If we want to argue about Joe & Jane Sixpack's revulsion to modern architecture (or non-objectivist painting, serial music, conceptual art, Dadaism, etc) let's begin at the beginning: Taste (and understanding, and value, and passion) begins at home, and later (if you're lucky) at school...Most folks in New England live in homes that mimic the vernacular of America's antiquity (really not a very long time ago at all)...Consider as an example, there are only three Wright homes in Massachusetts and New Hampshire combined (I'm not sure, but I think there are six in Connecticut, but all are around New Canaan/Ridgefield)...
People are most comforted by what they know -- Wright, Eicher, Lautner, Neutra, Elwood, Eames, Rudolph and even poor old Hugh Stubbins are unknown to most folks because these guys didn't do Capes, Georgians, and Colonials (Most of these architects are identified with the West Coast, but hopefully you catch my drift)...
Show most people a photo of a Usonian home, and they'll think it's a gas station...I'm not making a value judgment about their morals or their cognitive abilities...I am, however, making a stern judgment about what we teach (and fail to teach)...People spend their lives in a built environment (home, school, workplace, retail spaces, public buildings, concert halls, museums, stadia) -- it's sad that their frame of reference is left to chance...How often is architecture mentioned in high school civics or history classes? Understanding what we build (and why it looks the way it does) is a critical part of our understanding society -- can we at least agree on that?
The Masses (in and beyond Boston) dislike hard Modernism (concrete, exposed metal, rough surfaces, sharp edges) because it doesn't look like where they live or where they grew up (and no one's ever had a conversation with them about issues of design, urban planning, etc)...With a "difficult" building like City Hall, I'm not certain how we can help its detractors see the value of the building (and there a numerous problems to be solved for the building to work right)...I love the City Hall because it's forthright in its expression of structure (I wish it's inhabitants were so blessed) and it uses its principal material (concrete) with a sense of striving muscularity...
As an alternative, we could implode the building with great pomp and ceremony and erect a giant wood-frame three-decker and call that City Hall...
