*브루탈리즘 콘크리트 보스턴 시청사 [ Kallmann McKinnell, & Knowles ] Boston City Hall Kallmann

근대건축과 시작을 같이한 콘크리트는 여전히 건축을 정의하는 가장 중요한

수단 중 하나입니다. 여기 50년 전에 지어진 보스턴 시청사에게도

그당시의 모던함을 지금도 똑같이 변함없는 모습으로 보여줍니다.

그 당시는 시그램빌딩을 필두로 하여 새로운 마천루의

시대가 열리는 시대였습니다. 그것은 콘크리트를 대신할 글래스와 스틸의 시대로

현재 대부분의 마천루들이 글래스와 스틸로 일반화 되는데 큰 기초가 되어준 시기입니다.

하지만 건축가는 유럽과 미국에서 유행하는 스틸과 글래스를 선택하지 않고

모던건축과 브루탈리즘을 근거한 노출콘크리트로 무채색의 메스를 디자인 합니다.

그의 선택은 여전히 유효합니다. 브루탈리즘의 건축양식은 콘크리트의 메스감을

-구조와 건축의 경계를 넘어 디자인이 구조이며 구조가 기능이고 기능은

또다시 디자인이 됩니다.-순수하게 드러냄으로써 자의적이지 않은

당당함으로 만들어 냅니다. -어쩌면 이와같은 당당함이 몇십년을 뛰어넘어도

지치지 않는 건축물의 원동력이 되는 것이 아닐까 싶습니다.-

건축가가 이야기하는 것처럼 무채색 콘크리트만이 소셜, 문화, 그리고 정치적인

컨텍스트가 혼재되어 있는 장소를 건축으로 풀어 낼 수 있지 않을까요? 이러한 건축적 장치는

공용공간과 사무공간 그리고 문화공간을 켜켜이 쌓아 올린 공간 속에 적층되며

메시브한 볼륨 속에 또다른 디자인의 형태로 파사드를 나누는 기준이 됩니다.

50년의 세월이 무색합니다. 건축은 잠시 잠깐의 눈속임으로는 어림없는 짓인 것 같습니다.

10년 지나봐야 되고, 20년 지나봐야 되고, 시간을 먹을 수록 더욱 단단해지며

자신만의 색채를 띄게 되는 건축물이야 말로 우리가 지향해야할 바 아닐까요?

reviewed by SJ

As part of an international competition to design Boston’s City Hall in 1962, three Columbia University professors, Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles, diverted from the typical sleek, glass and steel structures that were being requested by popular demand.  Rather than basing their design on the material aesthetics, their goal was to accentuate the governmental buildings connection to the public realm.

Completed in 1968, the Brutalist style city hall bridges the public and private sectors of government through a gradient of reveal and exposure that allows the public to become integrated, either physically or visually, into the daily affairs of the governmental process.

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Architects: Kallmann, McKinnell, & Knowles
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Project Year: 1963-1968
Photographs: Wikimedia Commons
References: GreatBuildings, Wikipedia

Unlike many of the other entries for the competition that implemented glass and steel in their modernist designs, Kallmann, McKinnell, and Knowles used rough beton-brut concrete to contrast from the modernist designs that were proliferating throughout the United States and Europe at the time.  They strove for an architecture that was involved with its social, cultural, and political context where the one can understand the methods behind the design, both programmatically as well as construction methods.  The result is a concrete, tripartite design that stratifies the public from the administrative.

The city hall is divided into three main entities that make up overall system.  Its division, both volumetrically and programmatically, is essentially a division of public and privatized spaces that are emphasized such that as the building tapers into a cantilevering system, the more private aspects of the city government are directly related.

From the street, there is a large open plaza that separates one from the main entrance to the city hall. For Kallman, McKinnell, and Knowles, the plaza was supposed to be an extension of the main floor of the building, which becomes suggested as the plazas brick pavement begins to transition into the lobby’s quarry tile. In effect this subtle transition becomes a means by which the city hall is able to establish a relationship between the public sector and the everyday affairs of the government.

As the building continues to taper out, the building becomes more of standardized, bureaucratic façade system, which directly relates to the work happening within. At the uppermost floors where the mayor’s office workers are located, the façade system is structured on a monolithic scale appearing as an ancient triglyph the wraps the perimeter of the building.

At the heart of the building is where the strict façade system becomes broken and articulated so that moments in the building are revealed to those in the plaza. These protrusions and breaks in the façade are meant to be the ways in which the public can visually become part of the day to day activities within the mayor’s office.  It’s this juxtaposition and new spatial protrusions that are constantly recreating the relationships between the government and the people where either physically or visually the two are always connected.

Since the Boston City Hall has been completed, it has had a mixed review from the citizens of Boston, architects, and even the mayors of Boston.  In 2006, the mayor of Boston had actually filed a petition to have the building destroyed in order to make way for a better, more efficient building that was “aesthetically pleasing.”  However, since that has happened, a group of activists have been able to have the city hall given a special landmark status that prohibits any future modifications until it can be granted full landmark status.

“We distrust and have reacted against an architecture that is absolute, uninvolved and abstract. We have moved towards an architecture that is specific and concrete, involving itself with the social and geographic context, the program, and methods of construction, in order to produce a building that exists strongly and irrevocably, rather than an uncommitted abstract structure that could be any place and, therefore, like modern man— without identity or presence.” – Kallmann

from  archdaily