Harvard professor Alex Krieger talks about the Boston City Hall. Boston City Hall was a part of a major urban redesign effort in downtown Boston during the 1960's, a project which replaced Scollay Square with Government Center, which included City Hall and the City Hall Plaza. One of the most famous examples of so-called brutalist architecture, the design by Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles was the unanimous winner in an international design competition.
The building is famously polarizing and remains controversial to this day. Praised by many working within architecture and related professions for its vision, it has equally been criticized by workers, neighbors and other Bostonians as an unfriendly eyesore. There have recently been proposals both to demolish the building and to declare it a landmark.