Word: pei
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...contrary to what the BSA had previously suggested, it was Pei and Partners which, driven by a competitive urge, wanted the building so huge as to risk zoning violations and Copley Square residents' protests...
...Pei, in a 1970 Business Week story, said that when the soaring Prudential building was erected several blocks away from the Hancock site in 1967, the architectural "form" of the area was already destroyed. "Besides it wasn't a great space, like, say, the Place Vendome," Pei said. "Let's forget about the past as far as Copley Square is concerned and try to make a 20th-century space. We know it can be done. Look at Rockefeller Center...
...that is just what Cobb set out to do. In constructing the rhomboid building, the Pei partner created a building that seems inoffensive and one-dimensional from all sides. One of the men who examined the original plans, Ahern, said that the models "looked like a piece of wood covered with cigar wrappers. It looked pretty bad in the model but once built with those reflecting windows, it looked pretty vibrant and exciting." Rick Heym, president of Enviro-Design Group in Cambridge, also said that the bulding was deceptive on paper. "It looked like it would be inappropriate...
...final blows to Pei's beleaguered tower occurred intermittently during the summer of 1972, and increasingly through the winter, when the double-paned glass cracked in 3500 of 10,344 windows, some falling out of the window frames. Although this problem is not a rare occurrence--Pei's office claims that other buildings have had similar problems, without the publicity--the agony was compounded when the Hancock building replaced the broken windows with plywood sheets painted with a black fire retardant requested by the city fire inspectors...
...blame--neither Pei nor Hancock is talking. But someone will have to pay the $7 million it will cost to replace the windows. The reflection glass, and the window company, Libby-Owens-Ford, could be at fault--the use of reflective mirror-like glass might have caused the heat stress that the BSA had originally warned the designers about. But as architectural supervisor for the building, Pei and Partners again can't be totally free from blame. And it is possible that Pei and Partners might have designed a building without the materials existing to make its concept work...