City Hall Discussion - Redevelopment - Preservation - Relocation

I dont get why they cant just bulldoze it, start over, and then sell some of the 6 billion acres of brick nothingness for development. They need to stop looking at ways to dress this thing up and just start over. Its gonna cost a shit ton to make this thing somewhat decent, so we should just use that money on a restart.
 
9 year old thread and city hall plaza still looks the same.
 
How about we offer a competition for local university architecture/design students to design us a replacement-with a grand prize of some sort to the winner. The public could vote to designate the winning design, and we could pressure the city to build it. Maybe even incorporate it into a grand new (public/private) Back Bay tower..."City Hall Tower" could become the tallest building in the city, because of less stringent FAA height restrictions. Maybe it could jumpstart a Back Bay Station project....the upper floor office (+residential/retail/hotel/space?) would generate income for the city.....current city hall can then be torn down and the valuable chunk of land be sold to a developer...... We CAN fight city hall!
 
Not sure how profound a change he's going for here, given that he wants to select an alternative in a year...

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2015/11/03/boston.html

http://rethinkcityhall.org/

That said, this is what I like to hear:

"Areas of focus include the disposition of city-owned real estate, public/private partnerships, and conventional capital project funding sources."
Click to expand...

They keep mentioning realigning real estate. Probably more likely to mean selling parts of the plaza, but they don't sound like they're ruling out the move/tear-down approach.
 
Blow this up and do a redesign. This city deserves better and I'd love to see this building inspired by the city's history.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Fuck the haters.
Click to expand...

I dislike city hall and city hall plaza, but it has a lot more potential as-is with an overhaul and updates than with any "grand vision" for a complete redesign. The blank slate approach is how we got City Hall and a demolished West End in the first place. Much better and more realistic to add to and refine what we have.
 
Did anyone else attend the talk at the Boston Book Festival about this new book on Heroic (Brutalist) architecture in the Boston region? It was really fascinating. Great book too.

http://www.amazon.com/Heroic-Concrete-Architecture-New-Boston/dp/1580934242

One thing I learned was that City Hall on the Congress St side has no windows or doors along the base except for the entrance because Congress St at that point in time was essentially planned to be a highway (little or no pedestrian activity.)
 
Couldn't they build a new city hall along Cambridge St and then sell the rest of the plaza off for development? If they got creative the city could probably have a brand new city hall for free.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Fuck the haters.
Click to expand...

Sure, but the haters are under no obligation to acquiesce to an extremely small subset of individuals who somehow see redeeming quality in an otherwise universally hated structure, and especially when taxpayer dollars are involved.
 
HalcyonEra said:
Sure, but the haters are under no obligation to acquiesce to an extremely small subset of individuals who somehow see redeeming quality in an otherwise universally hated structure, and especially when taxpayer dollars are involved.
Click to expand...

Halcyon -- while some are haters some are lovers

I was looking at a particularly obnoxious mansionization in my neighborhood in Lexington and I met a gentleman and wife who were also looking at it and making critical comments

We started talking about the new houses in the neighborhood and also the NEW HOUSES in the neighborhood [aka Peacock Farm and 6 Moon Hill] it turned out that he had worked with Kallmann McKinnell and Knowles [City Hall] and later Kallmann McKinnell and Wood [Back Bay Station and Hynes Auditorium redo]

He still loves City Hall
 
whighlander said:
Halcyon -- while some are haters some are lovers

I was looking at a particularly obnoxious mansionization in my neighborhood in Lexington and I met a gentleman and wife who were also looking at it and making critical comments

We started talking about the new houses in the neighborhood and also the NEW HOUSES in the neighborhood [aka Peacock Farm and 6 Moon Hill] it turned out that he had worked with Kallmann McKinnell and Knowles [City Hall] and later Kallmann McKinnell and Wood [Back Bay Station and Hynes Auditorium redo]

He still loves City Hall
Click to expand...

I get what you are saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Admittedly, I will never understand brutalism, just as I will never like stucco structures or brown buildings. My point is that as an important civic space in the central city, a deficient structure in dire need of modernization is destined for "insensitive renovation" as the authors of the book like to put it, because if restoration is chosen the building screams for additional natural light which of course would likely radically change the appearance, much to the chagrin of those who love it.

On the other hand, government also owes the taxpayers respect in so far as the projects they do decide to fund (an outdated belief I realize, and oftentimes (usually) ignored), so selling the property to build a new city hall also has to be considered. That said, I don't think selling and moving will be the end result and I think that retrofitting it will be, as economically inefficient as that may be.

Even the most ardent supporters must admit that the building in its current condition has outlived its useful life, just as the old city did.
 
HalcyonEra said:
Even the most ardent supporters must admit that the building in its current condition has outlived its useful life, just as the old city did.
Click to expand...

Moving back to the old city hall would be about the only good alternative. A Boston City Hall in the information age needs less space for offices and centralized file cabinets surrounded by paper pushers, so they certainly could fit essential city hall functions back in the old Boston City Hall.

They can shuffle all the paperwork to the archives and make room for a better civic space in whatever city hall they end up with.

And move more neighborhood centered city services to buildings that are actually in the neighborhoods.
 
Is it really that hard to have the best of both worlds?... Keep City Hall, clean it a little, and put 3 sleek skyscrapers around it.

You're welcome.
 
type001 said:
Is it really that hard to have the best of both worlds?... Keep City Hall, clean it a little, and put 3 sleek skyscrapers around it.

You're welcome.
Click to expand...

Type -- I like the idea of adding a couple of stories of glass tent on top of the existing building much like the transformation of the old Federal Reserve Bank into the Langham Hotel

At the same time redo of the internals in particular the courtyard into new civic space -- much as the redo of the New Statehouse closed in a courtyard and made a very nice and functional new hall

Best approach would be to move into rented space for the 2 or 3 years it would take to remake the building for the 21st Century -- while Ugly and Brutal -- it does have a certain Cache or at least a -- je ne sais quoi :cool:

At the same time I'd knock down the JFK low-rise and build something productive there

Although the real opportunities for building BIG in the immediate Government Center area are are:
  • the Paul Rudolph disaster of the Charles F. Hurley Building and the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center Complex
  • or the equally space wasting Tip O'neill Federal Building at North Station
 
It's not so much the buildings themselves, which are ugly in any case.

It's more the entire setting of the superblocks, wide setbacks and vast plazas, plus the ugly building(s), which presents an ugly, anti-urban, and dysfunctional hole in the city.
 
Charlie_mta said:
It's not so much the buildings themselves, which are ugly in any case.

It's more the entire setting of the superblocks, wide setbacks and vast plazas, plus the ugly building(s), which presents an ugly, anti-urban, and dysfunctional hole in the city.
Click to expand...

I think government center plaza has done well. Lots of events are held there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top