99% Invisible - 400- The Smell of Concrete After Rain

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

There have been over 200,000 deaths as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. All have been tragic, but there are two people in particular we’ve lost due to COVID that were part of the world of architecture and design that we want to honor with a couple of stories today. First, we are mourning the loss of architect Michael McKinnell. Along with Gerhard Kallman, McKinnell designed the unforgettable Boston City Hall, completed in 1968. They won the commission for Boston City Hall after submitting their brutalist, heroic monument in a contest when Michael McKinnell was just 26 years old. It was always a controversial structure, much of the public found it ugly and too unconventional, but architects and critics tend to love it. This is the often the case with Brutalism in general and that is the subject of our first story starring Boston City Hall. Another voice who is gone too early was Michael Sorkin. Sorkin was a designer and the Village Voice architecture critic in the 80s. He brought a totally new kind of approach to writing about buildings, one that focused on people and politics. We spoke with design critic at Curbed, Alexandra Lange, about Sorkin's work, and Roman Mars reads excerpts from one of his pieces called Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know. The Smell of Concrete After Rain

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. There have been tens of thousands of deaths as results of the coronavirus pandemic. All have been tragic, but there are two people in particular that we've lost to COVID that were part of the world of architecture and design that we want to honor with a couple of stories today. First, we are mourning the loss of architect Michael McKinnell, along with Gerhard Coleman, McKinnell designed the unforgettable Boston City Hall, completed in 1968. They won the commission for Boston City Hall after submitting their brutalist heroic monument in a contest when Michael McKinnell was just 26 years old.

It was always a controversial structure. Much of the public fended ugly and too unconventional, but architects and critics tend to love it. This is often the case with brutalism more generally, and that is the subject of a piece, starring Boston City Hall that Avery Chalfenman reported for us back in 2015. To celebrate Michael McKinnell's life, we're gonna play that story for you now. It's one of my favorites. I hope you like it. The best James Bond is either Sean Connery

or Daniel Craig. I lean towards Daniel Craig. The new movies are just better. But the Sean Connery films definitely had the best villains. There's Blowfeld of course, who's so iconic that he turned the act of cat stroking into a thing that super villains do. But Bond's flashiest nemesis has to be Goldfinger. Do you expect me to talk?

No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die! Do you expect me to talk? Yeah, I expect you to talk. There's this dorky fun fact that the Bond villain Goldfinger was actually named after a real person. That's truffle-me. Avery truffle-me. The author of the James Bond books, In Fleming, named Goldfinger for a man he found so

dastardly, so terrible that he immortalized him in pop culture. The real gold finger was an architect, Erno Goldfinger, and he made giant, hulking, austere, concrete buildings. Goldfinger's buildings were decreed sole-less, inhabitants claimed to suffer health problems and depression from spending time inside them. Some of Goldfinger's buildings were vacated because occupants found them so ugly. And yet many architects praised Goldfinger buildings were vacated because occupants found them so ugly. And yet many architects praised Goldfingers buildings. His trellic tower, which was once threatened with demolition, has been awarded landmark status. This divide, this hatred from the public and love from designers and architects, tends to be the narrative around buildings like gold fingers, which is to say gigantic, imposing buildings made of concrete.

What some people refer to as brutalist architecture. And a lot of folks, beyond the creator of James Bond, love to hate them. We are in Worcester Hall, which to my great-dismay illustration is often considered the worst building on campus, or Worcester Hall, more like Worst. I met up with Sarah Briggs Ramsey in Worcester Hall, a brutalist building at UC Berkeley. I can't tell you how many times I've been locking up my bike outside and I over here undergrads,

walking with their parents, and going, ironically, this is the architecture school and it's the ugliest building on campus. Yep, Worcester Hall is the architecture school. Sarah completed her master's there. Buildings like this are pretty pervasive across most American and Canadian campuses. Yeah, there was a big bulky concrete building on the campus where I went to college.

And I hated when I had to go through it. It just reminded me of a bunker or a bomb shelter. These big concrete buildings just like bum me out. Absolutely, I mean, it has these connotations of, you know, Soviet era construction, sometimes third world construction, all these negative associations. This is Professor Adrian Forty, author of the excellent book Concrete and Culture. He's been researching concrete for around ten years now. It has a bad name.

Apart from aesthetic criticisms, concrete buildings present environmental concerns. A lot of these buildings built at a time when energy was cheap and they use up an awful lot of energy to heat and cool them. Concrete buildings were built with the illusion of plenty, that we will always have enough energy to build and heat and cool these massive, inefficient structures. As harsh as it looks, concrete is an utterly optimistic building material. Arguably too optimistic. Really from the 1920s it was seen as being the material that would change the world. It had the potential to build things in a way that hadn't been

seen before. Concrete was this material that seemed boundless, readily available in vast quantities, and it could create massive spaces, unlike any other material. So concrete sprang up everywhere. It's the second most heavily consumed product in the world. The only thing we consume more of than concrete is water. We use concrete for sidewalks, bridges, tunnels, and highways, and of course, for giant buildings. Whether we're talking about stadia or auditoria or condominia or gymnasia or planetaria. So historically, government programs all over the world loved concrete. Particularly in Soviet Russia, but also later in Europe, North America. It was used for welfare, welfare state projects.

Concrete presented the most efficient way to house huge numbers of people. And philosophically, it was seen as humble, capable, and honest. Concrete was just out there in all of its rough glory not hiding behind any paint or layers saying here I am love me or hate me and his concrete buildings came to signify humility honesty and integrity They were erected all over the world as housing projects courthouses schools churches hospitals and City halls you'll stand outside and a tour bus will go by and they'll be, well, ladies and gentlemen, voted the most ugliest building in the world, Boston City Hall. How do you compete with that? Chris Grimley is up against a lot, but he's trying to restore Boston City Hall's reputation.

My name is Chris Grimley. I'm with my fellow heroic people, Mark Paznik and Michael Kubo. Chris, Mark, and Michael have embarked on what they call the heroic project, chronicling the concrete structures in and around Boston. Rather than referring to these concrete buildings as brutalists, they prefer the term heroic. Because like so many superheroes, these structures have the best most noble intentions, but are sorely misunderstood. Also, just generally, brutalism is a big broad label that gets used inconsistently in architecture.

People tend to disagree on one precise definition. The name brutalism also just sounds intense, even though it's not actually related to brutality. It comes from Beton Brute, which is a French term for raw concrete. In any case, to these guys, heroic feels like a better term, especially in Boston, where concrete architecture swooped in and saved the day. You have to situate Boston in late 50s, 1960s. It is America's first city. Well, it is America's most historic city.

Again, not really, but I get your point. And yet, it finds itself in the doldrums. Boston, like a lot of other American cities, was plagued by a loss of manufacturing jobs and white flight to the suburbs. And for decades, Boston had the highest property taxes in the nation, and almost no development. There is this recognition from civic authorities that something needs to be done, and something needs to be done quickly.

So Boston sets an agenda to make the city great again with big, soaring, capable, thoroughly modern buildings made, of course, out of concrete. And though some of these buildings were celebrated, others were really not. What we call the third rail of Boston concrete modernism is city hall. These buildings were celebrated. Others were really not. When Boston City Hall was built in 1968, critics were put off by this concrete style. It was called alienating and cold. And since it was a government building, this criticism

became impossible to remove from politics. Boston City Hall became a political pawn. Mayors and City Council members kept trying to win public support with promises to get rid of the building, like John Tobin did when he ran for City Council. Hi everybody, this is John Tobin. Thanks for visiting votejontobin.com. Here we are on City Hall Plaza in front of Boston City Hall. I'm not in our context, but I know bad I could actually want to see it. This is a bad building, and I think we can do a lot by knocking this building down.

Former Mayor Thomas Manino actually started a study to really look into tearing it down. It turned out as a result of the study that you would need something like a nuclear grade weapon, basically to destroy this building, because it was so heavily over-bilted concrete. And so, when they couldn't tear down City Hall, officials chose to ignore it. People that occupied the building for decades and decades didn't like it, and so they didn't

invest money into the building, and effectively wanted to see the building go away. This is called active neglect, and it happens with a lot of concrete buildings. They are intentionally unrepaired, unrenovated, and uncared for. Which only makes the building more ugly, and then more hated, and then more ignored, and creates this vicious cycle where the public hate of Boston City Hall feeds itself. And then the discussion years on really became about what the original architects had done wrong, as if this were not a failure of maintenance, but a failure of the initial design. When people built these mammoth concrete structures, no one really thought about maintenance.

They seemed indestructible. In the early days of concrete, people assumed that this was an everlasting material that wouldn't need any attention at all. And that's wrong. We know that it does need to be looked after. It does deteriorate. It does decay. But it can be hard to tell when concrete is decaying. If you think of brick and timber, the decay takes place on the surface of them. But with concrete, the deterioration is internal. Concrete deteriorates chemically from the inside out.

Part of this has to do with the metal reinforcements that help hold up most concrete buildings. The rebar, well it can rust, and the rust eats away at the overall structure. But Adrian 40 says tearing them down is not the answer. Because as soon as you tell them down, then you have a problem, first of all, what you do with a detritus that's left.

And secondly, you've got to replace them with something else and use up a whole lot more energy and create a lot more CO2 in building something in that place. They already used up all that energy when they were made. They're already there. We can adapt these buildings to make them greener and make them more appealing places to be by adding windows, for example. But basically, Professor Forty thinks

we can all develop the capacity to love these concrete broods in all their hulking glory. Yeah, sure, people can learn to love anything. But, you know, as with any art form, whether it's opera or painting or literature, the more you know about it, the more you'll get out of it, the more you'll appreciate it. And this is especially true of concrete buildings. Architecture students appreciate them because they know that concrete actually requires a hell of a lot of skill and finesse to work with. To do architecture in concrete is proof that you are really an architect. It's the test of being an architect. For the concrete building, every little detail needs to be calculated in advance.

Concrete is wildly intimidating to work with. Once you pour it, there's no going back. With a concrete building, it's like the result of an immaculate conception. The whole thing is an integral monolithic whole, and it has to be right. And aside from the interesting design challenges that poses, concrete itself as a material can be subtly beautiful if you look closely. You know what we think of is just a monolithic, consistent homogenous texture is actually really rich and has a lot of interest when you actually go up to it and consider it.

Sarah Briggs Ramsey, the one I spoke with at Berkeley's Worcester Hall, did a year-long project traveling around the world, looking at concrete buildings in Europe and Asia and south and North America. To create a global comparison of one material that I think is so sort of under-considered, it's like the background of all the cities, but no one actually stands to look. We call the city a concrete jungle to talk about the artificialness of the urban landscape, but concrete can actually be a very natural expression of the environment. Concrete's color and texture can be dictated by local climate, local earth, and local rock. This is the Harvard Science Center on the Harvard campus, and it's got a very purpley, like a really pronounced purpley color, and that's the ground from the site.

Concrete can also be an expression of local style and custom, like how UK concrete has big, thick, textured chunks of rock, while Japanese concrete is very fine and custom. Like how UK concrete has big thick textured chunks of rock, while Japanese concrete is very fine and flat. But the beauty of concrete architecture is all the better when you can just observe the buildings like pieces of sculpture, without actually having to live and work in them, which brings in concrete surprising ally, photography. Concrete looks good in photographs. It provides this kind of neutral background.

It provides a wonderful setting for people's skin tones, color of their clothes. Fashion photographers realize this first and then pockets of the internet started to appreciate these concrete buildings. There are lots of these blogs and so on, which show a kind of extraordinary enthusiasm for concrete. Photography is allowing a new audience of non-architects to appreciate these buildings for their strong lines, their crisp shadows, and increasingly, the ideal is in the embody. They represent a set of ideas about the state of the world and what the future was imagined to be.

We want to preserve. We should remember what people were thinking 50 years ago. If we tear these buildings down, we will lose all of that. Architecture, whether we want to admit it or not, has a sort of shelf life, a time after which buildings fall out of fashion, and then are allowed to fall apart. Back in the 1960s, Victorian-style buildings were considered hideous, falling apart, impossible to repair, and we were tearing batches of them down, all the while erecting big concrete buildings. But enough Victorians were saved that today they are these beautiful, lovingly restored

treasures. Brutalist, heroic, whatever you want to call it. Concrete architecture now finds itself at a potential inflection point. Too outdated to be modern, too young to be classic. In a small but growing band of architects, architecture enthusiasts and preservationists would like us to just wait a bit and see. Maybe with a little time and love we might discover some architectural diamonds in the rough that we just can't see right now.

Michael McKinnell, architect of Boston City Hall, died of a COVID related illness at the age of 84. He is survived by his wife and architectural partner, Stephanie Malice. Our heart goes out to all who knew him and loved him. After the break, we honor a true vanguard of architectural criticism, Michael Sorkin. Stay with us. In late March, we also lost designer and architecture critic, Michael Sorkin, two complications brought on by COVID-19. When he started writing for the village voice in the 1980s, he brought a totally

new kind of approach to writing about buildings, one that focused on people and politics. I feel like he really stretched the boundaries on, you know, how confrontational you could be in print. This is architecture critic at Curbden, in front of the show, Alexander Lang. Storkin became famous for ripping into conventional wisdom and sometimes ripping into important builders and other critics too. It gave a vitality to architecture criticism and stretched the boundaries of what it could be

in a way that really kind of brought it to a new generation's attention and has continued to be really important for younger critics. Michael Sorkin wrote about buildings, but also the much bigger factors that make up an urban landscape. You know, one of the things that comes through really strongly in his work is this idea that it's not, architecture isn't just this pure profession of, you know, mostly men, you know, thinking about forms and then placing them in the city. You know, architecture is something that is shaped by social change, political change, dirty money, all of these things, and Sorkin always really brought that into the mix. In 2009, Sorkin published a book called 20 Minutes in Manhattan, which traces the walk

from his home to his studio in New York. Sorkin wrote about paying special, close attention to the little details of his neighborhood, and how those small details taught him so much about history and community. It's the kind of book that 99% of visible listeners would love, and it feels especially relevant right now. The kind of attention that he was paying to that part

of his city is something that we all can do now. I mean, people are obviously feeling stir crazy in their homes, but if they're also feeling stir crazy in their neighborhoods, one way to get over it is to add another layer of attention or go down streets that you don't normally go down. And I feel like that 20-minute limit could actually be a little form of freedom if you really want to drill down and think about your neighborhood in a deeper way than you usually do because

you're rushing through it to go somewhere else. A lot of Michael Sworken's writing is not online, but one of the pieces that made the rounds a couple of times on the internet was a provocative, meditative list called 250 things an architect should know. I thought it would be nice to read some of it now. Some selections from 250 things in architecture. No. The feel of cool marble under bear feet.

How to live in a small room with five strangers for six months. With the same strangers in a lifeboat for a week, the distance a shout carries in the city, the distance of a whisper. The number of people with rent subsidies in New York City, in your town, include the rich. The flowering season for Azaleas. The flowering season for azaleas. The insulating properties of glass, the history of its production and use, and of its meaning. How to lay bricks. Would Victor Hugo really meant by this will kill that.

The rate at which the sea is arising, building information modeling, BIM, the energy embodied in aluminum, how to turn a corner, how to design a corner, how to sit in a corner. Now Antony Gaudi modeled the Sagrada Familia and calculated its structure. The rate at which that carpet you specified off gases. The migratory patterns of warblers and other seasonal travelers. The basics of mud construction. The direction of prevailing winds. Hydrology is destiny.

Jane Jacobs in and out. Elementary ergonomics. The color wheel. What the client wants. What the client thinks it wants. What the client needs. What the client can afford. What the planet can afford.

The theoretical basis for modernity and a great deal about its factions and inflections. What the brick really wants. What went wrong in Provid Igo? What went wrong with the Tacoma Nero's Bridge? Where the CCTV cameras are. The secrets of the success of Robert Moses. The reciprocal influences of Chinese and Japanese building. the proper proportions of a gin martini, how the crow flies, how the pyramids were built, why, the pleasures of the suburbs, the horrors,

the quality of light passing through ice, the meaninglessness of borders, the reasons for their tenacity, the need for freaks, is possible to begin designing anywhere, the smell of concrete after rain, the angle of the sun at the equinox, how to ride a bicycle, the depth of the aquifer beneath you, the slope of a handicapped ramp, the wages of construction workers, where materials come from, how to get lost. The pattern of artificial light at night, seen from space. The reasons for the split between architecture and engineering,

many ideas about what constitutes utopia would shop safety, the architectural impact of colonialism on the cities of North Africa, a distaste for imperialism, the history of Beijing. Dutch domestic architecture in the 17th century, the rate at which copper acquires a patina. The levels of particulates in the air of Tianjin, the capacity of white pine trees to sequester carbon, the fire code, the seismic code, the health code. How to listen closely. That there is a big danger in working in a single medium. The log jam you don't even know your stuck in will be broken by a shift in representation. How to escape a maze.

Quirty. The proper way to behave with interns. The history of big machines, including those that can fly. How to calculate ecological footprints, three good lunch spots within walking distance, the value of human life, who pays, who profits, what to refuse to do, even for the money. The fine print in the contract, a smattering of naval architecture. Barrio practices in a wide range of cultures. The density needed to support a pharmacy.

The density needed to support a subway, the effect of the design of your city on food miles for fresh produce. Squatter settlements via visits and conversations with residents. The history and techniques of architectural representation across cultures. A bit of chemistry and physics. The importance of the Amazon. How to patch leaks. The components of a comfortable environment for sleep.

Strengths of materials, if only intuitively. Why do you think architecture does any good? The depreciation cycle. What rusts? Good model making techniques in wood and cardboard. How to play a musical instrument. The acoustic properties of trees and shrubs. How to guard a house from floods.

How to give directions. Offic floods, how to give directions, efficiently, and courteously. How close is too close? Bicycle safety and etiquette. The acoustic performance of Boston Symphony Hall, how to open the window, the diameter of the earth, the number of gallons of water used in a shower. The distance at which you can recognize faces. How and when do bribe public officials for the greater good? Concrete finishes. Straw-Bale building technology.

Rachel Carson. Your neighbors. The remediation capacity of wetlands. The capacity of wetlands to attenuate storm searches, the depths of desire, the heights of folly, the golden, and other ratios. Those are selections from 250 things an architect should know by Michael Sorkin. He died on March 26, 2020, from COVID. He was the head of the Michael Sorkin Studio and president of Terraform, a non-profit research group.

He is survived by his wife Joan Cope Check. She is a professor of modern culture and media at Brown University. We send her our sincere condolences and thank her for giving us permission to air Michael Sorkin's writing. 99% of visible was produced this week by Avery Trouffleman and Chris Baroubae, music by Sean Rial. Katie Mingle is the senior producer of Kurt Coles Dayly is the digital director. The rest of the crew is senior editor Delaney Hall, Joe Rosenberg, Sophia Klatsker, Sharif Yusuf, Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Leigh, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 9.7K ALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row, which is distributed in multiple locations throughout the East Bay, but in our heart it will always be.

In beautiful, downtown, Oakland, California. We are a proud founding member of Radio Topia from PRX, a fiercely independent collective of the most innovative listener-supported podcasts in the world. Find more at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show and enjoy discussion about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram and Reddit too. But our forever home on the web is 99PI.org. Radio Tapio from PRX.