decorated shed

American  

noun

Architecture.

1. a contemporary design concept characterized by buildings generally of purely utilitarian design but with fronts intended to give them more grandeur or to announce their functions.

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Example Sentences

The opposite of a duck, according to Venturi and Scott Brown, was a “decorated shed,” a basic, functional building with a sign on it.

From Washington Post

“I Am a Monument” was a decorated shed.

From Slate

They refer to this as creating a “decorated shed.”

From New York Times

From every direction, this is building as billboard, but without descending into the Venturian cliche of a "decorated shed".

From The Guardian

Also, Robert Venturi’s Learning From Las Vegas, the book that introduced the architectural distinction between a “duck” and a “decorated shed.”

From Slate