What I hate about Boston
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statler
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Security guards often get their panties in a twist about indoor photography. I will bring my camera in Monday and see what I can do. Some of it is viewable from the street.
Here a poor description:
In the Franklin St foyer the walls were covered with very ornate brass panels with large raised intricate brass reliefs attached. The brass panels were removed and replaced with dark wood paneling (very now) and the reliefs were put back in place sans context.
Honestly it not a terrible look, unless you know what was there before.
Thankfully, they left the outside of the building alone, except for some signage (which matches 101 but not 75) and replacing the odd-looking terracotta colored window frames with ugly brown ones.
Here a poor description:
In the Franklin St foyer the walls were covered with very ornate brass panels with large raised intricate brass reliefs attached. The brass panels were removed and replaced with dark wood paneling (very now) and the reliefs were put back in place sans context.
Honestly it not a terrible look, unless you know what was there before.
Thankfully, they left the outside of the building alone, except for some signage (which matches 101 but not 75) and replacing the odd-looking terracotta colored window frames with ugly brown ones.
kz1000ps
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tobyjug said:
I don't mind that building, partly because its plaza is actually useful, and also because it's small enough that it's easy to overlook. No doubt what was there before was infinitely more honorable, but all things considered, it's OK.
When built, that building was thought a minor masterpiece. It was so fresh and new looking! And it had trick detailing taht made it dernier cri. It got old and its style went out of fashion.
That often happens when you're so up-to-date: you stay perpetually up-to-date --with the date when you designed your building.
Striving to be timeless keeps you in fashion longer --maybe even forever if you really know how to be timeless. Consult Palladio and Wright for lessons. Oh ... that's commonly done already.
czsz
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Didn't they think of Adam-style country houses the same way? Palladio? I think you need to reach for explanations other than "being too up to date".
Style is cyclical. People used to right-mindedly criticize Penn Station for being overbearingly garish. These beliefs change.
Style is cyclical. People used to right-mindedly criticize Penn Station for being overbearingly garish. These beliefs change.
That's right; that's why we need to drop our obsession with style and modernity, its alter ego. All it does is make most architects ineffective.
Beton Brut
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Most architects should be content to be good followers, since they lack the genius to truly innovate. What kind of an army would you have if everyone were a general?
If you study and master a style, you're at least assured visual competence. If the style you master yields art only to a genius' efforts, you've picked the wrong style to study --unless you're a genius.
Gehry, Meier, Rudolph, Foster, Calatrava, Nouvel: they're all OK with modernism. But if your IQ's below 140, you're better off with a manner that has had a few centuries' development to keep the egg off your face.
If you study and master a style, you're at least assured visual competence. If the style you master yields art only to a genius' efforts, you've picked the wrong style to study --unless you're a genius.
Gehry, Meier, Rudolph, Foster, Calatrava, Nouvel: they're all OK with modernism. But if your IQ's below 140, you're better off with a manner that has had a few centuries' development to keep the egg off your face.
statler
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How is architectural IQ determined?
Who gets to separate the generals from the followers?
Was there anything that Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles had done prior that would have led us to believe they were capable of something like City Hall?
(I'm not challenging you, I'm genuinely curious)
Who gets to separate the generals from the followers?
Was there anything that Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles had done prior that would have led us to believe they were capable of something like City Hall?
(I'm not challenging you, I'm genuinely curious)
czsz
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Drop modernity, yes, style, not so much. If you have a world of "generals and followers", how does one choose whom to follow without some sense of the style one wants to work in - and some theory of why it is superior/one's own?
(The "generals and followers" argument reminds me of David Brooks' recent column in praise of individuals subordinating themselves to institutions. The idea is not new; it's derived from Burke - but the weakness is that fully "subordinate" individuals are prevented from shifting allegiances - and, more importantly, as Thomas Paine pointed out, prevented from forging new institutions when the times legitimately call out for them.)
kennedy
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Alright, way to absolutely crush my dream, suffocate my creativity, and assassinate any hope I have. I don't have an IQ of 140. So now I can't be a great architect? I can't create innovative architecture, ever, because I'm not smart enough? Since my left-brain isn't MIT material, my right-brain is F-ing useless?
Back to style. Ablarc, it seems to me you propose eradicating all innovation and progress in architecture, because it's too trendy. You sound like my mother decorating her kitchen, for chrissakes. Alright, so if all architects (except a minor few geniuses) decide to only follow in the footsteps of our forefathers, we end up with a solid design, but what are the architects there for? Why should they exist? Who's to say that Home Depot won't just come up with software that allows you to build your own house (in the conservative style), and it gets built? Architects (unless you're a genius) replaced by computers. Great. Now we'll really some interesting work in Boston.
My plan, for now, is to go to school for architecture and get my masters. When I work for a firm (or have my own firm, fingers crossed) I want to design super stylish, functional, and flashy architecture (design in general). However, I want it to last. I want a building to last, and not be a piece in a museum after 20 years. That's the challenge with modern architecture/design-styles that break barriers, and remain stylish for generations.
tobyjug
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The plaza, while usually dark, is not awful. The facade between the elevator/utility shafts that bracket it is dated, but in and of itself, not awful.
For me, at least, the wheels come off because of two features. 1) The wholesale destruction of Kingston Street street wall that the creation of the service entrance brought, as depicted in the photos posted above. Thus at least two superior buildings were lost, and it is unlikely that the Kingston Street hole will ever be filled. 2) The exceedingly poor relationship that the elevator shaft/blank walls bear to the adjoining buildings on Summer and Chauncey Streets. In one respect, these awful spaces are the precursors of the great black void on the back of the Province Street tower. Yet in another, they are far worse: while the void is redolent of cutting corners and sloppy thinking, the blank bookends are vanity made granitic. "Hey look at me! I'm new and special, not like those crappy old buildings that surround me."
No such thing as "architectural IQ". General intelligence is scientifically determined by testing, and informally by observation. Some folks are smarter than others. The smartest are actually able to conceive something wholly new. Did you ever wonder how Einstein was able to make the conceptual leap that brought him to E=mc2? Or how Brunelleschi discovered the mathematics of perspective?
Formally, no one of course. In fact, each architect chooses his course. If he makes the wrong choice, reality corrects him. If you don't have the talent to win at Wimbledon, you become a tennis coach.
Kallmann is a deep thinker whose ruminations reminded me of Kahn. McKinnell is an obsessed zealot (hope he doesn't read this). A nice combination: in this case, the partners formed a whole that would have eluded either individually.
statler
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So you are saying the problem eventually corrects itself, but we are still left with a bunch of bad architecture.
Though I'm not not sure the tennis analogy quite follows through. In sprts you win or lose. You lose enough you don't get to play anymore (professionally).
In architecture, you can be a bad architect is still have a full career designing bad buildings.
You put the onus on architects to be honest with themselves about their skill level. Probably your most wide-eyed pipe dream yet.
But yeah, it would solve a lot of our problems.No way.
Copying is what's trendy; genuine innovation creates trends among the copyists.
Problem is, today's innovators unleash trends so difficult that the copyists can't acquit themselves honorably.
When Richardson unleashed the Romanesque Revival, by contrast, his emulators were able to produce decent products, because the style was inherently rich and interesting even when applied by the modestly-talented. The same is true of Gothic Revival, which is always satisfying, and classical architecture, which produces unsatisfactory results only if it's applied without a knowledge of its rules.
Notice I didn't say "adherence" to its rules; you don't have to adhere to the rules, just know them well enough so you're clearly aware when you're taking them to a level of genuine innovation --or can appreciate that you can't because of your creative limitations.
Anyone who knows classical architecture can tell when an architect doesn't --just as you can tell when a musician plays a sour note. That doesn't mean you're forbidden to use dissonance creatively; in fact, you can use all twelve-tones to make music that an unsophisticate might regard as all wrong notes. But here too it helps to be a genius. It's much harder to make music that most folks like with a tone row than with conventional harmony.
Modernism is like that tone row; you can afflict the public with it if it's anything less than superb, whereas classical or gothic architecture is OK or better, even when it's not of the first rank.
To assure we end up with that solid design. That's really all we want or need 99 times out of 100. Who would want the North End to consist entirely of innovative works of genius? It would be monstrous.
A version of this already exists, but the architects aren't replaced by the computers; they operate the computers. There's still plenty of professional know-how privy to architects about such matters as spatial organization, structure and function.
Consider mastering the Deco Style. It's still modern, it's due for a revival, and its vocabulary is rich enough to satisfy both journeyman and genius.
It also makes great cities.
The problem is unique to practitioners of Modernism. If you do Beaux-Arts or Gothic or Deco, folks will like what you do even if you're not top rank.
That's what I'm saying; when you stop playing professionally, you become a coach. Except at Ivy League schools, architecture faculties consist almost exclusively of folks who have discovered they're not talented enough to play professionally.
Again, the problem is Modernism. You have to be super, super smart to make it yield paydirt. If you know how to do a classical building, you don't have to be a genius to come up with something satisfying. Ornament goes a long way towards pleasing people, and Modernism is the only style that forbids it. I bet Pete Sampras could beat you even if he were playing in handcuffs --but your local tennis pro couldn't.
Even more effective would be to have each one of them major in a second style to supplement the universally-taught Modernism --just in case you turn out not to be a genius.You put the onus on architects to be honest with themselves about their skill level. Probably your most wide-eyed pipe dream yet.
Good article.
statler
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I seem to remember you doing a rather lengthy post about Classicism. In in you showed a few examples of thoroughly Modern buildings that still (secretly?) followed Classic form.
Would it be fair to say all the Modernists you admire are probably well versed in the Classics and those who are responsible for the junk forgo the Classics entirely?
Kind of a "you need to know the rules before you can break them" sort of thing?
(If the above makes no sense, it's because it is late and I should be asleep -in fact I may be)
Would it be fair to say all the Modernists you admire are probably well versed in the Classics and those who are responsible for the junk forgo the Classics entirely?
Kind of a "you need to know the rules before you can break them" sort of thing?
(If the above makes no sense, it's because it is late and I should be asleep -in fact I may be)