Architects Look Forward and Back at Boston City Hall and Plaza

由专筑网雷军，杨帆编译

最近波士顿市政厅建筑师Michael McKinnell和其他建筑师在BSA论坛上争论波士顿市政厅和附近的广场的未来。

Boston City Hall architect Michael McKinnell and others debated possible futures for Boston City Hall and its adjacent plaza at a recent BSA forum.



波士顿环球报报道了一个动人心弦的故事，是关于波士顿市政厅（Kallmann, McKinnell和Knowles，1969年）及其广场（I.M. Pei & Associates）的设计，读者评论为这个故事添加了另一层色彩。

“整个地区看起来像是1980年的莫斯科”。

“拆了吧”。

“已经没有办法再进行修补了”。

“将建筑转换成建筑师们都喜欢的狂野风格吧”。

Whenever the Boston Globe runs a story touching on the design of Boston City Hall (Kallmann, McKinnell and Knowles, 1969) and its plaza (I.M. Pei & Associates), readers’ comments add color.
“That whole area looks like Moscow in 1980.”
“Dear Lord, knock it down.”
“No amount of tinkering can save it.”
“Convert ‘Brutalist’ building into housing for architects who like this style of architecture.”



然而，随着时间的推移，讨论愈演愈烈。虽然波士顿的前任市长和现任市长在不同的时间都提出将市政厅卖掉，但市长沃尔什•马蒂在上任以来已经改变了主意。一些建筑的公共功能，如支付停车罚单，可以在网上解决，使空间适应渐趋成熟化。并且认为没有那么多的建筑可以作为辽阔而荒凉的广场贝聿铭和美国建筑师协会会员Henry Cobb共同承担总体规划设计的一部分。2015年城市发起重新思考市政厅这一活动，并发出招标书，希望能使该综合体焕然一新。读者对新闻的评论如下：

“最后，人们开始思考而不是抱怨”。

“我不喜欢狂野式的建筑，这种风格具有一定的历史价值，我们应该把它保留下来，并作为历史建筑的一个案例”。

“这座建筑很有意思，有着别具一格的灯光照明、广场活动、景观美化、标识牌等，显得潜力无限。但查利棕色的树，就需要一些薄层色谱法来点缀了”。

Over time, however, the discussion has evolved. While Boston’s previous and current mayor both proposed at different times to sell City Hall, Mayor Marty Walsh has changed his tune since taking office. Some of the building’s public functions, such as paying parking tickets, are now performed online, leaving space ripe for adaptation. And it is now understood that the "problem” with City Hall is not so much the building as its vast and desolate plaza, part of a master plan designed by I.M. Pei, FAIA, and Henry Cobb, FAIA. In 2015, the city launched Rethink City Hall!, and has since been issuing RFPs to freshen the complex. Readers’ comments on the news are starting to sound more like these:
“Finally, someone thinking and not just complaining.”
“While I don't like Brutalist architecture, it's a style that by now has some historical value/merit. It should be preserved as an example of what was built in the past.”
“This building is very interesting and has the potential to be extraordinary with the right lighting, plaza activity, landscaping, signage. But like Charlie Brown's tree, it needs some TLC!”



波士顿市政厅和广场论坛，由Michael Ross（左）以及精选的小组成员（按座位从左至右）Mark Pasnik, Anita Berrizbeitia和 Michael McKinnell共同主持。

1月11日，200多人聚集在波士顿的建筑师论坛上，讨论过去和未来的市政厅与广场的发展。在一系列题为“设计波士顿”的活动中，都通过回顾设计师的意图来明确今后的目标。由律师Michael Ross主持，该小组由设计市政厅的美国建筑师协会会员Michael McKinnell与Gerhard Kallmann 和 Edward Knowles一起组成，合著《混凝土建筑和新的波士顿》（纳塞利出版社，2015年）；Anita Berrizbeitia，ASLA，哈佛商学院景观建筑系主任。代表波士顿城市建设部的是助理设计总监Gert Thorn和高级项目经理Maureen Anderson。

The Designing Boston: City Hall + Plaza forum, moderated by Michael Ross (left), featured panelists (seated, left to right) Mark Pasnik, Anita Berrizbeitia, and Michael McKinnell.
On January 11, more than 200 people packed a Boston Society of Architects forum on the past and future of City Hall and Plaza. Fifth in a series entitled “Designing Boston,” the event aimed to look clearly forward by looking back at the designers’ intentions. Moderated by attorney Michael Ross, the panel comprised Michael McKinnell, FAIA, who designed City Hall with Gerhard Kallmann and Edward Knowles; Mark Pasnik, AIA, coauthor of Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston (Monacelli Press, 2015); and Anita Berrizbeitia, ASLA, chair of the department of landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Representing the City of Boston construction department were assistant director of design Gert Thorn and senior project manager Maureen Anderson.



Ross说：“这将会是又一个有趣而又学术性的对话吗？”

Pasnik回顾政府中心的历史和最具特色的市政厅，如立面上的程序表达和整个结构设计的完整性。“是什么使建筑如此了不起，”他说，“建筑项目的室内外都合为一体”。如今有很多混凝土建筑被夷为平地，被“薄而商业化”的设计所取代，“Michael 和他那代人反对精确的建筑类型。城市需要被读懂，建筑需有其自身的DNA，这是我们获得重新思考的机会。”

Ross opened by gently challenging the crowd: “Will this be yet another interesting but academic conversation?”
Pasnik reviewed the history of Government Center and the most distinguishing features of City Hall, such as the expression of its program on the facade and the completeness of design throughout the structure. “That’s what makes buildings like this so remarkable,” he said. “The inside and the outside are conceived as one totalizing project.” Many concrete buildings today, Pasnik pointed out, are razed and replaced by “very thin and commercial” designs, “precisely the type of architecture that Michael [McKinnell] and his generation were reacting against.” The city needs to understand “where, within the building’s own DNA, there’s opportunity for us to rethink it.”



Berrizbeitia分配8.8亩的市政厅广场作为一个工作室项目，简单地改善其边缘，使用多样化的材料，并将其与城市肌理连接在一起。她展示了学生对于改造剑桥与国会间街道上29英尺的等级变化，创造“更多宜人的居住空间”。广场将成为一个真正聚集的地方，而不是一个“朝九晚五的空间”。作为政府中心T台的新标志物，Berrizbeitia反驳说，“解决方案不是把东西放在市政府广场上，我们需要关注的是如何让更小的空间变得优美宽阔，小广场的边缘也可以居住。”

Berrizbeitia assigns the 8.8-acre City Hall Plaza as a studio project, with a brief to improve its edges, diversify its materials, and connect it to the urban fabric. She showed plans in which students redistribute the 29-foot grade change between Cambridge and Congress streets, creating “more spaces for people to inhabit.” Given nearby foot traffic following the Big Dig, she said, the plaza is poised to become a genuine gathering place, not a “nine-to-five space." Asked about insertions such as the new headhouse on the Government Center T station, Berrizbeitia countered that “the solution here is not to put things on City Hall Plaza. What we need to focus on is how do we make that exquisite expanse have enough intricacy around the edges [in the form] of smaller spaces, smaller plazas, steps that can be inhabited.”



观众们很欣赏McKinnell，他似乎很高兴，就是这个力量推动着他的工作。在20世纪60年代，他说：“我们所有的人都很痴迷于对于公共领域、民主的可能性以及公共行动的可能性的想法。我们认为建筑应该应该是开放的，可穿透的，日夜可达的，这个想法贯彻了整个建筑物。”2001年他的公司在费城建立了独立访客中心，他说会把市政厅的底层作为访客中心和市博物馆，中央庭院变成一个“庆祝的空间。”他认为，这种变化应该是戏剧性的。他说，“我不不确定广场或建筑可以实现之前设想过的所有事情。但重要的是，无论发生什么，我们都应该大胆自信，这样才能更好地改造这座建筑。”

The crowd’s appreciation for McKinnell was palpable, and he seemed pleased, in turn, by the push to keep his work alive. In the 1960s, he said, "We were obsessed, all of us, with the idea of the public realm, the possibilities of democracy, the possibilities of public action. And we thought the building should engender that: The building should be open, and penetrable, and accessible night and day, and that was the whole idea of passing through and under the building." Invoking his firm's 2001 Independence Visitor Center in Philadelphia, McKinnell said he would turn the lower part of City Hall into a visitor center and city museum (a concept that has also been advanced by others) and the central courtyard into a glazed-over “celebratory space.” Changes to the complex as a whole, he argued, should be dramatic: “I’m not sure the plaza or the building in its present condition can accomplish the sorts of things that we had envisioned without a very considerable and radical intervention. What’s important is that whatever happens is bold, and self-confident, and in that sense can exist with the building and complement it."



当人们问及如何激活广场的边缘，McKinnell讲述了一个令人惊讶的故事：“我们非常努力地尝试在这周围加入咖啡店和饭馆。最后被告知这不会实现，因为城市没有引进任何投资商到这个公共空间来进行企业竞争。”

与会者分享了各自的想法，有人呼吁店面设计工作室可以暂停工作，回顾最新的计划，并提出建议。还有人建议另一个广场可以作为滑板场地。原市建设经理Mulligan私人筹款做了一个案例调查。资深建筑师和规划师SY，热情地召集数千人在市政厅广场向市长Walsh表示公众的支持，而“不仅是建筑师的支持”。

几位发言者称赞了开明的Walsh政府重新展开的这一对话。Mark Pasnik说，“我认为人们正在接受潮流转向，并且对这座建筑的未来很感兴趣。”

Asked about activating the plaza’s edges, McKinnell told a surprising backstory: “We tried very, very hard to introduce the possibility of cafés and eating places around the perimeter. We were finally told this would not happen, because the city had made an agreement with the local tradespeople not to introduce anything into this publicly financed space that could in any way be competitive with their enterprises.”
Attendees shared ideas. One called for a shopfront design studio where people could stop in, review the latest plans, and make comments; another suggested plaza space for physical pursuits such as skateboarding. Former city construction manager Jim Mulligan made a case for private fundraising. Veteran architect and planner Sy Mintz, AIA, called passionately for people to “come out in the thousands in City Hall Plaza” to assure Mayor Walsh that there is public support, “not just architects’ support,” for this public place.
Several speakers praised the “enlightened” Walsh administration for having reopened this conversation. In the words of Mark Pasnik, “I think the tide is shifting towards people accepting and being interested in the building."

出处：本文译自www.architectmagazine.com/，转载请注明出处。