Boston architecture: Moving beyond the bay windows
The Springstep Building in Medford is almost entirely glass on one side, enabling passers by to glimpse the activity inside.
Boston Business Journal - January 26, 2007
by Joyce Pellino Crane - Special to the Journal
The newly built Institute of Contemporary Art was touted at its December opening as a dramatic departure from Boston's traditional architectural style -- a unique modern structure among what some call classic and others term stodgy.
"We don't have enough truly unique architecture," said Wayne Koch, principal of ADD Inc., "and we tend to be conservative in our outlook in what's acceptable here."
Love 'em or hate 'em, nontraditional buildings generate strong emotions in Boston's architects, who are acutely aware of the pride taken in the neoclassical styles of Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival so prevalent in this region.
The Boston Business Journal recently asked a few Boston-area architects to list what they consider unique, offbeat or non-traditional styles throughout Greater Boston. Amidst brick and slate, concrete and cobblestone, there's a growing list of buildings that twist to the left or step to the right and generally don't fit the standard look of brick and slate.
Among them is the Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center at Wellesley College, designed by Mack Scoggin Merrill Elam Architects of Atlanta. The building won the 2006 Harleston Parker Medal, which honors aesthetically pleasing buildings constructed within the past 10 years in the Greater Boston area.
"Wellesley (College) has such a rich historic campus of buildings that are slate and brick and precast sandstone," said Robert Brown, Principal of Boston-based CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares Inc. "These are very traditional materials. Very rooted in the English side of New England."
But the new student center, said Brown, uses those traditional materials in different ways, with slate on the walls, copper downspouts and flashing, and "brick as a thin skin instead of masonry bearing."
"If you're a traditionalist," he said, "you might wonder what it is. It's not a building that has a natural order. It's balanced, but not in a symmetrical, geometric way."
The Institute of Contemporary Art, located on Fan Pier in Boston was designed by the New York architectural firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro. Its fourth-story cantilever extends to the water's edge.
A sense of history
Designing a building in New England presents challenges that go beyond weather conditions and spatial limitations. The emotional connection to the region's history sometimes limits creativity, say architects, and leads to modified designs even for the area's most imaginative structures and the world's most creative architects.
For Brown, the building that springs to mind as truly unique is the Ray and Maria Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Designed by world renowned architect Frank Gehry, the jarring angles, bright colors and varied textures are mixed with a brick front and popping bay windows that are designed to surprise as well as comfort, because they are similar in style to those used in the Back Bay's brownstone townhouses.
Compared to other buildings designed by Gehry, said Koch, the Stata is relatively staid, suggesting that the architect toned down his creativity to connect some elements to Boston tradition.
"What we view as being totally ecstatic and exuberant may be relatively tame compared to what's happening in other places," Koch said. "I would contend that the buildings we think are unique, like the Stata Center, are much more conservative pieces than what that architect has done (elsewhere in country)."
Beyond Boston
Though buildings in Boston and Cambridge fall under the spotlight, suburban locations are adding more nouveau styles to the mix.
Architect Hubert Murray of Hubert Murray Architect & Planner in Cambridge pointed to downtown Medford as a study in contrasts from traditional to inspirational. The city hall is a stone's throw from the newly constructed Springstep, a center for community participation in dance and music.
"Medford City Hall is quite a nice building and now it's got a fairly close neighbor," he said, "but the relationship between the two buildings is acres of black top and parking."
The Springstep "neighbor" was designed by Andrew Cohen Architects of Wayland. Murray called it "a beautiful diamond in the rough," because it sits next to Interstate 93 and its surrounded by "an architectural desert" of asphalt.
According to the Springstep organization's Web site, "the building is almost entirely glass on one side, allowing passersby to glimpse the activity inside. It is crowned by a sweeping, 2 1/2-story atrium."
For Roger Shepley, principal of Dyer/Brown & Associates of Boston, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University is unique because it was a replica of a villa in Italy, and the Carpenter Center by Le Corbusier, of Switzerland, completed at Harvard in 1964, is also unusual, he added.
"Like the Stata Building," said Shepley, The Carpenter Center "is a major signature building by an architect who is one of the most famous architects in the world and it is completely different from every building around it."
On the back side of Beacon Hill is the "quirky" State Health Education and Welfare Services building that, like Boston City Hall, was built in the Brutalist style, said Shepley.
Though not widely loved, according to Shepley, the building is notable because its style matches that of City Hall's, which has generated a great deal of comment lately in the wake of Mayor Thomas Menino's announced intention to move the municipal offices to South Boston.
Saying some outsiders view Boston's architecture as stodgy, Brown speculated that the region's unique buildings are getting built because some of their financial supporters come from outside of Boston.
"There's a likelihood that the money coming for these buildings is from a donor whose saying, 'let's play more, let's be creative, let's find a more interesting piece of work,'" he said. "It may be why these buildings stand out so much."