City Hall, Boston’s aging rock star of 1960’s modernism, has been getting a lot of attention recently. In 2005 ArchitectureBoston, the Boston Society of Architecture’s bi-monthly magazine, published an issue on the history and current state of the building. They followed it last year with an issue dedicated to proposals by young area architects for its transformation.
Architects paying attention to a favorite building isn’t surprising. Mayor Tom Menino’s decision, however, that the city should relocate its operations to South Boston and put the building up for sale is surprising. Passing over the very strange decision to advocate the city government leaving the city’s center, Menino’s argument for a waterfront view in South Boston stands primarily on his criticisms of the architecture of the current city building.
David Boeri, host of WBUR’s Radio Boston, used Menino’s announcement to put together an hour long radio treatment of the building which brought together familar arguments about the character of modern architecture, traditional public place-making, and the need to preserve modern buildings for their historical role in shaping contemporary culture.
What interested me more than the intentionally opposed arguments of paneled experts were the interviews with people on the street, office workers, and government officials. Of the exposed concrete finish and its massive cantilevered forms, certain phrases were repeated. The building is ugly. Concrete is cold. It is hard. Ugly. Cold. Hard. These are the words that hang over architecture today, together a shroud too small for the thing it’s trying to cover.
Ugly. Cold. Hard. Dealing with these words seems necessary for any architect hoping to hold onto his own love for designs that elicit each of these. And for the architect whose buildings will likely be accused of one or all. So, a post for each. Ugly. Cold. Hard. Let’s begin.
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