The American Academy of Arts and Sciences Kallmann Mckinnell Wood

Kallmann McKinnell & Wood

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William T. Young Library of the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky (completed in 1998).

Kallmann McKinnell & Wood is an architectural design firm based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1962 as Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles by Gerhard Kallmann (1915-2012), Michael McKinnell (1935–2020), and Edward Knowles.^[1]

History

The firm originated when it won an international competition to blueprint the Boston Urban center Hall in 1962.^[two] Soon reconstituted as Kallmann McKinnell and Wood, ("Kallmann, the eldest member of the team, [is] High german born and English language educated. ... McKinnell [is] English born and educated. ... Both have served equally ... educators at the Harvard Graduate Schoolhouse of Pattern." Henry A. Wood "joined the house in 1965."^[3]) the house would go on to design structures across the United states and abroad.

While the firm's "early catamenia" consisted of assuming structures of poured and pre-cast concrete, its afterward innovative work more than ofttimes utilized brick, stone, copper, slate and cast stone, amid other materials, for buildings that were less Brutalist in way and more postmodernist. In particular, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established KMW'due south new direction with a copper-roofed villa set amidst a stand of wood. The form of the business firm'due south work through the tardily 1980s was charted in Alex Krieger's exhibition at Harvard's Graduate School of Design and published in the itemize that he edited, The Compages of Kallmann McKinnell & Woods. In 2004, David Dillon'south tome of the same title carried the role'southward piece of work through the early 21st century.

KMW buildings take won the Harleston Parker Medal, given out for the best new edifice in Greater Boston, more times than any other firm in the history of the medal, as documented in the major exhibit of KMW's original drawings for Boston City Hall, from 2008. Drawn from the KMW annal in the collection of Celebrated New England, this exhibition was presented at the Wentworth Institute of Applied science in Boston and organized past architect Gary Wolf.^[four]

Boston City Hall

The business firm'due south design for Boston City Hall was selected after a two-stage national pattern competition with 256 entrants. The jury composed of major architects and three prominent Boston businessmen unanimously chose the projection because of its logical and successful handling of the competition's complex building program, because of its inventive response to the urban site, and because of its powerful symbolism of a "New Boston." Boston historian Walter Muir Whitehill proclaimed the KMK design to be "every bit fine a building for its time and identify every bit Boston has always produced." Horizon Magazine lauded both the design and the competition process itself: "Boston's jury...has turned in a decisive verdict that volition stand up for some time as a model of responsible civic conduct."

With its concrete massing echoing in an abstract fashion not but the classical cornices of ancient Hellenic republic but likewise the Neo-Classical forms of Federal Boston, and with its brick base creating a continuity with the nearby masonry structures of the Blackstone Block, the edifice engaged the historic city in means that the other competition entries did not.

Shortly after the building's opening, New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote: "Boston can gloat with the knowledge that it has produced a superior public building in an age that values cheapness over quality as a form of public virtue. Information technology likewise has one of the handsomest buildings around, and thus far, i of the least understood.... Information technology is a product of this moment and these times.... The result is a tough and circuitous building for a tough and circuitous historic period, a construction of dignity, humanism, and ability."^[5] Public opinion has been mixed, and remains so to this day.

In breaking with the smooth, curtain-wall surfaces and the simplified forms of the so-popular post-Miesian corporate modernism, Kallmann, McKinnell and Knowles' design asserted the borough presence of Urban center Hall on the big surrounding plaza. McKinnell spoke of how concrete immune architects to return to early modernist principles of true expression of construction and materials, while reacting critically to the corporate architectural institution of the time. "Subsequently we won the City Hall competition, we were walking along Madison Avenue, and we spied [Philip] Johnson coming towards us, waving his arms in typical Johnsonian style. 'Ah! I'm so happy for yous ii young boys who have won this contest. Absolutely marvelous. I think information technology'south wonderful. And it's so ugly!' We thought that was the greatest praise we could get."^[6]

Urban center Hall was published internationally both at the fourth dimension of its design and upon its completion, and popular publications and tourist guide books featured the building prominently, merely unlike the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and Sydney'south Opera Firm (besides products of widely publicized design competitions), Boston City Hall never became a symbol of the metropolis, except perhaps in a negative way. Although some tried to associate it with the urban center's successful reinvention of itself following decades of decline, this never caught on. For many it became symbolic of all that was wrong with Boston'southward government: rigid, mean, and uncaring of the masses. Said McKinnell: "Equally we all know, Boston'south mayor wants to sell or preferably tear down City Hall. Simply as [structural engineer] Bill LeMessurier once said, it will take a controlled nuclear device to go rid of this building. So in a very real fashion, perhaps, we have made our legacy using physical because information technology is so bloody difficult to get rid of.... Nosotros were correct in the sense that compages had to exist rethought every bit something which is long-lived and, over time, could be decorated, embellished, and adorned past subsequent generations."^[7]

As of March 2011, plans are underway to re-think the surrounding plaza in relation to the building.^{[8] [ix]}

Designs

American Academy of Arts and Sciences Building

Later on existence established to run into Boston City Hall through to completion, Kallmann McKinnell & Wood continued to design major buildings in Boston, throughout New England, and world-wide. Locally, its many buildings range from Newton, with the Metropolis's Public Library, to Boston's Columbia Point, with the University of Massachusetts Boston Campus Center. In New Jersey, the Becton Dickinson corporate headquarters can be establish. The Embassy of the United States in Bangkok, Thailand. The Krieger and Dillon volumes provide comprehensive overviews of the firm's work.

• Boston City Hall and City Hall Plaza, Boston, Massachusetts
• Becton, Dickinson and Visitor headquarters
• Back Bay (MBTA station), Boston, Massachusetts
• Blanton Museum of Art
• University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts
• Phillips Exeter Academy athletics building, Exeter, New Hampshire (1970)
• William T. Young Library, Lexington, Kentucky
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis University (2010)^[x]

References

1. ^ Hevesi, Dennis (2012-06-24). "Gerhard Kallmann, Architect, Is Dead at 97". New York Times . Retrieved 2012-07-sixteen .
2. ^ Kallmann McKinnell & Wood Architects, Inc., Firm History
3. ^ Stephen Sennott. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture. Taylor & Francis, 2004; v.one, p.156.
4. ^ Gary Wolf. Inventing a City Hall, Celebrated New England, Winter/Jump 2009. Illustrated article providing overview of exhibition.
5. ^ Huxtable, Ada Louise (February 4, 1969). "Boston's New City Hall: A Public Edifice of Quality". New York Times.
6. ^ Mark Pasnik. An Interview with Michael McKinnell. 2009.
7. ^ Pasnik. 2009.
8. ^ Casey Ross. A 10-yr programme for Urban center Hall Plaza: New incremental approach starts with remodeled T station, trees. Boston Globe, March xvi, 2011
9. ^ What practise you lot think should be done to City Hall Plaza? Boston World, March 16, 2011
10. ^ "Brandeis Mandel Eye / Kallmann McKinnell & Wood Architects". ArchDaily. vi July 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2018.

Publications

• Dillon, David, The Compages of Kallmann McKinnell & Forest, 2004, Edizioni Press.
• Krieger, Alex, editor, The Compages of Kallmann McKinnell & Wood, 1988, Rizzoli.

External links

• Official Website
• Google news annal. Articles near Kallmann McKinnell & Woods.
• Google news annal. Articles almost Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles.
• Historic New England. Kallmann, McKinnell and Wood architectural collection, 1950-1995

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