Post World War II Brutalism Architecture

Are you on team Brutalism or not? Brutalism is an architectural movement from the post-WWII era that features exposed concrete (from the French “béton brut” which got translated “brutalism”). Made popular worldwide in the 1960s, it has tended to inspire either awed admiration or deep-felt repulsion among viewers. And this building here, the Boston City Hall, has been called the most significant example of the Brutalist style in America.

Built in 1968 after a design plan from a professor and a graduate student from Columbia University, the Boston City Hall immediately inspired detractors and proponents. Those who like the style consider it honest and heroic — it is certainly bold, and confronts expectations of the heaviness of the concrete by being shaped into unexpected forms. In the case of the Boston City Hall, the widest parts of the structure are the horizontal top parts, which rest in a cantilevered style on a narrowing base.

I gotta side with the “I hate it” people. To me, Brutalism matches the angsty war-torn world of the mid-20th century. In my home town of Orange County California, the Brutalist buildings were always dark and damp, and when I moved to Boston in the 1990s, so too was the Boston City Hall. The inside space swallows you up. It was zero surprise to me that the DMV center was located there, and when I stood in line for some form, I felt like I was in some horrible hell-scene from a Sartre play.

If your opinion differs from my own, no problem. But I would like to ask you — have you spent actual time at the Boston City Hall, or just read about it? Mind you, I am not arguing to tear it down — it is history, after all. But the commentary made by Bostonians about the building says a lot (including the fact that I miss the brutal honesty of Bostonians): the building is “a giant concrete harmonica”, a “dungeon”, it is “mildly oppressive”, “sad”, and “ugly as hell”.

One magazine placed it on a list of “25 Buildings to Demolish Right Now,” while the architect Chris Grimley claims that it will “go down in history as one of the exemplar works of the 20th century”. We shall see . . . .