In 2012 architect Hannes Coudenys began documenting quirky and ugly buildings in his native Belgium. These pics he posted on an Instagram account and a Facebook site called 'Ugly Belgian Houses” He is still doing so.
Some of those pics and reader comments have been posted in Bytes previously.
Asked in an interview why he thought Belgium in particular seemed to produce such eccentric architecture, he replied:
“The Dutch have been ruling us, France has been ruling us, we have always had to be brave little Belgians. We were finally being set free and subsidized to do what we want. After school, you find a girl, you get married, and you build your own house, and it’s not OK for it to look like the neighbours’ houses.”
I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any.
Here are some more recent pics from Hannes Courdenys’ Facebook page with reader comments, at:
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I love it. Construction humour
Ladies and Gentlemen, the corner has left the building!
Cutting corners..
Tetris style
I suppose it seemed funny when they came up with it, after a few too many glasses of wine. They should have scrapped it the next morning though. It looks like a building shitting out a letter box.
They needed the bricks to support the letter box 🤣
Let's talk about the windows as well...
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It certainly raises a point.
☝️ yeah, or pointing at imminent danger from the sky ☝️
Aren't there enough bunkers in the cow fields and on the coast?
Magic eye
This is a beautiful house.
I see many new modern houses in Belgian, but that here looks really weird
Was this built in the famous Belgium red brick famine?
It kinda feels like he’s giving you ‘the finger’… 🤷🏼♀️
Interesting. I think the house on the right is uglier.
it raises its middle finger to the architect who designed the house
I like it.
I rather think it looks like a crematorium chimney... 🙈
Why cutting the one tree of the garden like this ? They are afraid of shade ?
Is that a chimney, or are you just happy to see me?
The question is: why have you tortured those poor trees?
And the owners cannot even be bothered to clean the dirty façade...
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Everyone loves a crenellated rampart.
A Belgianman's home is his castle.
Is it against the zombies?
Lego house
All these houses look like it is photoshopped. If it’s real…..🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Is this an iceberg house? Most of it underground? Are the lego on the top air vents? What are Belgian architects "on" so I can avoid it 😋
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When you absolutely, without a doubt, want none of your furniture to fit.
I really like it.
The only one who understood the concept of the house was the person that designed and installed the gate. Great job!
The architect designed the gate to create the art of suggestion.
This is a thing of beauty.
I wanna live there
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Tetris, 1 second before Game Over
When the architect is a fan of origami but also has to please a Star Trek enthusiast, you get this masterpiece.
Why does Belgium do this sort of thing?
Maybe this is the house with the most unusable spaces...
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I like this! And you don't know how it looks inside !
Is this the result of crazy urbanisation rules?
Left is a garage . Cannot be built higher and so the house on top needs to be as large as possible or there is no room inside , probably only achievable like this. Often the changes need to be made at the last moment when it is too late to change the rest of the design
What worries me is that it has no windows... If I were a cop, I'd definitely find excuses to look up there...
it may have a window at the back, or a skylight (though only a skylight would be really weird).
Despite the “welcome” sign, I would be very hesitant to get in.
This is where they keep their kidnap victims. Not basement people, not subtle either.
It's a home cinema! Or a sex dungeon. One or the other 😂
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Comes with own breathing machine
House is angry
That looks like they reused a steam train shed
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What you think you have stepped on when you’ve stepped on a Lego
Windows encountered an unexpected error 🤣
Well, aside from the dodgy half-roof-half-wall windows it's actually not bad.
It looks like 3 separate homes squished together.
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This is what makes Belgium unique ! Rather common ...
Actually kinda like this one
Well at least the house on the right has solar panels 😎
Hello brother from another mother.
In the house on the right is where my grandparents used to live, the picture here is made in 1979 for comparison 😁
It's not photoshopped, it's belgiumed.
Funny thing is.. it’s no exception. you see this everywhere in Belgium.
This just screams for a little 'Welcome in Belgium' logo
Quite classy, for Belgium
No it's real. I live in Belgium. There 's a lot more houses like these
I see a lot of old houses in Belgium, looking that way
Cut on the dotted line.
The car on the left doesn't fit with the house.
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Some more without comments . . .
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