Architecture: Hancock Tower vs Prudential Center

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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.

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