PPG Plaza is nothing more than a sidewalk on steroids."
Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts: Philadelphia, PA, USA; Is this 2001 building a downtown gem - or "the first great architectural mistake of the 21st century"?
Columbus Park Pavilion: 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.
Fairfax County Government Center: 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.
Keiner Plaza: St. Louis , MO, USA; Empty, uninviting, under-utilized... this plaza has all the hallmarks of a failed space.
Quarry Market Shopping Center: San Antonio, TX, USA; A giant retail complex whose elements are so spread out that shoppers might as well drive between them.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building: New York City, NY, USA; This "killer building" from the urban renewal era is a highrise attack on the surrounding historic lowrise neighborhood.
Boeddeker Park: 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
City Hall Plaza: Boston, MA, USA; This notorious product of late-'60s "urban renewal" is over 30 years old - can a renovation solve its deep-rooted problems?
Grace Plaza: 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.
HUD Plaza: Washington, DC, USA; The old plaza exhibited the worst of Modernism's frosty attitude toward accommodating humans - its late-'90s redesign is no better.
McArthurGlen Designer Outlet: Ashford, Kent, United Kingdom; World-renowned architect Richard Rogers creates the largest continuous tented structure in the world - for a megamall.
San Antonio Central Library: 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.
Skyline Park: Denver, CO, USA; Skyline runs for three blocks through the heart of downtown Denver, but it is a place without a heart.

Click here to see a list of nominees for the Hall of Shame.

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