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Go Home Do Ugly Buildings Deserve Stimulus Funds?

THE PLANK FEBRUARY 26, 2009

Do Ugly Buildings Deserve Stimulus Funds?

BY CLAY RISEN

Architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable implicitly raises an important question in her Wall Street Journal column today: What will the billions in construction and renovation funding now coursing outward from Washington mean for architectural preservation--and in particular for the as-yet-unloved, not-yet-landmarked landmarks of mid-century brutalist architecture? 

Brutalism's unfortunate name comes not from its cold and imposing appearance but from its material, raw concrete (in French, it's called beton brut). But the name is nonetheless apt: The style reached its apogee just as the urban renewal wave was tearing apart old neighborhoods, replacing them with massive hulks of concrete and glass; famous examples include Boston's City Hall and I.M. Pei's Third Church of Christ, Scientist in Washington, D.C.

These buildings have never been popular with the public, becoming even less so as they have aged and deteriorated. Many were designed without a thought to maintenance or renovation; Pei's church infamously requires $8,000 in scaffolding to reach burnt-out lightbulbs in the sanctuary. Some, like Pei's church, have received landmark status, but the
majority are still too young and too controversial for protection. Thus the connundrum of preservation: It's one thing to landmark a building, but in the face of heated public opprobrium, how do you justify spending millions just to update them? "Suddenly," Huxtable writes, "a 20th-century heritage is in crisis and in desperate need of
a revised, realistic agenda to keep its landmarks useful and alive."

While Huxtable doesn't say it explicitly, this is a vital question for cities about to spend stimulus money upgrading thousands of brutalist-era schools and government facilities. Should Boston spend some of its newfound cash on updating its hated city hall, or should it go in for a new one? And if Beantown replaces it, will they regret the decision later on, when brutalism enters the pantheon of architectural history?   

P.S.: At the risk of over-self-promotion, I have a piece on Huxtable and her legacy in the new issue of Architect. Check it out. 

--Clay Risen

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13 comments

I have never been especially fond of I.M. Pei, though his contribution to the Louvre is stunning. I say preserve the most prominent incarnations of the brutalist school and consign the rest to the wrecking ball.

- liberal reformer

February 26, 2009 at 1:21pm

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If we all think its ugly, is it really worth preserving just because its old?  Build a new one.

- acria multa

February 26, 2009 at 1:24pm

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Many, if not most brutalist buildings will never be loved.

Buildings exist primarily for the comfort and use of those who use them.  IM Pei's church in DC is cold and dark, and vastly more expensive to heat and light than a building of its size should be.  Similarly, Boston's city hall is hated by just about everyone who works there for its drafty halls and dungeon-like ambiance.

Merely being a popular architectural style does not warrant shackling people to buildings that serve their needs poorly.  Maybe there are brutalist buildings that are pleasant and useful, but the examples usually given of the style are not and should be torn down.

- ryanburke

February 26, 2009 at 1:29pm

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A question only an academic could love.  Brutalism is an offense to aesthetics.  The buildings in question are hideous, and are deservedly unloved.  Why should they be preserved, except as academic examples of a particularly ill-considered "school"?

That being said, if they must be saved, I second LibRef's suggestion.  Keep a couple of them (and apparently we're stuck with the Pei building), and replace the rest with something that actually pleases the senses.

- drdannyu

February 26, 2009 at 1:35pm

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Could you please fix the link to your article in Architect? I am unable to click on it.

- liberal reformer

February 26, 2009 at 1:36pm

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Short answer:  No, they don't.  Tear down these monstrosities and build something, anything else in their place.  They will be shovel-ready as soon as the smoke clears, and the demolition contractors can make some money that way too.  Since privately-owned buildings like the Third Church of Christ Scientist aren't eligible for stimulus funds anyway, they can survive as hallmarks of the age when civic architecture aped the aesthetics of the Maginot Line.

- wildboy

February 26, 2009 at 1:40pm

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The only reason I can think of to preserve even a single brutalist building is to remind future generations why we took a wrecking ball to all the others. If someone wants to remember what Boston City Hall looked like, they can look it up on Wikipedia.

Given that Boston has a lot of lovely architecture, I see no reason to get sentimental about a grotesque and looming folly in the middle of the city. Bad-but-significant painting and sculpture is worthy of preservation, but architecture is not merely art (something academic architects seem to have forgotten). Human beings have to live and work in and around brutalist buildings.

I say we bulldoze 'em all and let God sort 'em out.

- Androscoggin

February 26, 2009 at 1:51pm

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This post made my day!  My law firm's building is a 1970's urban renewal concrete bunker.  Ugly as sin, but built like a brick s***house.  I'll hate it every day until someone decides to nuke eastern Iowa.  I'll survive in my brutalist shelter.  

I might update our firm's webpage to showcase the brutalist architecture of our pillbox.

- phatkarp

February 26, 2009 at 2:10pm

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It's worth remembering how tackety-tack-tack mid-century modern design looked 15-20 years ago. Brutalism may well come to be loved. Not just significant. I'm not a fan of brutalism, but there is plenty of stuff I've changed my tune after a decent mourning period. Architecture has, I think, a particularly long mourning period, longer than fashion or design. But still, we do come to love again.

If the building is not functional, then of course, that's another story.

DrDan, we academics fool ourselves into thinking everyone loves the questions we ask!

- epicciuto

February 26, 2009 at 2:15pm

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Something's buggin', Liberal Reformer, so for now, here's the link:

www.architectmagazine.com/industry-news.asp

- Clay Risen

February 26, 2009 at 2:41pm

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Well there are a few brutalist buildings in the US that deserve saving but I can think of at least half of the Federal buildings that could use a fresh start. The FBI headquarters being one of them.

But the best examples of well designed brutalist architecture would be Marcel Breuer's Whitney Museum and the HUD headquarters in D.C. and I.M. Pei's NCAR headquarters in Boulder. It's really a case by case basis.

- singlespeed

February 26, 2009 at 3:25pm

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One afternoon during my misspent youth (the epoch immediately preceding my misspent senescence), my 1961 International Harvester one-ton pickup threw a rod on a quiet residential street in Daly City, CA, whereupon I eased it over to the curb in front of a vacant lot, got out, and walked away.

One year later I happened to be in the neighborhood and, on a lark, thought I'd see if my old crewcab was still there. It was! Minus the wheels, a bumper etc.--to be expected. But--and here's the good part--PLUS a whole lot of other, new stuff. Umpteen tags were spray-painted all over it.

Someone or ones had decorated it with about twenty neckties. Somebody else had installed an ancient moldering overstuffed chair in the bed, upon which one could easily imagine a neighbor teen and his date snuggling on a summer's eve.

My truck had emerged from the chrysalis of its abandon to take flight as an art car.

Friends, is demolition the only possible fate for eyesores? Nay, I say. Let the homeless at these buildings first--to scavenge the copper and chrome, the odd surviving cactus, the ironic office nameplate. Then turn artists and not-really-artists loose in them, spray cans at the ready. Let peregrines roost on the roof, pigeons poop upon the mezzanine. Remove the windows from the uppermost floors: let a thousand indoor windmills turn! Saxmen blowing in the stairwells; hookers turning tricks in glass elevators; the thirteenth floor, sold to a crematorium, now an orgy of ashes of the dead, all mixed together. A wax museum, sans wax! Turd-in-the-plaza sculptures made from actual turds! Somebody selling meat on a stick!

Folks who think the only choices are keep it or kill it just haven't thought the thing through.

- williamyard

February 26, 2009 at 3:48pm

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Clay, I see you've written for Metropolis (Architect Online credit)...great magazine.

- jet

February 27, 2009 at 12:38am

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