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…
Well just that it’s none of these things, as expressed by countless people, online and offline. It was voted as world’s ugliest building more than once etc. etc…
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 was born in Beantown and remember the site before construction (“Scollay Square”) as being pretty seedy and a place to avoid (still least for an eight year old). The new City Hall and Government Center were a huge improvement, and occurred during a period of rejuvenation for the city (addition to Boston Public Library, Copley Square expansion, final renewal of the city's red light district, aka the Combat Zone). I…
I'd always placed the city's nadir when I was a kid, in the 70s-80s, during white flight, and figured the upswing started with the central artery project changes in the late 90s. I guess I really have no idea how bad it was before the 70s when you're talking about. My parents and friends parents definitely seemed to think it was better then, though.
People interested in Boston City Hall should also visit the campus of Simon Fraser University, should they ever find themselves in the metro Vancouver area.
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 point of Notre Dame is to win football games.
Notre Dame Stadium: a more practical building than Notre-Dame de Paris.
I was born in Beantown and remember the site before construction (“Scollay Square”) as being pretty seedy and a place to avoid (still least for an eight year old). The new City Hall and Government Center were a huge improvement, and occurred during a period of rejuvenation for the city (addition to Boston Public Library, Copley Square expansion, final renewal of the city's red light district, aka the Combat Zone). I…
I'd always placed the city's nadir when I was a kid, in the 70s-80s, during white flight, and figured the upswing started with the central artery project changes in the late 90s. I guess I really have no idea how bad it was before the 70s when you're talking about. My parents and friends parents definitely seemed to think it was better then, though.
In general, that's probably considered around the nadir of a lot of US cities. When I graduated from grad school in about the mid-80s, aside from some finance people in Manhattan, my classmates mostly didn't move into cities. I'm not sure anyone I knew went to live in Boston in spite of quite a few getting jobs in the area--but pretty much all the computer companies were in the suburbs/exurbs. Boston was losing population until the very late 90s or so.
The trend for many new college grads to strongly prefer cities is a relatively recent phenomenon.
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…
I'd always placed the city's nadir when I was a kid, in the 70s-80s, during white flight, and figured the upswing started with the central artery project changes in the late 90s. I guess I really have no idea how bad it was before the 70s when you're talking about. My parents and friends parents definitely seemed to think it was better then, though.
In general, that's probably considered around the nadir of a lot of US cities. When I graduated from grad school in about the mid-80s, aside from some finance people in Manhattan, my classmates mostly didn't move into cities. I'm not sure anyone I knew went to live in Boston in spite of quite a few getting jobs in the area--but pretty much all the computer companies were in the suburbs/exurbs. Boston was losing popul…
I agree. A lot of US cities experienced that upswing in the 90s, so I'm not sure why I would attribute it to the central artery project.
In general, that's probably considered around the nadir of a lot of US cities. When I graduated from grad school in about the mid-80s, aside from some finance people in Manhattan, my classmates mostly didn't move into cities. I'm not sure anyone I knew went to live in Boston in spite of quite a few getting jobs in the area--but pretty much all the computer companies were in the suburbs/exurbs. Boston was losing popul…
I agree. A lot of US cities experienced that upswing in the 90s, so I'm not sure why I would attribute it to the central artery project.
In Boston's case specifically, the Big Dig did improve the living experience--after a fairly long period of time. (And there were some incremental public transit improvements.) But many US cities also had reduced crime rates and other quality of living improvements, the exact reasons for which are still debated and which led to many employment opportunities returning to cities.
My former company opened a relatively large near-downtown office and, while they're keeping a suburban office, it will be much reduced from its earlier main location.
It’s truly a building (and plaza) that has to be experienced in person to appreciate it. It certainly provokes emotion. An amazing place I’m glad to have experienced. But I’m also glad that most of the world is not like it.
Think of buildings that are near universally praised for their beauty. Notre Dame, Sydney Opera House, Sagrada Familia, Empire State Building. What do they all have in common? A sense of humanity. Why would we build a civic building that lacks that very thing?
To drag the humanity in a different direction.
Notre Dame and other great architecture is inspired by great archetypes, it's a well crafted expression of those archetypes to the extent it's possible in stone and concrete. Simply looking at it drags us closer to the ideas behind it.
But not everyone agrees with that direction. There is a large number of people who would rather take humanity in a different direction, and they build this oppressive architecture of bland geometric forms.