But when approached from the financial district and across Fort Point Channel on Congress Street there they are again -- impossibly huge -- and right on an axis with the street. I am referring to the vent buildings that supply fresh air to the Ted Williams Tunnel. They are the same buildings but have a different context -- what seemed from other vantage points as natural, if big, seems surreal on this street -- like a chunk of Utah geology or the realization of one of Antonio Sant'Elia's 1920s fantasy projects.

Whether these structures are horrible (the prevalent view) or macho and sublime (a view held by some architects and artists) is beside the point. The bigger issue here is whether structures designed by engineers should have aesthetic merit -- and whether they should "fit in" or have their own logic of form and scale.

"Architects don't have exclusive rights to making large objects beautiful; engineers have done OK as well," said Jim Labeck, Director of Buildings and Preservation at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. "Engineers may even have an advantage -- there's beauty in seeing, experiencing and understanding a working thing, whether a riverboat, the Hoover Dam, or a vent building. There's a process of discovery in these structures that is inviting and fun."

The intentions of the Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge were good, the effort appropriate. The bridge is designed not to "fit in" (the typical brief for any kind of building project in Boston), but to express a solution with some eye on the appropriate appearance of things based on use and on value.

Unlike the Zakim Bridge, which is clearly a work of engineering, the vent buildings have more of the characteristics of buildings in the conventional sense. Wallace/Floyd, the design firm responsible for organizing the guidelines for the vent buildings and taking them through preliminary design, conceived of the structures as a family of elements.

"The artery project will mean that a huge number of people will be underground," said Doug McCallum, president of Wallace/Floyd and lead designer for several of the vent buildings. "There should be some clue that there is a whole other city down there, and not just a sewer."

McCallum acknowledges some disappointment with the finer-grain design decisions. In some cases, he thinks the vent buildings were not developed enough during the design process and were left as built diagrams. In others, he thinks that too much embellishment compromised the authenticity of the basic idea -

proof that it is very difficult to negotiate between the logic of engineering and issues of appropriate scale and symbolic content.

Perhaps engineers and architects both need to proceed more cautiously when they attempt to mitigate the expression of fact with decorative strategies or easy symbolic content. As Labeck says "unlike the Zakim Bridge, the vent buildings are like trucks, strong, functional and good-looking trucks.

"They're not SUVs, with molded plastic and rubber snapped all over like Mr. Potato Head. Unfortunately, I think people prefer SUVs. Where the vent building tried on a little extra `styling,' the effort seems false."

Despite some qualms with the small-scale details, the vent building does look good at the end of Congress Street. It comes as a surprise, but an effective surprise, because of the contrast in scale and the clear message that something pretty big is snaking around just below the surface.

Tim Love is a Boston architect.

This story ran in the City Weekly section of the Boston Globe on 5/26/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.