What Style Is This?

Last week, I visited the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington. HUD is housed in the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, quite possibly one of the ugliest buildings on the planet (and I've visited Soviet-built government office buildings). My friend Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution calls it "ten floors of basement", which is pretty kind. In asking about it I learned it is built in what is called the "brutalist style".

Knowing that architects love to classify buildings by styles, I asked our team what style our building was built in. Bill Vitale of DesignWorks said that it could be thought of as "contemporary" or "modern" but that it really was of an emerging style that he thinks will be called "green" where the design reflects the effort to minimize the environmental impact and energy usage of the building while maximizing internal efficiency and comfort.

Jenn Rezelli of Re:Vision Architecture called our building "contextual" in that it is designed to complement the existing buildings around it both in materials, style and scale.

These two ideas: Green and Contextual really capture what we set out to do. We wanted to build a green building that captured the best building technology available and put it to use. We also wanted a building that added to the architectural heritage of downtown Reading and felt like it belonged in the city.

So, "Contextual Green" it is. Thank God it's not "brutalist".