GOVERNMENT

CENTER AND PLAZA

COMPLEX
Case Study
a. Scope and Delimitations

■ The case study that will be presented ore connected with the government center
and plaza complex. The focus of the case studies is on the issue on the best and the
worst erected government center and plaza complex, local or international. Some of
the case studies are incorporated with illustration, sketches and photgraphs.
CASE STBOSTON’S CITY HALL PLAZA

1. INTRODUCTION
In the 1960s, Boston riveted the attention of the architecture world as never before or since. A
cluster of the building arose by famous-name architects Walter Gropius and Paul Rudolph to an
urban plan authored by I. M. Pie. The occasion for Boston’s moment in the sun was Government
Center, an urban renewal area spread over the dozen of acres, whose collection of buildings
represent one of the world’s finest ensembles of mid-twentieth-century modern architecture.
the idea for downtown government building complex in Boston dates back to the early twentieth
century. In the 1950s the urgency, will, and resources for such a project came together to
produce Government Center.
The historical backstory of Government Center was Boston’s economic fall , caused by the
collapse of the state’s manufacturing sector, which reached precipitous level after World War II.
Dropping population, poverty, physical decay, and the flight to the suburbs impelled Boston
Political and business leaders to dramatic action to reverse the city long tern decline.
Planning Development.
■ The first step was to produce a master plan that would divided the dozens of acres
in the site into separate parcels with designated purpose, for government, business,
open space, and other uses.
■ According the 1959 BRA report the streets that would be implemented in Government Center
would accommodate the biggest existing streets to the vision of the Artery and the Tunnels
as means of producing new efficient flows only in the north-south direction. Four corridors
were planned.
I. Cambridge
II. The New Congress Street
III. The street beneath the central artery
IV. The Central Artery