about Kallmann. McKinnell & Wood Architects Inc.

Lecture 11.16.10 Meaning in Public Buildings

Meaning is expressed in public buildings in three ways: direct literal, indirect literal and abstract.

Hindu Temples, India

The Pantheon, Rome

University of Virginia, Charlottesville (Thomas Jefferson)

Doge’s Palace, Venice

Campidoglio, Rome (Michelangelo)

Stockholm Town Hall, Sweden (Ragnar Otsberg)

Boston City Hall (Kallman, McKinnell and Knowles)

St. Mary’s Church, San Francisco (Pier Luigi Nervi, Pietro Belluschi)

LBJ Library, Austin (SOM)

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Teaching Architecture and Society:
Architect: ,
Posted November 18, 2010

, 1988

“American Academy of Arts and Sciences”

Written by Larry Speck

When Kallmann and McKinnell – consummate Modernists known at the time for their brutalist Boston City Hall of 1968 – produced the gentle, arcadian American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980, it caused quite a stir among avid style-labelers in the Modernism/Postmodernism debate. Although noted critic Ada Louise Huxtable termed it “an architectural event [...]