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As Boston continues to ponder its Brutalist city hall, professor suggests covering the behemoth with a glass veil

As Boston continues to ponder its Brutalist city hall, professor suggests covering the behemoth with a glass veil

Like so many Brutalist buildings around the word, Boston’s iconic City Hall has not necessarily endeared itself to the public. Since it opened in the 1960s, there have been calls to update the building, completely overhaul it, and to demolish it outright and start over. There have, of course, also been calls to preserve it.

The latest idea to revamp City Hall comes from Harry Bartnick, a Suffolk University professor, who wants to cover the structure with a tinted glass curtain structure. In an op-ed in the Boston Globe, he called the idea “simple, obvious, and cost-effective.”

“The generally outward sloping angle of the glass would impart a feeling of greater stability, and redistribute the visual mass toward the ground,” Bartnick argued. “Translucent glass would allow the original wall-surface variations to still be seen, but now softened by filtration through the glass ‘veil.'” He continued that the intervention would help the building’s efficiency by establishing a “climate-controlled, passive solar interior environment.”

There are no plans to actually move forward with this project, but, as Bartnick noted, his idea comes as the area undergoes major changes including a new residential tower by César PelliBoston Business Journal also recently reported that Center Plaza, a 720,000-square-foot, mixed-us complex nearby, is set to receive a $25 million facelift. Along with new retail tenants, the CBT Architects–led transformation will update exterior walkways, street-level lobbies, and the existing rooftop.


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