Ode to Brutalism

Bird’s Eye Brutalism
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kz1000ps said:
1975 rendering of the Lahey Hospital's new campus out in Burlington... sharing not so much because the architecture is noteworthy but more for the mood that a black and white rendering of an institutional behemoth as filtered through a gritty, faded newspaper print can create. IMO it doesn't get much more big, bad brutalist seventies than this

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From Burlington Retro
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Why would you want a hospital of all things to look so menacing and uninviting?

Government buildings I can understand, but not this.
 
Blackbird said:
Why would you want a hospital of all things to look so menacing and uninviting?

Government buildings I can understand, but not this.
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Maybe that's why it wasn't approved the first time it was brought up at Town Meeting in the early 70s (though a lot of opposition at the time was due to local support for Woburn's Choate Hospital and Winchester Hospital.. In the end, it didn't end up looking a whole like that. It was a just as bland, but turned out to be a somewhat symmetrical, less menacing building built into the hillside (a good change from many hospitals which are the result of add-ons and end up with very confusing floor plans. When it was expanded in the 90s, the extension built-the third segment, closest to 128 with the void underneath and signage- looked like it was built with the original two segment building). Burlington Retro, by the way, is one of the better local history sites I've seen.
 
BTW, the newly elected Mayor of Boston loves City Hall. Let her know if you want a tour...
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I still think the plaza is the major offender and the building would be better complemented by a well-designed one, and I love Sasaki's work, but fear we won't see something that helps the building.
 
Beton Brut said:
For anyone interested in hard modernism while scratching their SvV itch…
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Hm, that's an oddly reasonable, informative, and engaging piece by him--at least, as compared to the snarky, bile-drenched nothingburgers, strewn with gratuitous potshots,* he spewed out while at B&T.

To be fair, his targets at that time--the BPDA/Menino Administration/exasperatingly NIMBYite suburban zoning boards--were immensely deserving of the criticism. But the way he did it was so vapidly "hot take", devoid of informed research/argumentation, as to make the pieces hate-reads and perfect examples of how "not to do it."


*(almost as bad as Howie Carr in that regard, perhaps)
 
As has been said by several on AB before, brutalism took a bad rap in Boston because of its accidental association with the carpet-bombing 1960s urban renewal Government Center project. It's necessary to separate out City Hall from its unfortunate setting in a vast empty plaza gouged out of a once vibrant city core area.
 
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St Paul's Lutheran, Route 2 Hilltop, Arlington has this little brutalist/modernist gem on the original "Concord Turnpike" street which nobody sees ever since the expressway Route 2 cut through the hilltop and the old street became an access road
(on the North/Arlington side of Rt 2, opposite the Mormon Temple; map linked below)

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(from Google Streetview)

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Arlington said:
St Paul's Lutheran, Route 2 Hilltop, Arlington has this little brutalist/modernist gem on the original "Concord Turnpike" street which nobody sees ever since the expressway Route 2 cut through the hilltop and the old street became an access road (on the North/Arlington side of Rt 2, opposite the Mormon Temple; map linked below)
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Concrete ages horribly in this climate, with a lot of drainage related staining. Painting old concrete has worked well on the remaining section of the GC Garage. I'd recommend it on St Paul's Lutheran as well but with a lighter color. Here's the painted portion of the GC Garage (photo by Beeline):

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