Ugliest couches in the world

Shown here is the winner of 2010's Worldwide Ugly Couch Contest; the 2011 contest is seeking entrants now. I have to say that as weird as this couch is, I can imagine it looking pretty good in the right circumstances -- sometimes it just takes a little norm-setting to make it all work. Think, for example, of the heroic decor of the Madonna Inn, where synthetic fabrics, vivid colors, and tone-on-tone are deployed in such concentration and volume that they power right through ugly and come out the other side.

Worldwide Ugly Couch Contest (via Neatorama)

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yerbamatte

Wow. The Madonna Inn. I want to stay in a different room each night.
IronEdithKidd

Madonna Inn is simultaneously the fuggliest and pinkest place I have ever seen.

*needing to wash eyeballs*
aeon

Apparently visitors to that site come from all over the world. Except New Zealand. We either have awesomely good taste in living room furniture or someone callously chopped all 4.3 million of us off the map…
Lagged2Death

I had never heard of The Madonna Inn and was disappointed by a dearth of photos on the website.

It turns out to be (in)famous enough to have its own Flickr group. Yikes. There are only 85 pictures, but that’s more than enough.
nemofazer

Ironically the designer went on to design the website for the worlds ugliest couch.
- Anonymous
  
  I agree, we need something more meta, the Contest for The World’s Ugliest Website of the World’s Ugliest Couch
- seyo
  
  It’s not ugly it’s “retro” ;) Seriously though, that site is hideous, in an awesome, hopefully sarcastic way. Takes me straight back to 1996. The only think missing is an animated gif with a poorly dithered transparency of a rotating @ symbol, or the one where a letter folds itself into an envelope and then flies away. Love it! Thanks Cory!
  - seyo
    
    Looking at the norwoodmall.com main page, apparently this is NOT a sarcastic web design… Pots calling kettles black, and casting stones in glass house, etc., come to mind.
irksome

The high-gloss vinyl upholstery is ideal for those pesky semen and blood clean-ups.
Anonymous

Any residents of Melbourne Au will know the retina scaring ugliness of the furniture available at Franco Cozzo!
“Grand Sale! Grand Sale! Grand Sale!”
fubbs

where did they hide the blow-up tube?
Donald Petersen

I don’t think there’s any need to continue the contest. This one should be the last winner ever. It just barely comes across as a sincere effort at tasteful stylishness by a designer who just happens to have extraordinarily bad taste and outlandishly unsubtle style. Anything worse than this will be intentionally worse, and thus doomed to fail in my eyes. Same reason why Lost Skeleton of Cadavra ain’t half so fun as Robot Monster.

Anyway, the scrupulously custom-fitted clear plastic protective covering simply can’t be beat all by itself. This settee unintentionally anticipates the gastro-intestinal distress inevitably caused by its own appearance, and the evolution of its protective carapace just goes to show why its predecessors didn’t survive: they were sent to the landfill because of ineradicable vomit stains.

Darwin would be proud, if he hadn’t bolted to the Gents’ just now.
TheCrawNotTheCraw

Years ago, I visited the apartment of some co-workers.

For some reason, the subject got onto the topic of furniture.

I mentioned I was saving my money, so I wouldn’t have to buy an ugly plaid sofa.

Dead silence.

I looked down, and realized that I was sitting on a plaid sofa which could be described as ugly.

Not wanting to offend, I (somehow) made matters worse with this “recovery”: “But not like this one. This one is *nice*.”

They didn’t believe me; neither did I…
- Anonymous
  
  Wow, you buy a couch like that you get a free bowl of soup. Looks good on you, though!
shannigans

Dear god, I thought they took down Geocities.
Modusoperandi

That’s not a couch. It’s a work-in-progress. Add two wide tires, two narrow ones and put a Model T frame with a blown flathead under it, and you’ve got a hotrod.
Anonymous

We had a couch just like this! Different colors, same shape. It was in our warehouse where we do art and throw parties.
dross1260

Save the Nauga!
Jamie Sue

I love it. Does that make me messed up?
Anonymous

Puh-leez! Why would you want to make me think of the Madonna Inn when I’m innocently sitting here eating my lunch?! The place has men pee into a waterfall and slaps Barbie pink on anything that can’t escape, fer chrissakes! Why would anyone want to emulate that????
Art

The couches are only slightly uglier than the link website.

Whew!!! Scary bad design and not even in a funny, ironic way.
Ruadhan

Cory: presumably you meant (wrt Madonna Inn decor) “they POWER right through ugly and come out the other side.” I couldn’t agree more. That place is the perfect stopover on the way to Hearst Castle, another monument to defiantly individual taste and style.

That couch reminds me of a ’57 Bel Air I once had.
Anonymous

This is my sofa. It also comes with a love seat and a chair and ottoman. All is for sale and in very good condition. 250 South Academy Blvd., Colorado Springs, Colorado 809010
chawke

I have to say – I really like the couch – although it wouldn’t really fit with any of my past, present or future decor. Perhaps a themed alcohol-opium den/green-room with the couch as its focal point?
chawke

Forgot to add — or perhaps a den themed along the lines of that S&M-themed Blackadder II episode.