Seattle has had a rocky relationship with its skyline. We have an overwhelming array of eyesores and a dearth of timeless and quality buildings. The city is growing so fast that it’s hard to believe architects and designers are really propagating quality. If you can see it from where you’re standing, take a look across campus at the glowering Safeco tower. Is there anything uglier? It looks like one of the spaceships from Alien, or at least a maximum-security prison. Hopefully, the UW goes “Kingdome style” on it now that it’s ours.

How about Suzzallo? It is one of the most awe-inspiring buildings on campus, one that strikes literary fear into the hearts of the partially educated. Around the back of it, we have a misguided monstrosity built in the growth-happy 1960s. Pancake stacks of sprawling floors are covered in bars of barbaric glass and concrete. There are several of these Rubik’s cubes around campus, all of them frustratingly juxtaposed with gorgeous gothic fortresses.

The same thing that happened in the 1960s and 1970s is happening now. Our city is enjoying some fabulous economic growth, and instead of taking it slowly and surely, we’re letting anyone build anything. Over in Green Lake, there is a bank of new apartments, and a host more are being built right now. But the newest ones don’t really look right. The bottom floor blends into the sidewalk with pure grey concrete, and the top units look like a Crayola grab bag of garish red, yellow and green.

There’s one of these buildings up in Ballard right now, and a cursory drive around the city reveals even poorer apartment building decisions. It’s all a hodgepodge of corrugated, colored metal, and it will look as horrendous in 20 years as the faux-Bauhaus efforts of Schmitz and Balmer Halls do now. I shun mention of Padelford merely because my professors are imprisoned there and I don’t want to insult their hard labor, although it is the closest thing we have to an ivory tower on campus.

There are Seattle buildings, both old and new, that give due dignity to our city. The Lothlorien Apartments on the Ave was a big undertaking, but its builders avoided over-ambitious designs and it looks better for it. The University Village looks fantastic now, but it’ll be hard for such a place to remain contemporary as the years go by. The Space Needle, despite its space-age Jetsons aesthetic, makes our city recognizable and doesn’t bother most Seattleites, unless you hate overpriced elevator rides and food. On campus, the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering is a spectacle that demands silence. Inside on any given day, people run into each other with their mouths agape, looking straight upward at its cavernous space and sleek lines.

If we’re condemned to do most of our hard work inside during the cold months, we need to be blessed with better buildings. Architecture can affect mood and maximize our natural light, abysmal though it may be. The UW needs to really make an effort to get qualified architects and sculptors when making new forays into the green sections of campus. That’s right, sculptors. Take a look at the top of Suzzallo and see the furrowed brows of a score of ancient literary figures staring down at you — not disdainfully, just hopeful. They see a lot of young talent pass before their ancient eyes every day. After you pass the Soviet missile silos of Kane and Odegaard, and the giant obelisk that is sure to crush dozens of us peasants in the event of an earthquake, go into Suzzallo, which rightfully dominates the scene. The gargantuan reading room upstairs will change your life, or at least inspire you.

Never settle for mediocre buildings — as if we needed anything to make the winter look bleaker.

[Reach columnist Jackson Rohrbaugh at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]