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 few blocks away - with these ridiculous stairways through a massive open space underneath an imposing bridge of offices.
More totalitarian than absurdist. The whole idea seems to be elevating the vision of "The Genius Architect" over the needs and wishes of the people who would actually use the space, with a borderline contempt for what non-architects and even non-Brutalist architects think.
I'm reminded of the time I ended up crossing the Empire State Plaza in Albany once in the dead of winter. Such a horrid experience. Surrounded by soulless impersonal concrete with wind and snow blowing and howling. I felt like a freaking ant. It's not the type of architecture that inspires and uplifts in person. It psychologically oppresses and beats down.
Compare that to a place like Saint Peter's, which even as a non-Catholic almost took my breath away to experience in person.
sandworm101 21 hours ago [-]
>> elevating the vision of "The Genius Architect" over the needs and wishes of the people who would actually use the space
Otherwise known as all architecture. In a past life I work in the entertainment industry: lots of late nights in venues like concert halls and occasional art galleries. All of them contain expensive architectural elements that serve no need other than to stoke the ego of their designers. Look behind the veil and you will see the rat's nest of engineering workarounds needed to keep these white elephants upright. Let the engineers draw a building's outline and it may be ugly, but at least it will have sufficient electrical connections, parking, and floor space.
DiggyJohnson 19 hours ago [-]
Generally human beings value ornamentation quite highly. I think you make an interesting observation, but to say “no other need” is ridiculous. I also have a dim view of a lot of high profile architecture and the high ego architect, don’t get me wrong, but form and function ought to be a balance and not a battle. You’re claiming it’s a battle.
unyttigfjelltol 1 days ago [-]
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.
lo_zamoyski 22 hours ago [-]
It seems to be intentionally designed to confuse and to disorient; misanthropic, as if designed by a demon.
DiggyJohnson 19 hours ago [-]
What do you think were the motives of the architects and the design committee that selected this plan?
I thought your comment was ridiculous at first until I realized that I agree.
DiggyJohnson 19 hours ago [-]
I’d encourage others to click on that link and do a 360. There are so many architectural styles with 200 yards.
neilv 19 hours ago [-]
The frog looking down upon you is displeased.
sdwr 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, it's friendly ugly. I'd be happy going to work there everyday.
28 State St is kinda ugly, but bland and forgettable.
Boston City Hall is so hideous and frightening that people outside of Boston know about it. Its appearance is a recurring topic in the news. That is impressive.
mlinhares 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, if you're going to make it ugly, make it newsworthy ugly. That thing is such an eyesore.
MiddleEndian 1 days ago [-]
In the same vein, I am jealous of Maryland's flag. Some state flags have some nice patterns, but most state flags are forgettable with seals. But the Maryland flag is so garish that it's recognized by pretty much everyone.
BugsJustFindMe 24 hours ago [-]
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 surrounding environment.
rsa4046 21 hours ago [-]
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 do remember the controversy of the design and public reaction — yes, it's not for everyone, but I've always had a fondness for the building.
jasonfarnon 20 hours ago [-]
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.
ghaff 20 hours ago [-]
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.
jasonfarnon 19 hours ago [-]
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.
ghaff 19 hours ago [-]
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.
ghaff 21 hours ago [-]
That whole area of town, aside from maybe tourist-land on the harbor, was a combination of big finance buildings and all the seed along Washington Street. Basically never went there when I was a student in the area.
ramzyo 22 hours ago [-]
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.
BugsJustFindMe 3 hours ago [-]
You're right that there was a plaza renovation project. It has helped massively, (though I think it didn't go far enough), and it was only completed at the end of 2022 so most people grousing about the building have never seen it.
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…
lo_zamoyski 22 hours ago [-]
> 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".
BugsJustFindMe 3 hours ago [-]
> This opinion puts you in a very small minority...
Statements like this always make me think about how the majority of americans believe that buildings can be haunted by spirits or demons or that ESP or telekinesis are real.
I think we need to be honest about the low merit of appealing to how well the average person's brain works.
The building itself is stunning. Look at every ground-level photo of it ever taken that doesn't include the plaza. But the feeling of standing next to the building has always been devastated by the blight of the plaza, and people are mostly incapable of separating the two. It only feels ominous looming conspicuously over a barren wasteland.
This has been quite improved relatively recently by plaza renovation (https://www.sasaki.com/projects/boston-city-hall-plaza-renov...), but that project was only completed at the tail end of 2022 so most people who have capital O "Opinions" about the building have never actually seen it in a less blighted context.
chrisdalke 23 hours ago [-]
The whole plaza should be grass and trees, agree it would change the entire look.
2OEH8eoCRo0 23 hours ago [-]
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.
lo_zamoyski 22 hours ago [-]
There is a third way between bland boxes and horror show.
botswana99 1 days ago [-]
I like brutalist architecture. And I am not the only strange one: r/brutalist has 174K members and the original fuckyeahbrutalism on tumbler.
Think of it like being a fan of 486 PCs or pixel art.
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 and a long legacy of mold and maintenance issues).
It's especially amusing that Boston City Hall is within a stone's throw of the only block that survived the fire of 1872 and throws a shadow over Faneuil Hall.
ghaff 1 days ago [-]
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.
lo_zamoyski 22 hours ago [-]
It looks like something that has survived an earthquake, but not left unscathed.
genter 1 days ago [-]
I like to think of it like a car wreck: no one actually enjoys looking at one, but you still have to look.
otras 1 days ago [-]
> It was in this context that the city decided to demolish the neighborhood known as Scollay Square and build in its place what would come to be called Government Center.
It’s interesting (and sad) to imagine what Boston could have been like without the damage of urban renewal. These neighborhoods could have easily become the quaint North Ends people love today.
People who opposed demolishing the neighborhoods would be called NIMBYs today and would be blamed for the housing crisis. I'm not saying this to be snarky, just that there is a real push and pull there that I don't think is appreciated. There are some beautiful old neighborhoods near me which are at risk of being torn down and replaced with multi-unit dwellings. The residents say 'save our neighborhoods' and the activists cry 'greedy homeowners' and in the meantime the developers are rubbing their hands in anticipation of mountains of cash.
ghaff 1 days ago [-]
That particular urban renewal didn't create a lot of new housing. On the other hand, that whole general area of Boston was pretty crappy back in the day. (Not just what's now Government Center but all along Washington Street.) It mostly didn't result in more housing; I'm guessing less. But burying the central artery was almost certainly a lot more positive overall.
fatnoah 1 days ago [-]
According to the West End Museum site, the project created more housing units, but also led to a population decrease, most likely due to the decrease in the number of people living in each unit.
Comparing what they proposed vs what resulted is very interesting.
kitten_mittens_ 1 days ago [-]
Some of parcels in the doc on page 58 (K) in particular are interesting. The city ended up widening the road there pretty significantly. When they built https://maps.app.goo.gl/7yVzp4vm72Js3w618 back in '22, there was just one tower. The original plan had two towers instead of one (https://bpda.app.box.com/s/lsw68tzgu4g788h9dr4zvorlc6ohy0oy). The resulting sub area is only two buildings now, where there were tenements before.
ghaff 1 days ago [-]
Thanks. I can believe that easily. I assume a lot of what, if not exactly tenement housing at least adjacent, was torn down while generally high-end often waterfront condos were built.
hax0ron3 23 hours ago [-]
Why would people be called NIMBYs today for being against replacing a heavily residential neighborhood with a bunch of government buildings? It would be different if the discussion was about keeping the neighborhood residential and just making it more dense in terms of housing.
Texasian 1 days ago [-]
Oh please. Take a look at the pictures of “redevelopment” back then and tell me it mirrors modern practices. We’re talking wholesale bulldozing of entire neighborhoods. Not a block or two, the entire damned thing.
ghaff 1 days ago [-]
There's a WGBH podcast about the Big Dig and the first episode I think helps you appreciate why some of the interstate connections and routings around Boston are so weird. https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-big-dig
recursivecaveat 21 hours ago [-]
I'll never forget my first bus ride in Boston: going through a tunnel that suddenly narrowed by 1 lane deep underground, driving 2km past our next stop to reach a u-turn to the other side of the highway.. It has the craziest road infrastructure I have ever seen.
ghaff 21 hours ago [-]
Although Boston driving can still be a bit crazy in areas you're not accustomed to, the combination of the Big Dig and GPS has taken some of the rougher edges off, especially for the main highways and getting to and from the airport.
fsckboy 1 days ago [-]
> It was in this context that the city decided to demolish the neighborhood known as Scollay Square
Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) grew up in that neighborhood
spcebar 4 hours ago [-]
The buildings across the street from the city hall plaza are an interesting counterpoint or maybe complement to brutalism. They're the same cement architecture but the concave areas of the faces are filled with brick, so it looks like a blending of the architectural styles of older Boston neighborhoods (like adjacent Beacon Hill) and the brutalism of many of Boston's municipal buildings. It's a lot easier on the eyes.
There's plenty of brutalist architecture around Boston and Cambridge, though none is as pronounced as city hall, in its massive open square, which in winter keenly acts as a powerful wind tunnel to smite those who would walk through the plaza.
screye 22 hours ago [-]
Boston City Hall is the perfect candidate for an eco-brutalist makeover. Add the SF Hyatt Regency while you're at it.
Europe's eco-brutalist buildings are gorgeous. [1] [2]
Boston City Hall's problem is the windy open plaza. The building stands as the only imposing mass in that area. If there were trees and other shelter, one could admire it. But as it stands today, it intimidates.
All that being said, positives changes are happening. Cop slide is definitely one of Boston's must see attractions.
Partly, it's definitely the combination of the building and the plaza. I don't know the history but it seems as if commerce (cafes and the like) haven't been especially welcome on the plaza though they'd admittedly only be attractive for 4-5 months out of the year.
don-code 1 days ago [-]
Architecturally, the city of Boston has changed many times. You can more or less pinpoint when a building was built by its appearance. City Hall's architecture is mirrored in most of the transit stops from the 1970s-era expansion. Some of them (e.g. Wollaston, Harvard) have since been rebuilt; others (e.g. Quincy Adams, Malden Center) are still concrete behemoths like City Hall.
Anything built within the last ten years is, of course, LEED-chic - the building is a glass box.
FrontierProject 1 days ago [-]
Funny thing about the glass box. If you look down Tremont Street towards the bay you used to get a beautifully framed view of Old North Church. The sightline was considered a historical landmark (there's even a plaque for it in front of the Omni Parker House hotel). The Government Center station completely obstructed the view to Old North. Allegedly this is one of the main reasons that Government center is a glass box, it was the only way the construction was approved.
Finnucane 1 days ago [-]
The glass box thing started here too: IM Pei's Hancock tower was one of the first, from the 1970s. And like many architectural wonders, the construction was crap. I can still remember going by and seeing all the boarded-up windows, because the glass kept falling out.
ghaff 1 days ago [-]
Though none of the Brutalist IM Pei buildings at MIT were as bad, my understanding that they had to retrofit a revolving door in one of them because the wind tunnel effect could make it really hard to open the doors.
Anytime i've brought my kids to that playground since that incident there is always someone either recreating or showing someone that video. The best exposure for a park really.
jcalabro 1 days ago [-]
[2012] it took me a second when they said "Mayor Thomas M. Menino" rather than "former Mayor Thomas M. Menino"
mazugrin2 1 days ago [-]
There used to be a neighborhood around it that had architecture similar to what the neighboring North End still has, which is very distinct among the entirety of the Americas. The lack of imagination that existed back then that led to it all being razed to build this and the rest of the garbage of the current West End is stunning.
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.
hax0ron3 23 hours ago [-]
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.
jrmg 1 days ago [-]
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.
fatnoah 1 days ago [-]
Speaking as a resident of Boston and the neighborhoods near city hall, that plaza is such a contrast from the rest of the area. Everywhere around it has shops, alleys, and interesting things to see, whereas that plaza was an endless sea of bricks. They've dressed it up better now, but it still feels more like a missed opportunity than a useful civic space.
ocschwar 1 days ago [-]
The one nice thing about the plaza is that when protesters show up there is no questioning their sincerity. You know they're not there for the fun of it.
phist_mcgee 21 hours ago [-]
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?
akomtu 19 hours ago [-]
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.
ghaff 1 days ago [-]
I read a humor column once that had something to the effect of it was designed to be even more intimidating than Soviet architecture.
ravenstine 1 days ago [-]
I actually like the building, but it does have that "Borg cube" feeling about it.
paultopia 1 days ago [-]
Yeah I've always thought that the point of much of the design was to have obvious places to put machine guns to mow down protesters.
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.
ldx1024 7 hours ago [-]
Check out the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus, too, about 60 miles south of Boston
22 hours ago [-]
Eumenes 1 days ago [-]
Its truly hideous. Old City Hall is beautiful. Why can't we build nice things anymore?
Symmetry 1 days ago [-]
Samuel Hughes at Works in Progress has been writing a bunch on this general topic recently.
The big idea is that some art styles are easy to appreciate without training and some aren't, and we probably shouldn't be making public architecture that's hard for members of the public to appreciate. Similarly atonal music isn't objectively bad, I often like it, but I recognize that it isn't appropriate to use in civic functions.
nilptr 1 days ago [-]
> Why can't we build nice things anymore?
Well.. first start by defining "beautiful", we're waiting. Also, it's a 50 year old structure.. we stopped building "nice" things after WW2 mostly because costs were astronomical and new materials and engineering opened up all kinds of avenues for more modern construction.
I've spent decent amount of time in and around Boston City Hall, the biggest problem with the building are:
1. The plaza in front of it is a damn wasteland. So much could be improved by building over the plaza and reestablishing the street grid here properly.
2. The Congress Street side facing Faneuil Hall is a concrete wall and a garage entrance. You probably can't fix the garage problem easily but the concrete wall with a proper structural engineer could probably reopened up.. of course, it would be expensive.
3. The interior while very interesting architecturally is really quite... I dunno, soul sucking. I kind of love the aesthetic inside but only from a "wow this looks cool" perspective.
rayiner 1 days ago [-]
> Well.. first start by defining "beautiful", we're waiting.
Hundreds of years later, most people from completely disparate cultures find these buildings beautiful.
tptacek 1 days ago [-]
Yes, those are two buildings people find beautiful. You can find lots more like it if you keep turning the dial all the way to "form" and away from "function".
astrange 22 hours ago [-]
It seems difficult to fit a city hall in either of them.
tacticalturtle 1 days ago [-]
The one nice part of the wasteland plaza is that it can hold large outdoor exhibitions in a way that no other space in downtown area can.
Inside the NBA was held live there recently, Boston Calling (the only largish music festival in the area) started there.
There’s obviously no massive outdoor parking lot in downtown Boston, and it would be a shame to have packed crowds trample over the common.
ghaff 17 hours ago [-]
Although Commonwealth Shakespeare has performances on the Common every summer and there's a fairly large underground parking garage there.
eber 1 days ago [-]
1. They remodeled City Hall Plaza in 2022 [1], unfortunately not a street grid, but less of a cold wasteland than before.
2. Agreed regarding the Congress St side, though the added playground from [1] adds some interest to that side (before the solid brick wall part).
3. Agreed with the interior. Something like just changing the flooring or interesting lighting would make it feel less cold. The floor is either brick (I assume an homage to Boston's brick) or terracotta tile. As a very rare visitor inside, it's kinda fun to see how the decor/lighting/infrastructure works with all concrete (hanging things from the ceiling instead of nailing to a wall, for example)
Aware of the remodel and it is indeed an improvement in nice weather months but it's still pretty lacking and absolutely awful Nov to April which is.. close to half a year.
ghaff 1 days ago [-]
I sort of agree. On the other hand, the outside on a waterfront in a northern US city is probably not going to be great for a good chunk of the year in any case.
There are nice parks in the area but they're not exactly delightful in the cold weather months either.
oceanplexian 1 days ago [-]
> Also, it's a 50 year old structure..
I don’t personally see this a good reason at all.
The US had a good run building neoclassical government buildings in the spitting image of the Romans and Greeks, and we already know that when properly done the aesthetic will stand the test of time for thousands of years.
As far as the improved materials argument that’s up for debate too. Will Boston City Hall be standing in 2,000 years? If I could put money on it I’d say it’s more likely to end up in a landfill.
ocschwar 1 days ago [-]
It will not. I guarantee it. The vehicle emissions worming into the bare concrete are acidic. The water from rain and from the humid air slowly degrades it. The salt air doesn't help. At some point, sooner than you think, the corrosion will reach the rebars inside the concrete.
All this could be prevented with sacrificial applications of stucco, but brutalist architects insist on keeping the concrete bare. It takes a lot of work to keep a building like that from crumbling under these conditions, and city hall is not loved enough to get the work done.
rayiner 1 days ago [-]
I work in the Watergate, and it's in terrible condition after just 60 years. The 1950s post-war mass produced house I grew up in is in better condition. Meanwhile, the Farley Post Office in Manhattan is so gorgeous 110 years later that they built the new Penn Station in it.
ghaff 1 days ago [-]
I don't love Brutalism in general but it also just ages pretty poorly. Some of it is about the updating of really crappy interior decor but the renovation of the Boston Public Library brutalist addition really helped a lot--though still, nothing like the original structure.
ghaff 1 days ago [-]
I mostly agree. The backside is just hideous and the brickyard is unnecessarily a wasteland for most of the year. Boston's climate doesn't help but, certainly at least in the warmer months, there could be more of a welcoming commercial presence there like there is outdoors on the other side of City Hall around Quincy Market.
The renovation does help somewhat; I agree with other comments. Rarely down that way any longer. Used to work a few blocks from there.
deeg 1 days ago [-]
> The interior while very interesting architecturally is really quite... I dunno, soul sucking. I kind of love the aesthetic inside but only from a "wow this looks cool" perspective.
Totally agree with this. I enjoy walking through the interior and I like the building overall but I would hate working there.
pivo 1 days ago [-]
A friend worked there for years, she said different offices would either be far too hot or else freezing on the same day. There was never a comfortable room.
If the interior offices were kept clean and tidy, I can see how it could be kind of interesting in a retro-futuristic way. But given that these are government offices, they're often full of stacked cardboard boxes of files and other mess that ruins the look. At least the building doesn't have drop ceilings (at least as far as I recall.)
lambdaphagy 1 days ago [-]
If architectural beauty is subjective, that’s an even stronger argument for building stuff that broad majorities find pleasing instead of stuff designed by architects who write manifestos about how much they hate beauty.
lucidguppy 1 days ago [-]
Older structures cost more because they lasted longer and were more maintainable. Growth was given priority over tradition - and we've had to deal with the tradeoffs.
Spooky23 1 days ago [-]
There’s more to it than that. People were rejecting tradition. How many millions were slaughtered in WW1 and 2?
There was a feeling that it was time to discard the old and do something different.
Spooky23 1 days ago [-]
We don’t have skilled immigrant labor and the post WW2 boom made it difficult to win contracts with high quality building materials and artisans. The Hudson valley of New York had hundreds of brickyards until the 1950s and 60s. Bricks suck because they’re made in like two places, because construction is scaled and needs cheap materials.
There’s no good wood because wood < brick and we cut all of the trees down. So now the cheapest path is pumped concrete, so we build giant reinforced concrete and glass structures that will literally crumble in 70-100 years.
m0llusk 23 hours ago [-]
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.
rayiner 1 days ago [-]
Because architects went from building monuments to God and creation to building monuments to their own narcissism. Notre Dame (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Notre-Dame-de-Paris) was meant to be pleasing to God. And by implication, to man, because man was created in the image of God. Boston City Hall wasn't meant to be pleasing to anyone. It's more important to "make a statement" than to make something that is beautiful and uplifting.
tptacek 1 days ago [-]
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.
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_Revival_architecture
tptacek 23 hours ago [-]
As you obviously know, the Taj Mahal is a memorial to the empress consort to the Mughal emperor.
rayiner 16 hours ago [-]
Yes, but it’s design and memorialization to her are deeply intertwined with religious significance: http://counterlightsrantsandblather1.blogspot.com/2013/12/th... (“According to Muslim tradition on the Indian subcontinent, women who died in childbirth are regarded as saints. Shah Jahan had all the more reason to revere his beloved wife as a saint when she died giving birth to their fourteenth child. The design of the Taj Mahal reflects the legacy Shah Jahan wished to create for his deceased wife, not only as deceased royalty, but as a saint. Our experience of the Taj and its gardens is not only about grief for a beloved wife, but a foretaste of the paradise that awaits the righteous and a premonition of the final Day of Reckoning as it is described in the Quran.”)
It was built by people who feared God and wanted to build something lovely in his sight.
tptacek 16 hours ago [-]
You can't bullshit a bullshitter. I'm a practicing Catholic. We've been putting Jesus, Mary, and Exuperius of Toulouse on things for a millennium to Christian-wash monuments to vanity. The Taj Mahal is about the Mughal emperor's bae, not about Allah.
I'm not saying Notre-Dame de Paris is a monument to the ego of Pope Alexander III. But the Taj Mahal is not a monument to the glorification of God. You're not going to win this argument.
tolerance 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tptacek 14 hours ago [-]
Nah. The Taj Mahal was 100% an extravagance, built by the architect of the Peacock Throne. I stand by everything I wrote here, and every implication you might draw from it. I do not "conjecture", but rather assert, that these are expressions of narcisissm.
And, fine. Whatever. The Taj Mahal is cool. But try to host a Notre Dame football game there. You can't do it. Ad majorem Dei glorium.
---
(the drinking thing is weird, but I'm watching the A24 "Stop Making Sense", which reliably keys me up, so if you regard that as an intoxicant, govern yourself accordingly.)
tolerance 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tptacek 14 hours ago [-]
Weird, dude.
This is not a good architectural fight to pick! Even if I was oot mah chicken, I'm pretty sure I could defend the claim I made upthread about the Taj Mahal.
tolerance 13 hours ago [-]
Can’t a man who commissioned the construction of an approximately $24 million (roughly adjusted for inflation) bejeweled golden throne be the same man who is capable of expressing grief over the loss of perhaps the only other living being he ever loved (sure, I mean, perhaps because she posed no threat to the aforementioned throne) through the construction of a complex (comparatively less extravagant than the throne, in way that could argue on behalf of his modesty in his intent) in which is situated a masjid (a building which in and is of itself is waqf—a property free from corporeal possession) worthy (albeit not at all in need) of appreciation as a building that stands as part of a monument that exemplifies a beauty that transcends self-interests?
Maybe not.
But there’s other ways to go about expressing how this cannot be the case than by using vogue terminology that strips the issue of life or by viewing it through a lens skewed by one’s own criticisms against monuments to vanity attributed to their own faith or by what a person more astute in architecture than me may allege, an address against the Shah’s motives that distracts us from a historical context that is not at all unique to the topic at hand (the influence that religions had on the architecture of public spaces).
And for the record, a man leaves a trail of more than wit and foes when he has a nose for good debate.
tptacek 13 hours ago [-]
I want to rebut this but "adjusted for inflation" makes this argument so funny I don't think I can credibly come back at you. What am I supposed to say here? Well played.
Doric columns on all new civic construction! It is settled.
idlewords 21 hours ago [-]
The point of Notre Dame is to win football games.
tptacek 20 hours ago [-]
Notre Dame Stadium: a more practical building than Notre-Dame de Paris.
kasey_junk 19 hours ago [-]
Not been meeting the form lately if winning football is the goal.
wglb 17 hours ago [-]
I would say drawing crowds is the goal. The crowds that hope and maybe pray that wins manifest.
light_hue_1 1 days ago [-]
> In the 50 years since, architects worldwide have declared Kallmann and McKinnell’s City Hall one of the greatest buildings of the 20th century
I despise architecture as a field. This is widely reviled building. I work in a similar building that is extremely user hostile but beloved by architects; every single day, multiple times per day, we run into stupid limitations of the building. And it's particularly nasty for people with disabilities.
In engineering we care so much about the end user experience. In everything from building fridges, to roads, to HVAC systems, etc.
That these two people see this as a work of art, instead of a practical thing that humans need to interface with, and that the artistic nature of the building is more important than the people, is incredibly selfish.
Selfish and shameful.
bombcar 1 days ago [-]
Architects design what their clients want, and their clients want "a bold statement" because that looks good on the planning documents and photographs.
If you want a well-designed building that works for the users, you can find architects to design that. It just won't be as well known because it'll work and do what it needs to do without pissing people off.
fatnoah 1 days ago [-]
> That these two people see this as a work of art, instead of a practical thing that humans need to interface with
As a Boston resident that has had to conduct business at City Hall many times, I couldn't agree with this more. The lower level interior spaces are dark and somehow cavernous and confining at the same time, while the upstairs spaces are more of a warren of rooms and hallways. Nothing about walking in the front door makes you feel welcomed into the space. Either the actual use of the building was totally disregarded in its design, our our standards for how we expect to interact with buildings have dramatically changed since its construction.
oldpersonintx 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
7e 1 days ago [-]
This is the worst building that exists in Boston at present.
1 days ago [-]
Rendered at 20:42:48 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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 few blocks away - with these ridiculous stairways through a massive open space underneath an imposing bridge of offices.
Pure absurdist humor.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/KUFh9jFkERjhp7MK9
I'm reminded of the time I ended up crossing the Empire State Plaza in Albany once in the dead of winter. Such a horrid experience. Surrounded by soulless impersonal concrete with wind and snow blowing and howling. I felt like a freaking ant. It's not the type of architecture that inspires and uplifts in person. It psychologically oppresses and beats down.
Compare that to a place like Saint Peter's, which even as a non-Catholic almost took my breath away to experience in person.
Otherwise known as all architecture. In a past life I work in the entertainment industry: lots of late nights in venues like concert halls and occasional art galleries. All of them contain expensive architectural elements that serve no need other than to stoke the ego of their designers. Look behind the veil and you will see the rat's nest of engineering workarounds needed to keep these white elephants upright. Let the engineers draw a building's outline and it may be ugly, but at least it will have sufficient electrical connections, parking, and floor space.
I thought your comment was ridiculous at first until I realized that I agree.
Compare it to 28 State St, right next to it: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jjHpGGuPkxgjXiPT7
28 State St is kinda ugly, but bland and forgettable.
Boston City Hall is so hideous and frightening that people outside of Boston know about it. Its appearance is a recurring topic in the news. That is impressive.
The trend for many new college grads to strongly prefer cities is a relatively recent phenomenon.
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.
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.
https://www.sasaki.com/projects/boston-city-hall-plaza-renov...
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".
Statements like this always make me think about how the majority of americans believe that buildings can be haunted by spirits or demons or that ESP or telekinesis are real.
https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2018/10/16/paranormal-am...
I think we need to be honest about the low merit of appealing to how well the average person's brain works.
The building itself is stunning. Look at every ground-level photo of it ever taken that doesn't include the plaza. But the feeling of standing next to the building has always been devastated by the blight of the plaza, and people are mostly incapable of separating the two. It only feels ominous looming conspicuously over a barren wasteland.
This has been quite improved relatively recently by plaza renovation (https://www.sasaki.com/projects/boston-city-hall-plaza-renov...), but that project was only completed at the tail end of 2022 so most people who have capital O "Opinions" about the building have never actually seen it in a less blighted context.
Think of it like being a fan of 486 PCs or pixel art.
I do hate this architecture, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowellism
It's especially amusing that Boston City Hall is within a stone's throw of the only block that survived the fire of 1872 and throws a shadow over Faneuil Hall.
It’s interesting (and sad) to imagine what Boston could have been like without the damage of urban renewal. These neighborhoods could have easily become the quaint North Ends people love today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_End,_Boston
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scollay_Square
It’s also eye opening to realize the extent of their plans that didn’t get done:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_695_(Massachusett...
This document is a fascinating read: https://archive.org/details/westendprojectre00bost/page/n79/...
Comparing what they proposed vs what resulted is very interesting.
Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) grew up in that neighborhood
There's plenty of brutalist architecture around Boston and Cambridge, though none is as pronounced as city hall, in its massive open square, which in winter keenly acts as a powerful wind tunnel to smite those who would walk through the plaza.
Europe's eco-brutalist buildings are gorgeous. [1] [2]
Boston City Hall's problem is the windy open plaza. The building stands as the only imposing mass in that area. If there were trees and other shelter, one could admire it. But as it stands today, it intimidates.
All that being said, positives changes are happening. Cop slide is definitely one of Boston's must see attractions.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2024/may/11...
[2] https://www.archdaily.com/958637/uncovering-the-hidden-gems-...
Anything built within the last ten years is, of course, LEED-chic - the building is a glass box.
https://nowiknow.com/the-curious-problem-with-mits-tallest-b...
What do they all have in common? A sense of humanity. Why would we build a civic building that lacks that very thing?
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.
Most relevant: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/making-architecture-easy/
The big idea is that some art styles are easy to appreciate without training and some aren't, and we probably shouldn't be making public architecture that's hard for members of the public to appreciate. Similarly atonal music isn't objectively bad, I often like it, but I recognize that it isn't appropriate to use in civic functions.
Well.. first start by defining "beautiful", we're waiting. Also, it's a 50 year old structure.. we stopped building "nice" things after WW2 mostly because costs were astronomical and new materials and engineering opened up all kinds of avenues for more modern construction.
I've spent decent amount of time in and around Boston City Hall, the biggest problem with the building are:
1. The plaza in front of it is a damn wasteland. So much could be improved by building over the plaza and reestablishing the street grid here properly.
2. The Congress Street side facing Faneuil Hall is a concrete wall and a garage entrance. You probably can't fix the garage problem easily but the concrete wall with a proper structural engineer could probably reopened up.. of course, it would be expensive.
3. The interior while very interesting architecturally is really quite... I dunno, soul sucking. I kind of love the aesthetic inside but only from a "wow this looks cool" perspective.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/No...
https://wmf.imgix.net/images/70_hero_image.jpg?auto=format,c...
Hundreds of years later, most people from completely disparate cultures find these buildings beautiful.
Inside the NBA was held live there recently, Boston Calling (the only largish music festival in the area) started there.
There’s obviously no massive outdoor parking lot in downtown Boston, and it would be a shame to have packed crowds trample over the common.
2. Agreed regarding the Congress St side, though the added playground from [1] adds some interest to that side (before the solid brick wall part).
3. Agreed with the interior. Something like just changing the flooring or interesting lighting would make it feel less cold. The floor is either brick (I assume an homage to Boston's brick) or terracotta tile. As a very rare visitor inside, it's kinda fun to see how the decor/lighting/infrastructure works with all concrete (hanging things from the ceiling instead of nailing to a wall, for example)
[1] https://www.sasaki.com/projects/boston-city-hall-plaza-renov...
There are nice parks in the area but they're not exactly delightful in the cold weather months either.
I don’t personally see this a good reason at all.
The US had a good run building neoclassical government buildings in the spitting image of the Romans and Greeks, and we already know that when properly done the aesthetic will stand the test of time for thousands of years.
As far as the improved materials argument that’s up for debate too. Will Boston City Hall be standing in 2,000 years? If I could put money on it I’d say it’s more likely to end up in a landfill.
All this could be prevented with sacrificial applications of stucco, but brutalist architects insist on keeping the concrete bare. It takes a lot of work to keep a building like that from crumbling under these conditions, and city hall is not loved enough to get the work done.
The renovation does help somewhat; I agree with other comments. Rarely down that way any longer. Used to work a few blocks from there.
Totally agree with this. I enjoy walking through the interior and I like the building overall but I would hate working there.
If the interior offices were kept clean and tidy, I can see how it could be kind of interesting in a retro-futuristic way. But given that these are government offices, they're often full of stacked cardboard boxes of files and other mess that ruins the look. At least the building doesn't have drop ceilings (at least as far as I recall.)
There was a feeling that it was time to discard the old and do something different.
There’s no good wood because wood < brick and we cut all of the trees down. So now the cheapest path is pumped concrete, so we build giant reinforced concrete and glass structures that will literally crumble in 70-100 years.
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.
Ironically, the other example of a good building you've provided in this thread, the Taj Mahal, is in fact a monument to narcissism.
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_Revival_architecture
It was built by people who feared God and wanted to build something lovely in his sight.
I'm not saying Notre-Dame de Paris is a monument to the ego of Pope Alexander III. But the Taj Mahal is not a monument to the glorification of God. You're not going to win this argument.
And, fine. Whatever. The Taj Mahal is cool. But try to host a Notre Dame football game there. You can't do it. Ad majorem Dei glorium.
---
(the drinking thing is weird, but I'm watching the A24 "Stop Making Sense", which reliably keys me up, so if you regard that as an intoxicant, govern yourself accordingly.)
This is not a good architectural fight to pick! Even if I was oot mah chicken, I'm pretty sure I could defend the claim I made upthread about the Taj Mahal.
Maybe not.
But there’s other ways to go about expressing how this cannot be the case than by using vogue terminology that strips the issue of life or by viewing it through a lens skewed by one’s own criticisms against monuments to vanity attributed to their own faith or by what a person more astute in architecture than me may allege, an address against the Shah’s motives that distracts us from a historical context that is not at all unique to the topic at hand (the influence that religions had on the architecture of public spaces).
And for the record, a man leaves a trail of more than wit and foes when he has a nose for good debate.
Doric columns on all new civic construction! It is settled.
I despise architecture as a field. This is widely reviled building. I work in a similar building that is extremely user hostile but beloved by architects; every single day, multiple times per day, we run into stupid limitations of the building. And it's particularly nasty for people with disabilities.
In engineering we care so much about the end user experience. In everything from building fridges, to roads, to HVAC systems, etc.
That these two people see this as a work of art, instead of a practical thing that humans need to interface with, and that the artistic nature of the building is more important than the people, is incredibly selfish.
Selfish and shameful.
If you want a well-designed building that works for the users, you can find architects to design that. It just won't be as well known because it'll work and do what it needs to do without pissing people off.
As a Boston resident that has had to conduct business at City Hall many times, I couldn't agree with this more. The lower level interior spaces are dark and somehow cavernous and confining at the same time, while the upstairs spaces are more of a warren of rooms and hallways. Nothing about walking in the front door makes you feel welcomed into the space. Either the actual use of the building was totally disregarded in its design, our our standards for how we expect to interact with buildings have dramatically changed since its construction.