notes:
The Boston Government Service Center was designed in the Brutalist style by architect Paul Rudolph. Brutalist architecture flourished from the 1950s to the mid 1970s, spawned from the modernist movement. The term was coined in 1954, from the French beton brut, or "raw concrete", a phrase used by Le Corbusier to describe his choice of material. Brutalist buildings usually are formed with striking repetitive angular geometries, and where concrete is used, often revealing the texture of the wooden forms used for the in-situ casting. Rudolph earned his bachelors's degree in architecture at Alabama Polytechnic Institute and then moved on to the Harvard Graduate School of Design to study with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. The Government Service Center is an unfinished, controversial, and neglected Brutalist structure. The building's exterior and interior surfaces make extensive use of Rudolph's signature ribbed, bush-hammered concrete aka “corduroy concrete”. This building's forms mingle the rectilinearity with extravagant curved forms. The many benches and sheltered and concealed spots the building offers are used by the local homeless population to take refuge from the weather, rest, and sleep. Officially, the property is closed to the public on evenings and weekends, but this policy is seldom enforced. The characters of a 2006 American crime drama The Departed are shown working in this building.
