Architecture: Hancock Tower vs Prudential Center

3113 Words7 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Benefits of tourism infrastructure

In the capital of financial services, two insurance buildings dominate Boston’s skyline. The Hancock Tower and the Prudential Center are structures that display the uneven change and the urban development that has occurred in this city over the course 19th century. Located in back bay these edifices work with the directionalities of their adjacent streets and the cultural history of the structures that surround them. Boston’s foundation was composed in a manner that designated and organized space. This creates the tension and contrast present in that between the two structures. The iconography that these structures have over the city is important. It represents a sense of the past as well as the purpose that the built environment has with a changing society. Even though these structures dominate so much of the skyline, they interact differently with the public. There is a physical boundary that separates the functionalities and interaction in which society can actively have with them. This essay will focus on the structural purpose in regard to the form following function of these skyscrapers and how they each demonstrate a design aspect that characterizes Boston through a visual perspective. The Prudential center is the second tallest structure present in Boston. Located in back bay and easy to access through public transit, the complex serves as a market for hundreds of shops and stores. This structure is a network of buildings and indoor walk ways that work as a unit to provide a very interactive system of circulation. This center directly focuses on the public, to the extent that it directs them through out a majority of the connected structures. Individuals are allowed to travel all the way through the center and up to t... ... middle of paper ... ...in its vast entirety fit for a shopping or community center. But until then it will just rule the skyline as a commercial and private corporation. Works Cited Rubin, Elihu. Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012. Print. Beagle, Jonathan. Boston: A Visual History. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 2013. Print. "Famous properties: Boston's signature skyscraper." Journal of Property Management July-Aug. 2004: 8. Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. O'Connor, Mickey. "Tempest in A Beanpot." Architecture Mar. 2001: 126. Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. "Pei, I. M. (1917-)." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. Luberoff, David. "A better public square." Technology Review May-June 1984: 80+. Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.

Show More
Related

  • The PSFS building: Construction in the Midst of Depression

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.

    Read More

  • ook Review: The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ehrenhalt, Alan (2012-04-24). The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City (Kindle Location 283). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

    Read More

  • San Francisco 1915 - Palace of Fine Arts

    1420 Words  | 3 Pages

    Banham, Reyner. "The Plot Against Bernard Maybeck." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians March 1984, p33-37

    Read More

  • Prejudice and Racism - Home Ownership in A Raisin in the Sun and in America

    2250 Words  | 5 Pages

    Segrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press, 1996.

    Read More

  • 1933 Chicago World's Fair

    1842 Words  | 4 Pages

    The "Mixed Metaphors in Chicago. " Architectural Review August, 1933. v. 74 pp. 47-49.

    Read More

  • Architecture in the United States: Professor Dell Upton

    1957 Words  | 4 Pages

    Dell Upton is a historian and renowned professor of architecture and Urbanism at the University of California. He has published several books on architecture; one of them is “Architecture in the United States”, published in 1998. In this book, Upton analyzes the architecture of the United States in different aspects, such as nature, money and art, thus depicting the great variety in architectural forms, and how throughout the decades, different interests have lead communities to different ways of building, different purposes and materials, thus reflecting their way of thinking and their relationship with the environment. By exploring so many different architectural styles, Upton reveals the great diversity and richness that has always, and continues to characterize American architecture.

    Read More

  • Historic New York and Its Diversity

    937 Words  | 2 Pages

    Every culture left a mark of its quality on New York’s buildings that change over time: some are old, some are new, some are tall, and some are small. They might have a lot in common, but not one building is like the other. Diversity is what makes New York.

    Read More

  • The Interactions of Nationalism and Building Style

    1220 Words  | 3 Pages

    (Image taken from Tranchtenberg, Marvin, Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: From Prehistory to Postmodernity. Second Edition. Prentice Hall, Inc. New Jersey: 2002.)

    Read More

  • Chinese Immigrants in America

    2037 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Biography of a Chinaman. Independent Magazine 19 Feb. 1903: 417-23. Print. The. Gottesman, Ronald, and Richard M. Brown. The "Chinese Americans.

    Read More

  • Gentrification

    1826 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many researchers have theorized why the wealthy desire to move back into the city. Schwirian believes that many wealthy people are drawn to the architectural design of some of these old houses in urban areas (Schwirian 96).      Harvey believes in a number of theories, and ...

    Read More

  • Architecture And Architecture Of Frank Lloyd Wright And American Architecture

    864 Words  | 2 Pages

    “In the Cause of Architecture” is an essay written by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908. In this work, Wright outlines many of his architectural values. This text goes into great detail about the philosophy behind Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, as well as many important milestones in his life, such as working for Adler and Sullivan. This text is useful because it comes straight from Frank Lloyd Wright himself. It talks about many things important to his role as a notable American, such as his influences for his architecture and his architectural

    Read More

  • The Life and Death of Great American Cities by Jane Jacob

    908 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Jane Jacobs’s acclaimed The Life and Death of Great American Cities, she intricately articulates urban blight and the ills of metropolitan society by addressing several binaries throughout the course of the text. One of the more culturally significant binaries that Jacobs relies on in her narrative is the effectively paradoxical relationship between diversity and homogeneity in urban environments at the time. In particular, beginning in Chapter 12 throughout Chapter 13, Jacobs is concerned greatly with debunking widely held misconceptions about urban diversity.

    Read More

  • Modern vs. Postmodern Architecture

    1622 Words  | 4 Pages

    The essence of modern architecture lays in a remarkable strives to reconcile the core principles of architectural design with rapid technological advancement and the modernization of society. However, it took “the form of numerous movements, schools of design, and architectural styles, some in tension with one another, and often equally defying such classification, to establish modernism as a distinctive architectural movement” (Robinson and Foell). Although, the narrower concept of modernism in architecture is broadly characterized by simplification of form and subtraction of ornament from the structure and theme of the building, meaning that the result of design should derive directly from its purpose; the visual expression of the structure, particularly the visual importance of the horizontal and vertical lines typical for the International Style modernism, the use of industrially-produced materials and adaptation of the machine aesthetic, as well as the truth to materials concept, meaning that the true nat...

    Read More

  • One World Trade Center

    1591 Words  | 4 Pages

    One World Trade Center (WTC) is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere measuring up at 1776 feet tall. The built output sets new standards of design, construction, and prestige. Its beauty in New York City’s magical skyline makes it an icon. It is the most recognised and desirable office address in the world. In this essay I plan to argue that the social, political and economic status of society has affected the built output of this building considerably, for the good. Making the building one of the best skyscrapers in the world.

    Read More

  • Post Modern Architecture Essay

    2318 Words  | 5 Pages

    Abstract: New forms in current world have been testimony to the contemporary style of postmodern architecture and are the strength of today’s generation for creating significant architectural standards. Post modernism has blurred the borders between contemporary and traditional construction classical concepts and simply in the field of art and literature. The architectural elements like domes, arches, and classical shapes have lost their identity but the post modernism tries to bridge between these historical forms and contemporary styles. The related architects not only struggled to achieve the image for the buildings but also rejected oversimplified diagrams for living. The post modernism here tries to achieve theoretical base for their designs that creates the excitement in the design program.

    Read More

More about Architecture: Hancock Tower vs Prudential Center

Open Document