The great medieval cathedrals, the sculptor Auguste Rodin wrote, are built on “the principle of living bodies,” the bodily harmony that results from “the counterbalancing of masses that move.” The Jenga building — its suggestion of unbalanced mass — throws off my own sense of balance. It does more than disrupt the skyline — it disrupts the relationship of my body to the earth.
Meanwhile,
Jenga-style buildings are a thing — there are examples in New York, Austin, and Vancouver, and more on the way. (BU prefers comparison to a stack of books.) Andrew Witt, an associate professor in practice of architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, said in an e-mail that the building “invites you to see it in the round” and lauded the spiral arrangement of those Jenga blocks. “Together,” he wrote, “the shuffled volumes, spiral twist, and shimmering facade allow the building to show many faces to the city, creating an effect that is both rational and elusive.”
OK, so maybe I’ll get used to — or even learn to love — BU’s new building. When I recently took a walk around the building, I was surprised to find it less imposing from the sidewalk and not nearly as unsettling. I took in the play of light on its reflective surfaces, the alternating patterns of verticals and diagonals. It was dazzling. So maybe Boston’s most spectacular new building will also someday not be its scariest.
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