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How Boston City Hall was born

bostonglobe.com

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Re: How Boston City Hall was born

#71

Post by hax0ron3 »

Finnucane wrote: post #4

When you walk across the plaza in front of the building, you do get the sense that this is a building with a message. And that message is: We will crush you.

I've only seen it in photos, but to me it looks like the kind of place where a dystopian military dictatorship tortures its political prisoners. Or maybe like one of the army base levels from the original Quake, with its blocky polygons. I do see a certain charm in its architecture if I let myself enjoy the absurdity of it, but it does not seem fun to walk through all the useless empty space in front of it on a windy day with this thing looming over you.

Re: How Boston City Hall was born

#72

Post by m0llusk »

Eumenes wrote: post #2

Its truly hideous. Old City Hall is beautiful. Why can't we build nice things anymore?

The old city hall had a decorated cake look, but was a dysfunctional structure. There was nowhere to gather outside except the sidewalk. Entry was primarily through a large set of stairs that limited access. Once inside there was nowhere to gather, only a maze of narrow corridors servicing cramped offices with limited access to light and air.

The new city hall makes people angry and generates comments about totalitarianism, but it offers a range of places to gather inside and out and is extremely easy to navigate with internal spaces that have plenty of light and air. Brutalism may be an unpopular style, but the form itself has quite significant benefits.

Re: How Boston City Hall was born

#73

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #68
tptacek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of Notre Dame is to be a monument to God. That's not the point of most buildings. Ironically, the other example of a good building you've provided in this thread, the Taj Mahal, is in fact a monument to narcissism.

The Taj Mahal is covered in arabic inscriptions from the Quran: https://www.wonders-of-the-world.net/Taj-Mahal/Scriptures-on... Public buildings historically had a religious significance, and architecture as a field was intertwined with religion. The current british parliament building, for example, is built in gothic revival style, which arises from religious architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Reviva…

As you obviously know, the Taj Mahal is a memorial to the empress consort to the Mughal emperor.

Re: How Boston City Hall was born

#74

Post by chrisdalke »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #67

Boston City Hall is objectively beautiful and photos of it are all universally awesome (though it could stand a good powerwashing). The problem that locals experience and cannot escape is that it happens to be located on a giant ugly swath of absolutely not a goddamn thing called City Hall Plaza. So the building itself is grand, but the experience of looking at it in person is pretty bad and ominous purely because of…

The whole plaza should be grass and trees, agree it would change the entire look.

Re: How Boston City Hall was born

#76

Post by lo_zamoyski »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #67

Boston City Hall is objectively beautiful and photos of it are all universally awesome (though it could stand a good powerwashing). The problem that locals experience and cannot escape is that it happens to be located on a giant ugly swath of absolutely not a goddamn thing called City Hall Plaza. So the building itself is grand, but the experience of looking at it in person is pretty bad and ominous purely because of…

> Boston City Hall is objectively beautiful

This opinion puts you in a very small minority, to put it very kindly.

It is a poster child for the dystopian, a cubist insult to anyone who has the misfortune of laying eyes on it. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here".

Re: How Boston City Hall was born

#77

Post by lo_zamoyski »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #70
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #67

Boston City Hall is objectively beautiful and photos of it are all universally awesome (though it could stand a good powerwashing). The problem that locals experience and cannot escape is that it happens to be located on a giant ugly swath of absolutely not a goddamn thing called City Hall Plaza. So the building itself is grand, but the experience of looking at it in person is pretty bad and ominous purely because of…

I love it. It's an underdog of expression surrounded by bland forgettable towers. Maybe that says more about the neighbors but the contrast is striking.

There is a third way between bland boxes and horror show.

Re: How Boston City Hall was born

#78

Post by lo_zamoyski »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #56
jcstauffer wrote: post #34

I always think of the building (and brutalist architecture in general) as absurdist architecture, and I find City Hall to be quite humorous in that light. The general shape lifts up and is trying to appear as if it's floating, in contrast to the material selection. Think of an Elephant ballerina, or Douglas Adams "It hung in the air in exactly the way bricks don't". Another example is the Holman government building a…

City Hall is absurd in both it's appearance outside and the impracticality of the design and interior. Rooms with giant concrete columns that cut off sight lines, rampant maintenance problems from elevating form over function , and the comfort of a supraterrestrial civil defense shelter.

It seems to be intentionally designed to confuse and to disorient; misanthropic, as if designed by a demon.

Re: How Boston City Hall was born

#79

Post by lo_zamoyski »

ghaff wrote: post #64
munk-a wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really appreciate how functional the building is. It's extremely visually distinct while having really engaging vertical elements (I've always thought it evoked waterfalls) and lacking the functional flaws I've seen with other highly visible architecture (I'm especially thinking of the Gehry Building at MIT - that's whimsical in appearance but an absolute nightmare of usability with awkward unusable interior spaces…

Stata at MIT has sort of grown on me from an abstract architectural perspective. But it cost a lot and I've never really heard good things about it from people who actually use the building though I've never been in it myself aside from the ground floor. It was also sort of justified as a landmark northeast entrance to campus but was soon pretty much literally overshadowed by a lot of newer construction in the area.

It looks like something that has survived an earthquake, but not left unscathed.

Re: How Boston City Hall was born

#80

Post by ramzyo »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #67

Boston City Hall is objectively beautiful and photos of it are all universally awesome (though it could stand a good powerwashing). The problem that locals experience and cannot escape is that it happens to be located on a giant ugly swath of absolutely not a goddamn thing called City Hall Plaza. So the building itself is grand, but the experience of looking at it in person is pretty bad and ominous purely because of…

Hmm, lived there for a long time and walked by Boston City Hall almost every day. I'm not quite sure how to differentiate objective beauty and subjective beauty, but at least subjectively, in my opinion, it's an eyesore.

Agreed on all fronts that City Hall Plaza is a disaster, though. I thought there were plans to revamp it with the Government Center station green line revamp a few years ago, but not sure if that improved anything.

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