Currently, Ugly Belgian Houses has a whopping 161k followers on Instagram, as well as an additional 120k+ fans on Facebook. And these folks can’t wait for the latest architectural disasters to challenge their understanding of good and bad taste.

Hannes, the founder of the project, has published a book about Ugly Belgian Houses, does vlogging on the side on YouTube, and even has his own creative digital studio, Hurae.

Earlier, the founder of the project spoke to Bored Panda about the Instagram page, beauty, and how some homeowners can get very angry when their properties get featured.

“I have been visiting a lot of the houses and had some really nice conversations,” Hannes told Bored Panda earlier.

“Meanwhile I am working on a second edition of the book, so I have to call all the owners again. I’ve just had a call with two people who hate me and don’t want their house in my book. I can understand that,” he opened up to us.

According to the Belgian, the success of his project is due to “the fact that we all have a certain opinion on what makes a house beautiful. Or ugly. And the fact that these opinions are only opinions.”

Meanwhile, he pointed out that a lot of Belgians also agree that they have a lot of ugly houses in the country. It’s not a unique perspective to have there. However, Hannes firmly believes that it is better to have an ugly house than a boring one.

“In Belgium, you have a lot of suburbs and housing projects that all look the same and are in fact very boring. Something you see in Holland as well. I prefer ugly than these boring creatures,” he suggested that calling a house ‘ugly’ is almost a subtle compliment.

In his opinion, a typical ugly house in Belgium has “its own quirky uniqueness” such as having “a special roof, a special stone, a special decoration.” He added: “We want to express ourselves via our house.”

Hannes joked that his beloved project has turned into a kind of a cult. “We all love to hate ugly Belgian houses,” he told us. However, Belgium is far from the only place that has errrr unique architecture. “Poland has terrible architecture, as a lot of people have let me see,” he shared his insights.

It doesn’t mean that Belgium only has disturbingly quirky houses, though. Hannes thinks there’s a lot of good there, too. “I like the work of Gijs van Vaerenbergh, Vens-Vanbelle, De Vylder Vinck Taillieu, Vincent van Duysen,” he said.

"Normally, if you like architecture you like good houses, but in Belgium, there’s a lot of ugly architecture. So I started taking pictures of it,” he opened up about the roots of the Ugly Belgian Houses project.

"Because regulations are quite liberal and we love to design our own quirky dreamhouse," the founder of the page said. And some homeowners are so proud of the designs, they’re willing to fight Hannes tooth and nail.

“I received emails from lawyers and eventually gave in, stopping the blog altogether. I can understand the negative reactions in a way... It's the house of their dreams and I am demolishing it!" he told Bored Panda.