There are uglier than him, but there are no ugliers like him.
The image of the building that was uploaded to the thread on Reddit (photo: screenshot, Reddit)
The issue of high housing prices in Israel is one of the topics discussed here in recent decades, but usually the emphasis is on the high price, and not on the low value - but last weekend one building in Bat Yam gained dubious world fame when it won the title of "the ugliest building in the world" in a thread on social media Reddit - and he didn't even know he was one.
The residential building which rises to a height of about 12 floors is located near the tomb square in the northern part of Bat Yam.
It was built in the seventies, as part of a large commercial complex that is located on the lower floors and includes, among other things, an event hall, shops and parking lots.
It was photographed by a drone and uploaded to the thread by a user named holyroach, where it was rated the highest by surfers, leaving behind buildings as naked from other countries, such as a Soviet apartment block in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, slums full of shantytowns in Manila in the Philippines or Cape Town, South Africa and an immigrant neighborhood in France.
Apparently the combination between the size and height of the building and its state of neglect are what earned it the insulting title.
This is a construction that was typical in Israel from the 50s to the 80s of the 20th century, which is characterized by massive residential buildings with a clumsy appearance, and without balconies.
Add to that outdated shutters, rusting bars and air conditioner motors that hang on the outside of the building in every vacant lot, and a roof from which satellite dishes and solar heaters stick out.
It is hard to argue with the fact that the result is not aesthetic.
Reactions to the photos of the building in the Reddit thread were mixed.
Quite a few surfers noted a similarity between the subsidiary building and the construction style of the Soviet residential blocks that were used in the countries that belonged to the former Soviet Union.
One of them wrote "It looks like they took a Stalinist building and threw it near the Mediterranean Sea."
Among the commenters were quite a few Israelis who tried to defend the building and the Israeli construction style in general, and claimed that it was treated unfairly and that there are worse than it, while others pointed out that an apartment in the building must cost several millions due to Bat Yam's proximity to Tel Aviv, which is one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Support from an unexpected direction came from an Egyptian surfer who wrote: "I don't know, it seems fine to me. I live in Cairo and this is what mid-high-end apartment buildings look like here (although in Cairo the apartments are probably cheaper, from what I understand from the comments)."
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The thread in which the building in Bat Yam was ranked as "the ugliest in the world"
The discussion even drifted beyond the borders of Reddit and reached Twitter, where the Israeli surfers took the criticism less personally, and flowed with humor.
"And they haven't even seen all the buildings in Bat Yam" - wrote one user and many others stung that an apartment in this "ugly" building costs much more than most voters in the original survey can even afford.
Oh, and of course how is it possible without the response that is always required in such situations: "anti-Semites".
In any case, for those who are bothered by winning the dubious title, we will make it clear that this is not an official competition (nor is there a prize for the winner), but a spontaneous vote by surfers in a sub-thread of a group whose topic is ugly residential buildings.
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