Hannes Coudenys has been irritated by the "visual chaos" surrounding him since he was a kid. He discovered a jumble of architectural types on the way from his home to his school in Bruges — haciendas, villas, farm-style homes, all mixed in with boxy malls and carpet stores.

He snapped a picture of a home that was divided into two jarringly different designs as an adult, still exasperated: a drab urban semi whose other half was a jaunty brick cottage. He uploaded the picture on the internet with the caption "ugly Belgian houses," and a trend was created.

Ugly Belgian Houses began as a blog, then expanded into a book. More Ugly Belgian Houses was released last month, ten years after the original picture was posted.

Coudenys, who has no architectural experience, said he was just reacting to Belgium's "chaos." Because we are such a tiny nation, the level of disorder is extremely visible.”

The book is a celebration of architectural whimsy and homeowners who allow their imaginations run wild, and “ugliness” is in the eye of the observer. There are redbrick suburban pyramids, homes with turrets and crenellations, and a student housing building with a dizzy 45-degree angle between the door frame and the ground.

There are homes with bricked-up windows and residences with jangles of windows of all shapes and sizes that cause headaches.

Then there are no-nonsense building restoration options, such as replacing a decaying façade with black corrugated iron panels. Or just oddities of personal taste, such as a pink, white, black, and brown façade, a huge model dog protecting a doorway, or walls adorned with paintings of classical warriors in the manner of an old Greek urn.

Many individuals were disappointed to see their house on the Ugly Belgian Houses website. “Dear Mr Asshole, if you want to avoid a lawsuit, I suggest you remove your post about our house from your ridiculous website as soon as possible,” one complained.

Another commented, "What gives you the right to call these houses ugly?"

Few people wanted to be featured in Coudenys' first book. Because publishers struggled to get permission from residents and architects, just 50 of the 500 homes featured in the blog were included in the book.

The second version, according to Coudenys, who owns a creative firm that assists businesses with social media, was considerably simpler. The website Ugly Belgian Houses has taken on a life of its own.

The site has 115,000 Facebook likes and 150,000 Instagram followers. Ugly Irish Houses and Ugly Melbourne Houses, he thinks, were inspired by his site. In a segment called "Hannes says sorry," he visited the owners of "ugly" homes on a Flemish television program.

He made it plain that he was not apologizing for calling their home ugly. Rather, he expressed regret "for the fact that I may have caused them some additional trouble."

It was nerve-wracking for him to meet the residents, but he was warmly welcomed. “The majority of them were not enraged. “It's my taste, not yours, and I'm very happy here,” they added.

He learned about the homes and the people who lived in them from the program. What seemed to be a crooked wall was really an essential part of a "passive house," which was built to maximize energy efficiency.

Twins who shared a piece of land and a penchant for mock-Tudor architecture built two similar detached homes, each with a tower in the center. One wooden pile house was imported from Thailand and carefully rebuilt piece by piece over a pond in Belgium.

Some residents, on the other hand, acknowledged that they may have given their architect too much leeway. One homeowner told him, "To be honest, I don't really like it."

Coudenys has also reconsidered his position on some of the alleged ugliness. Rather than railing against the architectural jumble, he now admires the Belgians' eagerness to try new things.

He has concluded that ugly Belgian homes are part of his country's surrealist heritage, which he would not alter for the generic advances he has seen in the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, and increasingly in Belgium.

“I've come to the conclusion that I really like what we've got here,” he remarked. “It's nice to know you have the freedom to build and experiment like this.

You don't have to agree with my experiment, but I believe it's great that we have the freedom to try new things.

“My blog's current credo is that it's better to be ugly than boring.”

Thanks to Jennifer Rankin at The Guardian whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.