<p>This link mentions several such buildings “beautifying” the UW campus in Seattle:</p>
<p><a href=“Nuclear Reactor Building on the University of Washington campus is dedicated on June 1, 1961. - HistoryLink.org”>Nuclear Reactor Building on the University of Washington campus is dedicated on June 1, 1961. - HistoryLink.org;
<p>I recall going to the old law school building to meet a friend and being shocked how ugly the concrete structure was on the inside! </p>
<p>If I was duped, I can still say I had fun. Have a great day! </p>
<p>I think the inside of the Wesleyan buildings are more appealing than the exterior.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.belmontfreeman.com/projects-academic-wesleyan-zilkha.html”>http://www.belmontfreeman.com/projects-academic-wesleyan-zilkha.html</a></p>
<p>And some perspectives from the outside are better than others. These make it look like a prison complex.</p>
<p><a href=“Wesleyan Art Center - Larry Speck”>http://larryspeck.com/2011/05/10/wesleyan-art-center/</a></p>
<p>Not sure how I forgot to mention IIT and the work of Mies Van der Rohe, the institute’s longtime dean and master planner:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“sb: Illinois Institute of Technology”>http://sbincville.blogspot.com/2011/06/illinois-institute-of-technology.html</a></p>
<p>Yep, I’m rich.</p>
<p>I’m extremely fond of Neutra, though I don’t think I could ever live in one. I once had the pleasure of being shown aound one by the original owner. We were just gawking at it from the street. She had all the original drawings. It was one of the houses which had a reflecting pool both inside and outside the living room with a glass divider in the middle. Soooo cool! She clearly loved the house and didn’t complain about leakes.</p>
<p>Williams represents in this category with Mission Park, a large dorm with dining hall. It’s unlike anything else on campus and tends to draw criticism. The dining hall is actually quite nice, very large windows, though the view is pretty much just into the hill it’s built into. Lovely when snow is falling. The dorm rooms are small, mostly all singles, though the common rooms are pretty nice.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.clarch.com/mp-dorm.html[/url]”>http://www.clarch.com/mp-dorm.html</a></p>
<p>Then there are other poured-in place concrete buildings by Kahn with similar elements that are stunningly beautiful in person, like the Salk Institute. Don’t think anyone would accuse that of being some sort of architectural in-joke!</p>
<p>Love the Salk Institute and happy that the Getty is assisting in its preservation:</p>
<p><a href=“Getty Conservation Institute to Help Conserve Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute | ArchDaily”>http://www.archdaily.com/540774/getty-conservation-institute-to-help-conserve-louis-kahn-s-salk-institute/</a></p>
<p>A very good example of the problem modernism poses is the Boston Public Library extension by Philip Johnson. If you think of it as an idea, it sort of can work: a big, blank thing meant to recall a palazzo with a huge blank interior courtyard and all right angles and hard lines. It’s ugly in practice. It’s impossible to keep pristine. It might look better draped with giant banners and cloths. Oddly, the only part that works is the stair to the basement, which comes across as an almost Kahn-like space. This thing attaches to the extraordinary old library, so you can see the urge to dissociate, to not try to match or outdo the detail and harmony of the old. But abstractions make poor buildings in general. Another example is the yucky mess he put up down the street, with oversized lamps and lousy proportions. The worst of his cartoon-like post-modern phase. I agree with those who say it borders on fascist style.</p>
<p>I mention this to say we’re in a much, much, much better period for public buildings than nearly all the modernist era. </p>
<p>I wish I could say the same about homes, but in MA it’s bleak, with way too much fake vernacular NE style and the rest being McMansion or even more tasteless crud. </p>
<p>The University of Washington’s Red Square offers a striking juxtaposition of Collegiate Gothic Suzzallo Library and Kane Hall, which could probably be described as brutalist. </p>
<p><a href=“InCommon Federation Discovery Service”>InCommon Federation Discovery Service;
<p>@Lergnom:
</p>
<p>You may be right. I began this thread with only academic buildings in mind and I have to say that I am more struck by their relative conservatism given the period when they were constructed. However, when it came to spaces open to the general public, the 1950s and 1960s included some of the most iconic structures built in the last one hundred years:, </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/un1.jpg”>http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/un1.jpg</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://mikikokikuyama.com/data/upload/olcms/twa_02_00001.jpg”>http://mikikokikuyama.com/data/upload/olcms/twa_02_00001.jpg</a>
:
<a href=“http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/10/28/blogs/20111028Lever1/20111028Lever1-blog480.jpg”>http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/10/28/blogs/20111028Lever1/20111028Lever1-blog480.jpg</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Lincoln_Center_by_Matthew_Bisanz.JPG”>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Lincoln_Center_by_Matthew_Bisanz.JPG</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://media.guggenheim.org/content/New_York/visit_us/vu_guggenheim-museum690.jpg”>http://media.guggenheim.org/content/New_York/visit_us/vu_guggenheim-museum690.jpg</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/flushing-meadows-park-unisphere-christina-martinez.jpg”>http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/flushing-meadows-park-unisphere-christina-martinez.jpg</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.urbansplatter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/1962-Seattle-Worlds-Fair-Space-Needle-by-Douglas-Coulter.jpg”>http://www.urbansplatter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/1962-Seattle-Worlds-Fair-Space-Needle-by-Douglas-Coulter.jpg</a></p>
<p>On the other hand, I walked across the plaza of Boston City Hall last week and was again struck by its ugliness, by its lousy proportions and by the fact that the best parts were the alterations to the fringes. That shape and concept come from the great central plaza in Sienna, which shows that ideas don’t always travel well. I’d add it never made sense to me this big upside down concrete pile of City Hall turns to brick at the bottom and literally doesn’t relate at all to the public space on 3 of its sides, unless you count a loading dock and garage entrance.</p>
<p>Boston City Hall illustrates a number of points about modern architecture, not all of which have anything to do with the particular style of the building itself, but, rather with people’s reactions to it. And, it’s a great opportunity to use Google Map’s street view. Here’s the view looking down Congress Street: <a href=“Google Maps”>Google Maps;
<p>The first thing we notice is Fanneuil Hall directly across the street. The red brick pediment lining the City Hall plaza is at least three stories high and is an obvious attempt to relate to its “neighbor” across the street as much as it dares. Some people might have preferred another version of Fanneuil Hall itself, but of more gargantuan proportions. But, then you have to ask yourself, at what point does imitation become a form of parody? It isn’t that the modernist style doesn’t relate to its public surroundings; it’s that the public surroundings have done everything possible to wall itself off from the style. Note the wide traffic median that separates both sides of Congress Street (complete with spiked fencing). A strip of mature trees - planted only along the the sightlines between the two buildings - adds insult to injury.</p>
<p>Granted, the designers could have done a little more to bring pedestrian traffic closer to street level. Perhaps, they wanted everything to empty into the plaza which is likewise elevated, albeit by a series of transitional landings:
<a href=“Google Maps”>Google Maps;
<p>In any event, the surrounding area is hardly pristine by any stretch of the imagination. .</p>
<p>Suzzalo and Kane - the beauty and the beast of our Red Square! :)</p>
<p>I realized that I was enjoying the view of a gorgeous mid-century modern structure while eating dinner at Palisade last night - our iconic Space Needle (that just turned 50).</p>
<p>Don’t forget Gund Hall, which houses the Graduate School of Design at Harvard
<a href=“Home - Harvard Graduate School of Design”>Home - Harvard Graduate School of Design;
<p>Here’s how the GSD describes the student workspace, which is under the glass steps a the top of the building:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I had some student friends and the real story is that the stepped, clear-span roof leaked, so they had to cover their desk with plastic sheets in case it rained. It also made it impossible to heat and cool properly, so the building was rarely comfortable to work in. And the stepped design was the worst of all worlds–visually, it broke up the space, thus hindering the collaboration opportunities that open spaces are supposed to provide, while doing nothing to prevent sound from carrying, so it was very noisy. </p>
<p>One can only hope that students experiencing this design might be inspired, when they go out into the world, to give everyday usability a higher priority than “making an eloquent statement”.</p>
<p>Here’s a fun slideshow of mid-century modern homes.</p>
<p><a href=“Articles about best midcentury homes america on Dwell.com - Dwell”>Articles about best midcentury homes america on Dwell.com - Dwell;
<p>BB – lol @ beauty and the beast. I never heard that one before. Actually, I loved Kane Hall when I was a student. I took a lot of 101 classes which of course are often lectured there. Something about the scale of it always awed me. </p>
<p>More on the house tangent. I just stumbled upon the Case Study House Program. What is that all about?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Houses-Taschens-Anniversary-Special-Editions/dp/3836513013/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416091242&sr=1-1&keywords=mid+century+modern+architecture”>http://www.amazon.com/Houses-Taschens-Anniversary-Special-Editions/dp/3836513013/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416091242&sr=1-1&keywords=mid+century+modern+architecture</a></p>
<p><a href=“Case Study Houses | Los Angeles Conservancy”>Case Study Houses | Los Angeles Conservancy;
<p>“The University of Washington’s Red Square offers a striking juxtaposition of Collegiate Gothic Suzzallo Library and Kane Hall, which could probably be described as brutalist.”</p>
<p>One person’s “striking juxtaposition” is another’s “aesthetically unpleasing.” I freely admit I’m untrained and probably too bourgeois for words here, but these are two things that just don’t go together, and admiring their “striking juxtaposition” doesn’t make them go together any more than mixing stripes and polka dots.</p>
