Towards Civic Brutalism

1960s Massachusetts was a Brutalist mecca, much of it with civic dimensions, mediating through architecture citizens\u27 rights and identities. The expanded welfare state\u27s administration in Massachusetts was consolidated in new buildings for federal, state, and municipal workers in Boston\u27s Government Center, a top-down urban renewal process. Government Center\u27s buildings, including Boston City Hall and the Massachusetts State Service Center, embodied Brutalist values of material integrity, monumentality, and abstraction. Little thought was given to the architecture\u27s civic dimensions, how people would engage politically with each other and the state. Subsequently, City Hall Plaza functioned for decades as eastern Massachusetts\u27 civic fairground, while also increasingly commercialized, rented for corporate events. Part of the State Service Center is presently being privatized for commercial development. And City Hall Plaza is being renovated from a regional fairground into a neighborhood park. Where does this Government Center civic Brutalism story lead us Moving Forward with UMass? Perhaps towards advocating for the continued public character of civic Brutalism against its privatization and domestication, and for architectural designs and processes to activate a an inclusive, empowered democratic citizenry, as it works, resides, and is educated