When ERA’s book Concrete Toronto: A Guide to Concrete Architecture from the Fifties to the Seventies was featured at Boston’s Pinkcomma Gallery, which exhibited concrete buildings in the Boston area, Graeme Stewart and Michael McClelland had the chance to meet with Chris Grimley, Michael Kubo, and Mark Pasnik.
Kubo, who is pursuing his PhD in architecture history, alongside Pasnik and Grimely, principals of architect firm over,under, are working to publish Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston this fall.
At a time when concrete buildings across the United States were widely disparaged and in danger of insensitive renovation or demolition, Heroic surveys the original aspirations of the 1960s and 1970s, recorded through the lens of Boston’s transformation. At 336 pages and with more than 260 illustrations drawn from a dozen historical archives or produced especially for the book, Heroic offers one of the first comprehensive studies of the impact of concrete architecture in the United States. It includes essays by historians, interviews with architects from the time period, and examples of thirty buildings crucial to Boston’s reemergence.
Book Rendering
The next step for the book is to bridge the gap in budget for all of the historic imagery and to develop an expanded web archive that will provide a platform to promote deeper understanding of the legacies of the era here and across North America. With some additional funding, the team can make a digital advocacy website that builds on the book to encourage a better understanding of the efforts that went on in the 1960s and early 1970s.
View the Kickstarter Fundraising page here. People can purchase architectural prints, t-shirts, and of course the book itself as ways to support the project.
*Feature Image: Peabody Terrace, Sert, Jackson & Associates, 1962–64*
