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64 ab ArchitectureBoston

Virgil wrote his Ecloguesand Georgicsover 2,000 years ago,

examining the relative virtues o lie in the country and the city.

Since Virgils inspiration was the Idylls o Theocritus, writtenin the third century BCE, we know that our sales agent who

is cheerully opening doors and pointing out views on this

sunny Saturday aternoon is on well-trodden ground as she

enthusiastically compares lie in the Fort Point Channel/SouthBoston area with her ormer home in the suburbs. Virgil drew

no hard-and-ast conclusions in his pastoral works; today,

distinctions are more easily drawn. The new Macallen Building

that the agent is describing oers an on-site health club and lap

pool; a unction room with adjacent landscaped roo deck; andvery attractive industrial-modern apartments with high ceilings,

lots o natural light, and high-end appliances. High-speed Internet

access is included in the condominium common charges. Thebuilding is right across the street rom a Red Line T-stop and

within a very short walk to South Station, so the enclosed parking

that is included with every apartment is more a luxury than a

necessity (and can be removed rom the apartment oering with asubstantial saving in the base cost). It is all very new, up-to-date,

and quite appealing.

Most important, the building has achieved a LEED Gold

rating or environmental riendliness; in act, it is the rst

LEED-certied residential building in Boston. The Macallen,

designed by Oce dA with Burt Hill, is the rst step in what

the developer, Pappas Enterprises, intends to be a model urbanneighborhood. Pappas has already completed a rehabilitation

and condo-conversion o the warehouse-style building that

lies next to the Macallen. The ormer street between the two

buildings has been blocked to orm a pedestrian space betweenthem. The developers next structure planned or a site

across the street aims or a LEED Platinum rating. All are

in place to become the northwest outpost o a revived South

Boston perhaps the next evolving neighborhood in the

city. For many, moving to this ormerly neglected area will bea statement o belie as well as a move to a hip and attractive

place. For these people, like our sales agent, the attitudes that

created the suburban rings around our cities are out o date,and they are ready or a new lie and a new way o thinking

about the environment. Nature in the suburbs was about

participation; at the Macallen, it is about stewardship. Sitting

in your living room on the ourth foor may not oer you aview o trees, but its nice knowing as you sit there that you may

have saved a ew. Society at least in the West has changed

its entire attitude toward the natural environment; the old was

all romantic passivity, today we are talking about concerned

by James Hadley AIA

From Moon Hill

to Macallen:Searching for

Purpose in theNew Modernism


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MayJune 2008 ab 65


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activism. Modern architects are, as always, ready to join the

revolution ready to create the new world.

And yet 60 years ago, when architects turned their attentionand themselves towards the suburbs, they were just as convinced

that they were doing the same. The members o The Architects

Collaborative (TAC) who in 1948 began the Six Moon Hill

community in leay Lexington, just outside Boston, were allassociates o Walter Gropius, who had brought European

Modernism with him to the United States when he fed

Germany in the 1930s. The simple, wood-sided houses they

designed or themselves and the other amilies who built withthem were, i anything, more revolutionary than the Macallen

is today. With large areas o glass, fat roos, and no ornamental

trim, they were nothing like houses that Americans were used to

seeing. More important than the style o the buildings was theattitude toward nature that they represented. They celebrated

the natural world, mainly by emphasizing their slick newness

in contrast to the rustic natural scene, which they let largely

intact. With their elimination o ornament and emphasis onconstructivist detail, much o the visual interest these houses

provide to their occupants comes rom outside. This became

clear to me when I recently called Sally Harkness, one o the

ounders o both TAC and Six Moon Hill. As we spoke, she

described to me the warmth o the light that was alling on her

rom a large window near where she was sitting, and told meo her delight in the ever-changing views rom all her windows.

Clearly parts o the Six Moon design concept still work or one

o its ounders, even ater 60 years o occupancy.

Other aspects o Ms. Harkness lie in Six Moon Hill haveturned out to be less successul. These are mostly about

mobility; although active, she no longer drives a car, and relies

on neighbors or trips to town. She is ortunate, because the

community spirit that characterized the original settlers liveson with newer arrivals, and much help is at hand in the orm o

rides rom caring neighbors. Here is another aspect o Six Moon

Hill that was, and still is, revolutionary it was more than just

an experiment in architecture. As Martin Filler reminds us, Theorgotten (or suppressed) truth about Modernism was that the

radical new orms o architecture and urbanism its practitioners

advocated were only parts o broad and highly detailed agendas

or the reorm o lie in everything rom economics and politicsto spirituality and class equality. It is very easy to orget the

impact o Socialism on the architecture o the mid-20th century.

(Sally Harkness conessed to me that the ounders o TAC had

considered calling it The Architects Cooperative, but rejectedthe name as too political.) The plans or Six Moon Hill illustrate

the underlying eelings o the group. The elimination o all

For many, moving to this formerly

neglected area will be a statement of

belief as well as a move to a hip and

attractive place.


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MayJune 2008 ab 67

ancy details in the houses other than what results rom the

needs o the construction process is very much in the European

anti-bourgeois tradition. Communal ownership o the pool

and open space, with common charges to support them werenew, then. (Now they are standard operating procedures or

condos like the Macallen.) What was most important was the

group eort that Six Moon Hill represented. The ounders were

architects; they looked or and acquired the property together,then chose one o their group to prepare the subdivision design

and ell into line behind him. Properties that were carved rom

the overall plot were assigned to the purchasers by the drawing

o lots. The spirit carried on as the community progressed,with activities like snowstorm parties, held when the roads

were covered, providing an excuse or getting together. Because

o these organizational underpinnings, the sense o the place

remains largely as it was conceived. Additions have been madeto many o the original houses, but they still appear relatively

small and deerential within the natural surroundings. There are

no ences. Children still play in the street. And also because o

the non-quantiable things that a real community still has, SallyHarkness can get a ride to the store.

It is hard not to wonder what might have happened i the

social thought that inspired Six Moon Hill had spread to the

larger community. What i notions o a shared responsibilityor public inrastructure had led to the development o

high-density centers linked by rail, with additional public

transportation networks reaching outlying districts, much as

the Regional Plan Association proposed or the greater New

York tri-state area in the late 1960s? Would amenities oered

by cities have spread to the outer rings? Would trac jamshave evaporated along with much o the trac that made them

up? Could seniors with an interest in culture remain in their

woodland homes? Would bright young adults whose children

have nished high school still sell their homesteads and move tothe South Boston/Fort Point Channel area?

The questions are important ones, because it is very clear

that, at a certain age, most American amilies will choose

the suburbs over the city or reasons that have nothing todo with design amenities or newness. The developers and

architects o the Macallen are clear about their market: it is

young proessionals without children, or with children prior

to school age; and empty-nesters. Much o the population atthis exemplary building is either on the way into, or out o,

the suburban ring, and the energy saved by its state-o-the-

art design will be used up by those amilies who move to a

single-amily home on a separate lot outside the city, in uturecommuter trac and the many, many HVAC systems this

liestyle will require.

The opportunity to live on a eld or in the woods remains

at the center o an American dream. Alas, at the onset othe 21st century, this dream o a benign and lie-sustaining

natural world is deeply conficted, in ways that neither Virgil,

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Theocritus, nor the ounders o Six Moon Hill could have

imagined. There is perhaps no better example than the Slow

House proposal by Diller + Scodio: a beach house eaturing

a picture-window-cum-video-screen that records and replaysthe water view. We no longer live in nature, but with nature in

an uneasy stando. Having bought up the world, we are now

rightened o the responsibilities we, as a species, have taken

on. Within a climate o ear o and guilt about nature, welook only to the technological aspects o the Modernist vision

or help. And we begin to sense the inadequacy o our current

paradigm the market or solving environmental problems.

Developing new and greener apartment buildings in cities maysucceed as conservation and as a sales strategy, but the energy

these projects save may well turn out to be less than the energy

generated by a liestyle that they acilitate. (I know o at least

one architect with a home on Cape Cod who is purchasing anapartment in the Macallen as a pied--terre.)

It is hard to imagine architects and developers solving the

environmental problems o the 21st century no matter how

inventive our new buildings become. It will take social willas well as imagination to do this. Perhaps it is time to step

back rom the anxieties we have with our place in the natural

order, and resurrect some o the collective sel-condence

that characterized Modernism in its broadest sense ormuch o the mid-20th century, to look again at what Filler

calls the humane ideals o the Modern Movements early

>Harkness House. Photo courtesy, Perry Neubauer FAIA.

>Macallen Building.

Photo by John Horner.

masters We have reconnected with the vocabulary o the

movement could it be time to revisit some o the goals? Onething that architects know is that problems have solutions; we

just want to be sure were addressing the right problems.

James Hadley AIA is a partner with his wife, Patricia Crow,

a landscape architect, in Hadley Crow Studio in Orleans,

Massachusetts.

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