Fixing one of Boston’s structural deficiencies

As in my last architecture centered blog, I want to touch upon something not usually considered by architecture reviews. Something important that everybody notices but nobody takes note of. Something like a piece of garbage on the sidewalk, that people walk around and frown at but don’t pick up and throw away.

I’m talking about, as opposed to the residents, the people who aren’t. The city, the neighborhood that a new building fits into, and how it is affected by a new piece of property, whether or not that structure is artistic, aesthetic, or useful by itself. Robert Campbell’s article on the expanding Convention Center in Boston’s south waterfront is less a review (though he certainly gives his opinion on the structure that’s already there) but a warning, or maybe just an argument, against expansion – and a few ideas, if making it bigger is what Boston’s Convention Center Authority really thinks is the smartest course of action.

Apparently, the CCA just wants Boston to be a competitor. Other cities have bigger convention centers, and thus they have bigger conventions, which attract more people who spend more money and need more places to stay when they get here. Fine. That’s a noble economic goal for the city, but why might it render Boston ultimately less visitable?

The answer is charm. As Campbell argues, these buildings are steel monsters that take up large amounts of space and look bland at best (most times just obtrusive). Such a building “creates a dead zone around itself, as if it were some kind of toxic infection in the city.” Built far away from the center of Boston’s vivacity, our Convention Center makes pedestrians “feel alienated and unwelcome,” especially taking into account the “moat of traffic” that surrounds it. Clearly, though our center may contain “12 acres of indoor space,” its functional abilities come with the added cost of a big chunk of Boston real estate rendered, well, less functional than it could be for the parties not concerned with this week’s event. Which are usually the people who, um, live here.

However, Campbell lists two cities that have effectively integrated a convention center into their neighborhood. Integration is the key word for Philadelphia and San Francisco. With the latter’s Moscone Center, most of the building is underground, only “museums and a green park at ground level.” That sounds pretty unobtrusive. Philly’s Pennsylvania Convention Center is a single story high, “allowing Philadelphia and its streets and activities to flow continuously, without interruption, through and beneath it.” Both are centrally located, as opposed to throwing your convention center as far from society as your arm (and city limits) will allow. The Philadelphia Center in particular includes lots of restaurants and shops right up around it, so that one could walk by and do something else instead of having to weather a “useless no-man’s land” to avoid it. “Not great architecture by a long shot,” the PCC at least works with the city around it, and has glass lobbies and corridors to help you connect with your surroundings.

Campbell’s ideas for improvement of Boston’s Convention Center are to include public streets (instead of huge highways), have restaurants and attractions around it for those who don’t necessarily care about conventions, and to generally fit in with Boston so that people might want to take a walk through the area or stay awhile if that’s where they end up. With these improvements, which again concern the key word “integration,” “it might even do good for the South Boston waterfront.” For a city built on “walkability” and small-scale charm, it’s strange that Boston would be so far behind with making this sterile monolith fit in.

The expansions haven’t been built yet, so there’s still time to create a thriving, lively piece of urban renewal around what is now a flat line in the city’s otherwise steady architectural pulse. For my last blog about Campbell’s architecture review, what could be more appropriate than to cover Campbell’s ideas for a better city, as opposed to just his opinion of what’s already here? This is a seasoned man’s vision of how to fix something he sees as architecturally undeniably wrong. We would all do well to take note.