Paul Rudolph's Government Services Center

Can someone please make this mess of a building disappear! Hey, Samantha, we need some nose twitching down here! 😉

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What was the justification for those vertical slabs that block views both left-and-right and up-and-down? (eg. passive solar? creating intimacy?) I worry that they're just pure "suck it up, users, I think it looks cool."
 
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Source. Some beautiful drawings and renderings on that site.

I will say, this would be a great building anywhere except a downtown location. The general form of the building makes it hard to approach from the street by design. Even if you try to open it up at the ground level, it will be difficult to make it feel 'right,' IMO.


Edit: More:

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I'd argue that this suffers the same problem most monumental architecture of time suffered from, namely plazas for the sake of plazas. These architects were trying to model these buildings after the plazas of Italy but on a completely different and wrong scale. If you had built this without also demolishing the West End then the plazas would have seen more use since they would be needed. But when every massive super block has undefined open space then it becomes useless. That said I still think some kind of middle ground could be found here. The building doesn't have to be so inhuman if the street level was opened up and much of the plaza space was built out.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
I'd argue that this suffers the same problem most monumental architecture of time suffered from, namely plazas for the sake of plazas. These architects were trying to model these buildings after the plazas of Italy but on a completely different and wrong scale. If you had built this without also demolishing the West End then the plazas would have seen more use since they would be needed. But when every massive super block has undefined open space then it becomes useless. That said I still think some kind of middle ground could be found here. The building doesn't have to be so inhuman if the street level was opened up and much of the plaza space was built out.
Click to expand...

I revisited the renders this morning and came to the conclusion that, given a good amount of work, you could possibly open this up and make it work. If possible, it appears you may be able to enter from street level, albeit likely up a few steps, through the tall, almost cathedral-like open air lobby and onto a plaza that could host retail, food stands, public interior spaces, pop up shops, etc. Some suggestive landscaping and streetscape design could draw people up and into the building, if done right. It appears it would be a 2-level plaza, which might be reaching into plazas for the sake of plazas territory, but if this were to no longer serve a governmental/institutional purpose, you might be able to attract enough retail, residential and office (on top of the upper level plaza), etc. to activate both levels.

My thought process illustrated through a horrid paint drawing:
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This could arguably end up being more 'interactive/porous' than most buildings today, with people entering/passing through the building rather than just entering storefronts or eating on the sidewalk in front.
 
stefal said:
I revisited the renders this morning and came to the conclusion that, given a good amount of work, you could possibly open this up and make it work. If possible, it appears you may be able to enter from street level, albeit likely up a few steps, through the tall, almost cathedral-like open air lobby and onto a plaza that could host retail, food stands, public interior spaces, pop up shops, etc. Some suggestive landscaping and streetscape design could draw people up and into the building, if done right. It appears it would be a 2-level plaza, which might be reaching into plazas for the sake of plazas territory, but if this were to no longer serve a governmental/institutional purpose, you might be able to attract enough retail, residential and office (on top of the upper level plaza), etc. to activate both levels.

My thought process illustrated through a horrid paint drawing:
View attachment 1926

This could arguably end up being more 'interactive/porous' than most buildings today, with people entering/passing through the building rather than just entering storefronts or eating on the sidewalk in front.
Click to expand...

The courtyard in that rendering is a full floor above street level. It's an unused space on the Mezzanine level of the Lindemann building. The closest sidewalk would be the one that runs in front of the surface parking lot (nee "plaza") at the intersection of Staniford and Merrimac. It's impossible to improve access or make it porous without adding new stairs, or heavily modifying the set you see rendered which is a major architectural feature of the building.

That said, there are still things that could be done to make it more porous. Adding ramps (or an elevator) to the Plaza level (what's rendered there above/to the right of the courtyard) and renovating/reopening the stairs would be a welcome improvement encouraging people to pass through. It'd would allow pedestrians a more direct path to the opposite side of the mega block (Cambridge/New Chardon) than they currently have. That would certainly get some use.
 
You could have put x1000's of persons within walking distance of these plazas........
wait, we're now doing that....
skating rink n foodies--faded quick.
foreboding, drab, hostile--you see the same nil usage, today.
 
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Looking at these renders makes me realize again how traumatized America was from WW II. These look like sheer madness to me.
 
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