Archinect - News

Samuel Ross unveils Brutalism-inspired Kohler smart toilet concept for Milan Design Week

2024-04-02T12:59:00-04:00

Designer Samuel Ross has shared a preview of the new Formation 02, his first smart toilet concept for Kohler, ahead of the opening of this year’s Milan Design Week on April 16th.

The piece is inspired by Brutalist architecture and will retail for $25,000. The brand is marketing his creation as an inspired demarcation from the traditional silhouettes used in its Eir Smart Toilet line.

Ross sees it as a sculptural enhancement of a necessity intended for use in a variety of settings he describes as capable of delivering "democratic, open, public experiences."

Image courtesy Kohler Co.

His design intentions were so described via a scrollable digital 'Manifesto' relating Ross and his studio SR_A’s philosophy and new model for water solutions. This adds to Ross’ longstanding creative relationship with Kohler, which includes the Formation 01 faucets the new product, rendered Haptic Orange, serves to compliment.

Image courtesy Kohler Co.

"Our objective goes beyond function — it’s closer to v...

Zooco creates ‘Brutalism over the sea’ with Spanish restaurant inside renovated 1970s concrete structure

2024-01-11T13:55:00-05:00

Madrid-based studio Zooco has completed an extensive renovation and extension of a 1970s concrete structure in Santander, Spain. The Cantabrian Maritime Museum restaurant has been constructed inside an architectural complex that also includes an Oceanographic Center designed by Vicente Roig Forner and Ángel Hernández Morales, built between 1975 and 1978.

Image credit: David Zarzoso

The original concrete structure sees two square forms connected by a canopy. The interior spans three floors with a central courtyard covered by a vault of paraboloid membranes, while a 2003 renovation and extension saw the addition of a pyramid-form aluminum structure to the western facade and roof.

Image credit: David Zarzoso

For their 2023 overhaul of the scheme, Zooco inserted a new space on the second floor to house a restaurant and terrace. To facilitate the restaurant, a new volume was constructed to resolve issues with the roof and facade, while ...

Harvard GSD details Gund Hall renovations

2023-12-21T12:06:00-05:00

Harvard’s Graduate School of Design has unveiled plans for a slate of renovations that will culminate next year and are aimed at improving the user experience for students and faculty at 51-year-old Gund Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The project will help preserve the familiar John Andrews design for new generations while serving as a model for the sustainable redevelopment of midcentury structures, the school announced. Boston-based Bruner/Cott Architects will be leading the process, leaning on its past renovation and remodeling of the Harvard Holyoke Center with Hopkins Architects that was completed in 2019.

The first phase of construction will insulate the building envelope in order to reduce energy costs and increase occupational comfort. Gund Hall’s iconic ‘trays,’ the terraced glass structures covering studio spaces will be reglazed. The GSD is testing out prototypes in Gund Hall’s 'The Pit' multiuse area and says they are especially hopeful for a hybrid vacuum-insulated ...

In BRUTAL DC, Brooks + Scarpa proposes adaptive reuse of Marcel Breuer's landmark 1968 design

2023-10-25T13:49:00-04:00

Brooks + Scarpa has proposed an adaptive reuse renovation of the Marcel Breuer-designed Robert C. Weaver Federal Building in Washington, D.C. in an effort to address the chronic issue of empty office space plaguing the city’s economic growth and downtown core.

The proposal is included in a new exhibition at the Southern Utah Museum of Art that examines Brutalism’s past and future potential through seven key structures and Metro station designs. The exhibition includes Diller Scofidio + Renfro's scrapped 'Bubble' reimagining of the Hirshhorn Museum and other schemes from Gensler and students from the UNLV School of Architecture.

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

The inclusion of the 55-year-old Weaver Building is significant as it is the headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which wants to position itself in line with industry pushes to build a “just and equitable future for all citizens.”

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

After the p...

MVRDV completes transformation of communist-era Tirana Pyramid monument in Albania

2023-10-17T20:11:00-04:00

The transformation of an aging brutalist monument to communism into a new tech education center geared toward teenagers in the capital city of Albania has been officially inaugurated following a three-and-a-half-year revitalization effort led by MVRDV.

The project remade the 127,000-square-foot Pyramid of Tirana, first established as a museum dedicated to the legacy of dictator Enver Hoxha in 1988, into the centerpiece of a new cultural hub and park space located in the heart of the city.

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode/MVRDV

Brightly-colored boxes are stacked within, around, and on top of the original structure, providing areas for education and events programming, while the addition of outdoor steps to its sloping beams creates intriguing new public space possibilities for visitors. Some see it as a testament to the country’s dogged ability to overcome the collective memory of the Hoxha regime. MVRDV hopes it will turn into a “carrier” for the cult...

Inside the expensive repair of Brutalist landmark Boston City Hall

2023-07-07T11:41:00-04:00

Local Boston news outlet WBUR has offered an insight into the multi-million dollar operation to repair and renew Boston City Hall. The Brutalist icon, now 55 years old, was recently allocated $80 million to address ongoing issues.

The most extensive renewal project to be undertaken in the building is the removal and replacement of the original hot water pipes dating from the 1960s. As WBUR reports, many of the pipes are inaccessible and completely encased in concrete.

"We've actually had to core into that concrete just to be able to repair and actually identify the leak," Boston’s commissioner of property management Eamon Shelton told the outlet. As a result, the city has budgeted $13.5 million for the pipes project alone.

Other repair and renewal projects include the replacement of all lights in the building with energy-efficient LEDs, plans to...

Sotheby's purchases Marcel Breuer's Brutalist Whitney for a rumored $100 million

2023-06-01T17:56:00-04:00

Sotheby’s said Thursday that it has purchased the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1966 Brutalist building by Marcel Breuer on Madison Avenue and will move its headquarters there from York Avenue in 2025. The deal — which Sotheby’s and the Whitney refused to confirm in response to queries from The Times in April — finally resolves the fate of the Breuer building, which has hung in the balance since the Whitney moved down to the meatpacking district in 2015.

The auction house will operate a rotating exhibition space out of the building — in addition to hosting live auctions — beginning in September 2024. There are no plans for the subterranean level restaurant at this time. The Frick Collection, which has been leasing the building since the Met walked away in March of 2020, will officially move back into its $160 million Selldorf Architects-renovated original East 70th Street location in the months prior.

The New York Times reported a source mentioning the deal, which was brokered between the current landlords Whitney Museum and Sotheby's, was worth approximately $100 million. Sotheby's CEO Charles F. Stewart explained to the paper that it was simply a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we couldn’t pass up."

New bill seeks to re-mandate Trump's classical architecture order for federal buildings

2023-05-30T15:35:00-04:00

A new bill introduced by Republican Indiana representative Jim Banks has once again returned the years-old debate around Classicism and the design of federal government buildings first begun by Donald Trump during the final year of his Presidency.

Banks’ proposed new H.R. 3627 bill — titled the "Beautifying Federal Civic Architecture Act" — expands on the Trump era executive order to "make federal buildings beautiful again" via the establishment of a new President's Council on Improving Federal Civic Architecture and advocacy for styles of "traditional architecture" including Gothic, Romanesque, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and Mediterranean that Banks feels are endemic to the United States.

Previously on Archinect: Trump signs executive order promoting 'traditional and classical architecture' for America's federal buildings

The bill also denounces the Brutalist style espoused by Paul Rudolph and others at midcentury in deference to the neo-classical designs used in the Supreme ...

Kenzo Tange's 'Boat Gymnasium' in Japan faces demolition

2023-02-21T14:52:00-05:00

An important Kenzo Tange design is facing an uncertain future in Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture after reports that authorities there are moving forward with the demolition of his 1964 “Boat Gymnasium” over disrepair and an apparent inability to fund seismic structural upgrades.

The Brutalist structure in Takamatsu was first shuttered in 2014 and has since been the subject of preservation pushes that unsuccessfully pressured the government to save the building, which shares many of the same stylistic elements as his masterwork Yoyogi National Gymnasium built the same year for the Olympic games in Tokyo.

The news comes almost a year removed from the final fate of the Kisho Kurokawa-designed Nakagin Capsule Tower, which is now being disbursed piecemeal to private enthusiasts and public collections after a long back-and-forth came to a close with preservationists on the losing end.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons user Bigjap (CC0 1.0)

The local Board of Education, which manages the gymnasi...

Philly's infamous police headquarters faces an uncertain future as a symbol of brutality

2023-02-06T18:51:00-05:00

The city of Philadelphia is prepared to release a report detailing a months-long community engagement effort officials say will inform the fate of the Roundhouse, the unusual concrete building that served as police headquarters for more than six decades. Many of the residents who participated in that process said they want to see the shuttered building at 7th and Race streets repurposed as a community hub that recognizes the site’s long history of police abuse.

Philadelphia has a long-frayed relationship between its police department and the community, including most notably the 1985 MOVE Bombing that claimed the lives of 11 activists while displacing another 250 people and destroying 61 homes. The Roundhouse has a central role in this fraught history, and now opinions are split over its proposed future redevelopment.

Robert Geddes, one of the building’s three designers has chimed in to say he feels it should be given a second life as a font for social justice activities and other types of community-based activism. The 125,000-square-foot Brutalist-style structure has also been floated as the potential site of affordable housing, though its layout remains difficult to convert by most estimates.

A final decision on its fate is expected sometime within the calendar year.

NBBJ will lead the redevelopment of Paul Rudolph’s Hurley Building at Boston Government Center

2022-08-31T11:13:00-04:00

NBBJ has been selected by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to lead the redevelopment of Paul Rudolph’s iconic Charles F. Hurley Building at the Boston Government Service Center.

The move was announced last week after years of speculation as to the fate of Rudolph’s endangered Brutalist follow-up to his Yale School of Art & Architecture building from 1963. NBBJ will add two glazed towers to the site directly on top of Rudolph’s Hurley Building, while Beyer Blinder Belle is on tap for the interior renovations of the extant structure.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker called it a “transformative redevelopment” that would “add much-needed housing, and boost the Commonwealth’s world-class life sciences sector.”

Image courtesy Leggat McCall Properties/NBBJ

As part of the deal, developers Leggat McCall says the remade site will include some 350,000-square-feet of government offices at no cost. The existing central plaza area will be transformed by the local landscaping firm Mikyoung Ki...

In Kyiv, a virtual tour guide shows the world what's left to uphold

2022-08-30T12:24:00-04:00

Soloviov’s virtual tours, which he announces on his Instagram page, have also become a way of coping with present circumstances. He says that during the pandemic and now the war, he has missed meeting visiting foreigners, some of whom were his most inquisitive tour participants. Now, he’s meeting them in their living rooms.

Dmytro Soloviov is unlike the many Ukrainian citizen journalists using social media to inform the non-traditional, non-television-connected audience about their war-torn home. Evacuated at the outset to the western Carpathian Mountains region, he began offering in-person and then (upon his return to the capital) virtual tours to audiences who described them alternatively as either “very intimate” or as places of refuge.

He says he won’t offer reviews of bomb-damaged buildings as a rule and is working to preserve the country's stock of Soviet-era architecture so as not to see it fall victim to war's terrible cycle of destruction — even after the shelling stops. “What will our descendants know of the 20th century in Ukraine if we demolished it all?” he said. “What will they think? That we did nothing?”

Trellick Tower residents are bracing for a fight against encroaching development schemes

2022-08-11T11:45:00-04:00

“Given the dire shortage of affordable housing in London and the valuable real estate occupied by the Trellick, it is almost certain that someone will build on the site in the future. But residents would like their say. [...] Many fear the build would only attract more developers to the surrounding neighborhood, spoiling the character of the site.”

This fall, residents were able to halt a Haworth Tompkins scheme for a new 16-story tower block in the place of its demolished nursing home that would have obstructed sightlines, a graffiti wall, and exterior views of the Grade II* listed structure. Some units have already been converted into luxury accommodations. Many fear the same privatized fate that befell leaseholders in Ernö Goldfinger’s earlier Balfron Tower is all but inevitable, given London developers’ penchant for leveraging the city’s social rent needs in order to obtain taxpayer-funded contracts.

"All we’ve ever done is stop them for a couple of years," original tenant Keith Benton told the Times. "There’s no guarantee they won’t try again."

Balfron Tower apartments go up for sale; enter Oliver Wainwright

2022-07-26T17:28:00-04:00

Almost 60 years later, Balfron’s streets have been scrubbed up and the residents’ facilities turbo-charged, but the kind of community that Goldfinger imagined has long since been evicted [...] Where once Balfron looked out over declining docks, it now winks across the Thames at the towers of Canary Wharf, whose bankers are a target audience for the new flats, which went on sale this weekend.

A spokesperson for the developer told the Guardian critic that the prospective buyers have mostly been well-to-do architects and design-hip young professionals thus far. Up for grabs is the famed Bond villain namesake Goldfinger’s personal apartment on the top floor, along with the five other preserved "heritage" apartments. Fans of the brutalist icon will have to shell out a pretty (money)penny to get inside its Grade II-listed halls, however: Asking prices for each of the 139 total apartments start at £375,000, or about $451,000.

Related on Archinect: Stock bricks to Brutalism: housing design in Poplar

Wainwright lamented the material choices and functionality of windows included in Studio Egret West's suite of upgrades as well as the newfound lack of views caused by the installation of a concrete balustrade. He also delved into the story behind its sordid ownership transfer. To that score, one "decanted" former resident told him the sloppy turnover was the product of "a political...

'I knew I had to do something': A Bulgarian architect on preserving a monument to her country's ugly past

2022-05-24T12:00:00-04:00

What do you do with a building that was built to glorify an oppressive Communist system but, ravaged by rain and snow and stripped bare by thieves, is now a wreck? Should it be torn down in the spirit of reckoning with history — just as the statues of Confederate generals have been toppled in the United States and monuments to Soviet hegemony have been demolished across Ukraine, particularly since Russia invaded in February?

After receiving two rounds of funding totaling $245,000 from the Getty Foundation in back-to-back years, the ever-popular photographer’s subject is struggling to raise the millions needed to restore it to the former 'glory' seen in what its designer Georgi Stoilov called “morally and materially superior times.”

Bulgarian Architect Dora Ivanova, who is leading a new push to conserve the Buzludzha Monument, says she “does not want to glorify the past” but rather intends to use its grimy edifice as an educational tool that fills a void in her native country’s national conversation about its less-than-sterling communist history.

“We don’t want a museum freezing everything as it was,” she told the New York Times, “but a place for discussion about the past. The idea is to overcome this silence — the shame of talking about what happened.”

...

Paul Rudolph-designed First Church in Boston prepares for 50th-anniversary celebrations

2022-04-25T19:20:00-04:00

Dedicated in 1972, plans are underway to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Paul Rudolph’s design for the First Church in Boston. In 1967, a fire destroyed most of the original 1867 gothic revival church by William Ware and Henry Van Brunt. The congregation considered proposals from Marcel Breuer, Joseph Schiffer, Joseph Eldridge, and Paul Rudolph. They voted in favor of Rudolph’s design [...]

In celebration of the anniversary, several events are scheduled at the church building for this weekend, April 30th and May 1st, including an Architects Panel on Sunday from 2–4 pm.

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AIA announces energy-efficient redesign scheme for its Brutalist D.C. headquarters

2022-04-20T19:09:00-04:00

In an effort to bring the organization closer to its own self-stated goals on sustainability, equity, and collaboration, the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has today unveiled plans for a comprehensive new upgrade to its aging Washington, D.C. National headquarters.

San Francisco-based EHDD will lead the overhaul of the nearly 50-year-old Brutalist structure using the AIA’s Framework for Design Excellence to author a host of efficiency upgrades that are expected to save some 58% of the building’s pre-Covid energy use levels.

Renderings courtesy AIA

“[The] AIA’s headquarters should serve as an expression of the value architects provide and align with the values we uphold as a profession,” President Dan Hart explained. “We have a responsibility to redesign this iconic building to the highest standards in sustainability, resilience, and equity. By demonstrating the powerful role design can play in improving our communities, we can...

The fate of Miami's Marine Stadium hangs in the balance after a delayed vote on preservation funds

2022-03-10T16:06:00-05:00

Despite an illustrious history, the prized structure on Virginia Key has sat vacant since Hurricane Andrew swept through the city in 1992. It now faces an uncertain future as city commissioners will soon decide whether to allocate $61.2 million in revenue-bond financing for the building’s restoration.

The Miami City Commission has since moved to defer the planned February 24th vote until late May after Commissioner Joe Carollo urged City Manager Art Noriega to reconsider the mounting financial impacts caused by increasingly costly restoration, which centers around reestablishing its original use as a concert venue.

Previously on Archinect: Rescue Plan for a Marooned Miami Stadium. Photo: Ken Hayden/Saving Places.

“I have been asking for the administration to give me a study to show how much we’re going to be losing, or if they think we’re going to make money, how much are we going to make, in a five-year projection. Nobody will give me that,” the commissioner said at the hearing. “It’s not that we don’t want to look back and enjoy history, but you can’t bring everything back again.”

Previously on Archinect: Architect of famed Miami Marine Stadium, Hilario Candela passes away at 87. Photo: Ken Hayden.

Miami had previously approved $45 million in now-expired funding for a restorati...

Oliver Wainwright on the Barbican’s big 4-0

2022-03-04T18:55:00-05:00

The result was a beguiling cocktail – part bastion, part brutalist hanging gardens of Babylon – and it stood as the ultimate expression of the modern movement’s search for a monument. The complexity of incorporating so many venues on so many levels across a 40-acre site has always made the place an infuriating labyrinth for the uninitiated, with successive decades of signage and way-finding strategies deployed in an attempt to ease the maze-like passageways.

The Barbican’s important birthday comes ahead of next month’s revealing of the winner of the City of London Corporation-sponsored redevelopment contest. The Centre is celebrating with a weekend of special programming including a guest DJ’d after party.

Previously on Archinect: City of London reveals shortlisted candidates for the redevelopment of the Barbican Centre

Wainwright also managed to dig up an original review of the Barbican’s opening from 1982, which provides remarkable insights as to how the estate, which was first commissioned by the city’s Court of Common Council in 1957, was received by the media.

“The overpowering imagination, skill and effort which has gone into the 25-year project becomes apparent immediately,” The Aberdeen Press and Journal wrote at the time. “It is engrained in the pine-clad walls, the polished teak flooring, the subtle lighting, the overall design. In fact, the Barbican has been described as ‘a haven of cultural perfection in the midst of the City...

City of London reveals shortlisted candidates for the redevelopment of the Barbican Centre

2022-01-11T17:26:00-05:00

One of the most important renewal projects in recent memory is a step closer to being realized in central London.

The city’s development corporation has officially revealed its competition shortlist of design partners for the highly-publicized Barbican Centre revamp.

Five teams were named to the list featuring a variety of international and local standouts that were tapped to compete for the chance to leave their mark on the capital and what is perhaps the country’s foremost example of Brutalism.

Adjaye Associates led the list in what would be an interesting follow-up to the firm's controversial UK Holocaust Memorial project currently nearing its start two-and-a-half miles away in Westminster. The firm’s bid is combined with assistance from Benetti Architects and PUP and joined on the list by another from BIG, aided by Avanti Architects and POoR Collective and one from DS+R, with McCloy + Muchemwa and Purcell as design partners. Two entries headlined by local firms round out the l...

Judge denies petition to preserve Brutalist bank in San Jose, making way for its demolition

2021-11-03T17:07:00-04:00

The development of a huge office campus in downtown San Jose can proceed and an old bank building can be demolished, a Santa Clara County judge has decided in a new ruling on the controversial building. A proposed development that would replace downtown San Jose’s decades-old CityView Plaza with a modern tech campus that could bring 14,000 jobs to the city’s urban core is at the heart of a legal action whose goal was to preserve a bank building designed in a “brutalist” architectural style.

The ruling denies a petition filed by the Preservation Action Council of San Jose filed seeking to preserve the 1973 Bank of California building and alter the construction of the new office campus being developed by real estate company Jay Paul Co. The petition by the preservationist group claimed that the San Jose City Council conducted a flawed environmental review process for the development and that it should be revisited.

The group also suggested that it might be possible to incorporate the brutalist structure within the proposed campus. This and the call to delay the demolition of the bank until another environmental impact report could be conducted were rejected by the judge.

Eight other structures will also be demolished for the redeveloped CityView Plaza, making room for a trio of 19-story, glass office towers designed by Gensler.

Former RIBA president and champion of Brutalism Owen Luder has passed away at 93

2021-10-11T14:44:00-04:00

Sad news today as multiple outlets are reporting the death of Brutalist icon and former RIBA president Owen Luder in England at the age of 93.

Luder held a number of different titles throughout his six-decade career and was a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) at the time of his passing.

Born in South London in 1928, Luder studied at what was then called The Brixton School of Building (today a part of London South Bank University) before opening his own practice in 1957 and going on to create some of the most controversial buildings in the post-war UK.

Characterized by his signature multi-use developments, Luder famously paired with Rodney Gordon on a number of theaters and multi-use projects that ultimately failed to withstand tests of time and wuthering public criticism.

Developments like the so-called “Dunston Rocket” in Tyre and Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth remain as some of the most...

The fate of Marcel Breuer's Frick Madison building could fall into developer hands soon

2021-09-20T19:01:00-04:00

The Breuer building, an architectural icon and the former longtime home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, could soon have a new owner. The Whitney is considering the sale of the building and brokers are compiling lists of potential buyers, according to sources in the art world and real estate. Now the multi-million-dollar question is: If the building is sold, can it be developed?

The brutalist masterpiece know colloquially for its architect Marcel Breuer opened as the new home of the Whitney Museum in 1966. The building exchanged hands in 2015 as the Met expanded past Fifth Avenue for the first time to make room for the collection of billionaire cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder.

Previously on Archinect: Frick Collection opens in Marcel Breuer-designed temporary new home, Frick Madison

The Met Breuer’s ill-fared run ended in March of 2020 before reopening in the spring after a pandemic overhaul led by Selldorf Architects. The new Frick Madison will occupy the current site for the remainder of its lease, which runs through the end of next year.

AaaM founder Bob Pang is leading a team of architects dedicated to preserving Hong Kong’s brutalist past

2021-09-14T07:56:00-04:00

Pang, of AaaM Architects, set out to locate Hong Kong’s Brutalist past with other local design professionals, who formed a team of architectural sleuths. They identified more than 70 buildings, 15 of which now feature in an exhibition showing how the architectural style made its mark on Hong Kong’s educational, industrial and religious building

The St. Stephen’s building was designed by Tao Ho, who died in 2019. Ho was also responsible for Hong Kong’s Bauhinia flower flag design, as well as its still-standing Arts Center, which opened in 1977.

The exhibition came together with the help of an AaaM intern named Alison Chan Lok-yan, who created building elevations for each of the 15 structures by hand using pencil and a grey paper material commonly used by architects in the 1970s.

Pang told the South China Morning Post brutalism reflects “the social conditions of the time and should be considered for conservation.” A full look at the group’s effort to preserve some of the city’s brutalist past can be found here.

Construction Update: Becker + Becker's transformation of a historic Marcel Breuer building is making progress

2021-08-16T15:20:00-04:00

A brutalist icon continues to make progress with its green makeover thanks to a new Passive House renovation by Becker + Becker.

The Pirelli Tire Building is perhaps one of New Haven, Connecticut’s most famous landmarks. The original nine-story structure was completed in 1970 and considered one of Marcel Breuer’s signature American buildings as well as one of the best examples of Brutalism in the country.

Architect and developer Bruce Becker is working to convert the former office building, famously owned by IKEA until recently, into a boutique hotel with 165 rooms that also has a net-zero rating with water, heating, and electricity provided on-site, a feature the architect says is unique to some of the challenges of the typology.

“The hospitality sector is probably one of the hardest ones to electrify, because the buildings tend to use energy more intensively,” Becker told Fast Company. “If they have on-site laundries, the convention is to use a lot of fossil fuels to run those. ...

Construction update: Halfway there for Sasaki's Boston City Hall Plaza upgrade despite a slate of unforeseen obstacles

2021-08-09T20:23:00-04:00

It’s been a year since former Mayor Marty Walsh announced the start of renovations to City Hall Plaza and work is about halfway complete, despite unexpected obstacles.

The renovation is the brainchild of former Boston mayor (and current Secretary of Labor) Marty Walsh, who promised an 18–24-month construction period when the project was announced in 2019. The barren 7-acre plaza has long been an object of derision in the city after the McKinnell & Kallman-designed Brutalist building opened in 1968.

Site plan of the plaza overhaul. Image courtesy Sasaki.

Sasaki is leading the $70 million redesign which will add green space, children's play areas, and a promenade to a more accessible City Hall Plaza.

Boston.com has more on the renovation’s progress here.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sasaki (@sasakidesign)

Paulo Mendes da Rocha, pioneer of Brazilian architecture, dies at 92

2021-05-24T10:39:00-04:00

Paulo Mendes da Rocha, one of the most acclaimed architects in Brazil and around the world, has passed away at 92. The pioneer of “Brazilian Brutalism” died in São Paulo on Sunday May 23rd, following a battle with lung cancer.

National Coach Museum, 2015. Lisbon, Portugal. Photo: Aménio Teixeira. Courtesy of Paulo Mendes da Rocha

Born in 1928, Mendes da Rocha’s career began at the age of 29 when he won a competition to design the gymnasium of the Paulistano Athletics Club. Following the Paulistano Athletics Club, Mendes da Rocha designed many notable projects including the renovation of the Pincoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, and the Patriarch Plaza redevelopment project with its iconic portico. He is considered one of the exponents of the “Paulista School”, a group of modernist architects formed in the 1950s that embraced exposed concrete surfaces, rough finishes, and heavy, brutalist massing.

Paulistano Athletic Club Gymnasium, São Paulo

His cont...

Demolition of Paul Rudolph's Burroughs Wellcome Building underway

2021-01-21T12:48:00-05:00

The dismantling of The Elion-Hitchings Building, near where Cornwallis Road meets the Durham Freeway, has been underway internally for several months. But now the demolition has reached the point where workers are pulling the building apart and hauling away pieces by the truckload. Fans of the building and its architect, Paul Rudolph, had hoped to persuade its owner, United Therapeutics, to save it because of its architectural and historical significance.

Despite repeated calls to preserve and protect the Paul Rudolph-designed Burroughs Wellcome Building in Durham, North Carolina — a change.org petition launched by the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation in September has collected over 5,780 signatures so far — the demolition of this significant piece of 1970s Brutalism has been well underway, reports Richard Stradling for The News & Observer.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by PaulRudolphHeritageFoundation (@paulrudolphfoundation)

"The building stood out in the Triangle when it opened in 1972," Stradling writes. "Perched on a small hill overlooking the Durham Freeway, the A-frame structure had terraced floors and angled walls and windows. Some called it innovative and futuristic; others simply found it ugly."

Demolition is expected to be completed by April.

Uncertain future for the brutalist buildings of northern England

2021-01-06T13:24:00-05:00

Some of the finest examples of brutalist architecture in the north of England are at risk of being torn down, according to a photographer who believes a crucial part of the country’s architectural history could be lost in the process. Simon Phipps [...] said that a mix of mismanagement and a general undervaluing of brutalism was leading to unnecessary demolition.

The Guardian has published a gallery of photographs by Simon Phipps who has been documenting northern England's concrete heritage for his new book Brutal North.

Trump signs executive order promoting 'traditional and classical architecture' for America's federal buildings

2020-12-21T16:29:00-05:00

With only 29 days of his White House mandate remaining, President Trump revisited a topic that had previously stoked sharp criticism from the architecture community and signed an executive order today that makes classical architecture the preferred style for federal buildings.

The order opens with a lengthy rundown of American federal architecture, from its beginnings under Washington and Jefferson, through its perceived problems with Modernism since the 1950s, all the way to calling out a certain contemporary "San Francisco Federal Building" as one of the "ugliest structures" in the city.

"Classical and other traditional architecture, as practiced both historically and by today’s architects, have proven their ability to meet these design criteria and to more than satisfy today’s functional, technical, and sustainable needs," the order transitions to the policy section. "Their use should be encouraged instead of discouraged."

Related on Archinect: New executive order could make clas...