Brutalist West Palm

   Visitors to the small downtown core of West Palm Beach are confronted with an incoherent jumble of visual and architectural styles to grab onto: faux Caribbean-style condominiums replete with the same pastel colors one might see in St. Thomas, Spanish colonial residences converted to offices, even a sprawling and depressing outdoor mall that is as unique as your local Wal-Mart.  (Cheesecake Factory? OMG!)

       Yet for all of the contrasting architectural styles comprising the relatively dull skyline, perhaps no hulk of metal, concrete, and glass provides as gripping a “stop and look” moment as the brutalist-style former West Palm Beach City Hall, opened in 1980.

          Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.  And some commentators and readers will undoubtedly agree with the co-founder of this blog: “That shit is ugly.”  One can imagine visitors to the city wondering how the hulking mass, just steps from the intracoastal waterway, was ever approved in this subtropical context.  Alternatively evoking the image of an alien fortress, a prison, or some other guardian of the security industrial complex, the concrete old city hall will, at the very least, not engender apathy – viewers will either love or hate the style.

          Brutalist architecture has come under fire from a wide variety of sources.  Theodore Dalrymple, contributing editor to City Journal, for one, critiqued an exhibition dedicated to noted iconoclast Le Corbusier, arguing that “A Corbusian building is incompatible with anything except itself,” and likening brutalism to a form of architectural totalitarianism.

          In some respects, Dalrymple is correct: the brutalist old city hall does not appear to be designed with any of its surroundings in mind, heightening the appearance of a self-contained fortress at odds with the world.  To give a further example of the stark isolationist feel of the old city hall, compare for example one of the designs submitted for a redevelopment of the site from Song & Associates:

This proposal could not be more different from the existing brutalist building: in the proposal’s rendering, you actually notice that the site is close to the intracoastal waterway.  The sloping angles appear to be designed to direct attention to, give better views of, and incorporate the natural beauty of the intracoastal waterway, Palm Beach, and the ocean into the site as a whole.  Overall, the proposal looks harmonious with its surroundings and is generally consistent with what we might imagine when imagining a warm South Florida hotel site on the water in an urban context.

                When confronted with the juxtaposition between the friendly hotel proposal and the harsh city hall, consider the two schools of thought: on one hand, we could rage that our civic buildings should generate a feeling of friendliness and welcome and symbolize our government’s openness.

                I, however, beg to differ.  Brutalism, for this author, in the context of a government or civic building such as the old city hall, is the architect’s way of demonstrating in as outspoken and outrageously confrontational a manner as possible, that our city/country/state is muscular, robust, and doesn’t take any mess.  The highlighting of concrete and the deliberate contrast to the building’s surroundings speaks to me of a confident, unapologetic view towards the world: we are Man, we have conquered our surroundings, we are stronger than nature.  We do not need to be coddled; we are permanent.  Of course, my view directly conflicts with critics like Dalrymple who complain that concrete “does not age gracefully but instead crumbles, stains, and decays” and rail against brutalism’s alleged destructiveness.

              But just as the cascading upper echelons of art deco skyscrapers call to my mind the expression of an age in which anything was possible, in which we reached ever upward in our quest to modernize and perfect, and in which man had proudly industrialized, (cf. Detroit’s Penobscot building, at right), I do believe brutalism has a place, even in subtropical, cheesy, and corrupt West Palm Beach.  And although critics of the building’s style can quibble about its aesthetic beauty, our discussion necessarily leads to a more substantive and practical question regarding the building's successor - the sprawling new city hall complex on Clematis St.:

Is it more “brutal” to have a unique and statement-making building to represent your city tucked away on a relatively sleepy lot, or was it in fact more brutal for politicians to spend $154 million (in a city with 18% of people living below the poverty line) inexplicably placing the new city hall complex smack dab in the middle of a main commercial strip, replete with Saddam Hussein palace-style bathrooms, in the face of popular discontent?  Which is the true symbol of oppressive and totalitarian architectural and site design – brutalist structures, or brutally insensitive and inane politicians?