Significant Boston Architecture. Love or Boo.

There are a lot of very architecturally significant buildings in Boston. We went to a ton of them but rather than bore you with the ins and outs of why they matter how about a quick summary judgment. Love or Boo.

Institute of Contemporary Art by Diller Scofidio + Renfro – Love.

Although that’s probably because the sculptural ribbons remind me of one of Matt’s old studio projects… also I love their blur building so I’m a bit biased.



Plus they have the added bonus of being a husband/wife team where the wife’s name comes first. Because if architectural history has taught us one thing it’s that if the wife’s name comes last it will be dropped. I’m so not making that up. How many people have heard of Venturi? What about Scott-Brown? I rest my case.


Kresge Chapel by Saarinen – Love.




I’m a huge fan of the perfect circle on the outside and waviness on the inside.




Kresge Auditorium by Saarinen – also love.

Here’s why:


Yeah.

Some Ghery Campus Building I don't even care enough to look up the name of - Boo:

Seriously can we be over these already? He jumped the shark with Bilbao and that was over 10 years ago. All of his campus buildings kindof look the same and even worse they leak. But for some reason we’re plunking these down on campuses across the US. Definite Boo.

Simmons Hall by Steven Holl - Love:



Ok I was admittedly biased on this one because I though Kiasma sucked a big one. Seriously that building was all about path of discovery and the experience of walking though the galleries… everything was all ramped and linear and stuff to make you go in one direction and one direction only. And this whole carefully designed path cumulated with a fire stair. I shit you not. Fire stair. But I have to admit…. This?




I kindof love. Although that might be because of the ball pit. Yup. The building has a ball pit (pic here). What’s not to love about that?

Trinity Church by H.H. Richardson:

Well I’m going to give this one a big Love.

But I’m a Richardson fan. Also all of the column capitals are different and details like that make me ridiculously happy.


I.M. Pei Concrete Monstrosities:

First off is the Government Center:

This would be from his concrete “I swear it wasn’t me” period. From before he discovered that glass pyramids were the way to go. And based solely on the giant, useless, empty, hard, boring, plaza in front of it this building is a Boo.

Next would be the Church of Christ, Scientist:

I’m going to go with a Love. But that might just be because the maparium inside was so frickin’ cool. That or the reflecting pool:

More buildings should have reflecting pools.

Quincy Market – Boo

This is significant b/c it a large scale preservation project along with one of the first festival market places so I’m pretty sure I studied it for at least one of those reasons. Or something like that.

I’m still giving it a boo because it was essentially a tourist mall.

So there you go.... yeah architecture!

Oh and many, many more Boston pics are over here on Flickr... I've finally finished uploading all of them!