WGBH looks to wrap new headquarters in digital skin

Last week in this space we wrote about a color from the past: the 1950s era of buildings with turquoise facades.

This week it's the opposite. We're talking about the colorful architecture of the future.

Visited Times Square lately? Noticed how the architecture is morphing? Buildings used to be visibly made of something. They might be brick or stone, they might be glass or metal, but they were visibly something. Now, though, the entire facade of a building, from sidewalk to roof, may be a digital screen that flashes ever-changing images.

Is it a billboard? Is it architecture? Is it art? Who can say? Is this the world we're headed for? Will we even know anymore when we're in the real world and when we're in a media simulation? Will that cease to be a meaningful distinction?

The topic has suddenly become timely in Boston in recent weeks. The radio and TV station WGBH plans a new headquarters for itself on a site that overlooks the Massachusetts Turnpike in Brighton. The architect is the distinguished New York firm of Polshek Partnership. And WGBH and Polshek are proposing a digital facade.

Henry Becton, WGBH's president, says the new building should "express and embody our standards of creativity." He says that in its old home, on Western Avenue, "We have no presence visually, no public face."

Designer Richard Olcott of the Polshek office, working with Chris Pullman, WGBH's vice president for design, figured the way to get that public face was a 30-foot-high wraparound digital facade facing eastbound traffic on the Pike.

It won't, they say, be flashy. In the WGBH tradition, it will announce the presence of the station through graphic images. It won't push the station or its programs, just announce its presence and evoke its spirit. There probably won't even be words.

Pullman sees digital architecture as something new in the world: "A fourth medium, after radio, television, and the Internet." He's in the tradition of famed Philadelphia architect Robert Venturi, who has often said that architecture as we know it will disappear, to be replaced by ever-changing information screens.

I think it's fair to say the proposal threw the Boston Redevelopment Authority into a modest turmoil. Initially, the staff rejected the proposal on the grounds that it would establish a bad precedent. If WGBH were allowed to erect a dignified digital facade, what would prevent someone else from doing evil? Would the FleetCenter, let's say, bombard traffic on the Zakim Bridge with giant images of Budweiser cans?

The BRA has now backtracked from its original refusal. It's negotiating with WGBH. At the same time, BRA director Mark Maloney is putting together a task force to come up with a general city policy for this new kind of design.

"At first we saw the 'GBH proposal as a commercial entrance to the city of Boston, and we didn't want that," says Maloney. "We'd accept it only as architecture. It needs to be part of the building, not a plasma screen stuck onto the building. We wouldn't want too much movement or rapid change in the image. Drivers might watch the screen and not the road. But this could be part of 'GBH's educational and creative mission.

"Maybe this kind of innovative design would be good for places like Lansdowne Street or the Theater District," Maloney continues. "We're looking for ways to make the theater district more cohesive and easier to find. It could celebrate the creativity of Boston, a place where so many artists come at some point in their lives."

Nobody really knows what to call this new architecture. I ask Tim Hartung, a partner at Polshek. "Animated building skin," he suggests. "The whole facade is speaking." Pullman likes "dynamic imaging," and he thinks of the skin as part of the station's broadcast mission. I suggested "plasmatecture," but it turns out these are LED screens, not plasma. Anyway, it's not about the technology. Gothic cathedrals were larded with images, too. It's about what we see. Maybe "image architecture?" I'd be happy to hear suggestions from readers.

From the city's point of view, digital architecture raises tough questions because it crosses so many categories of city planning. Is it a building, to be reviewed as architecture, or is it a billboard, thus coming under the sign ordinance? How do you decide? Maybe on the grounds of whether the digital skin keeps out the weather? Are digital facades a public safety issue, like cell phones used by motorists? What about the environmental impact of light? That's always an issue for the "dark skies" lobby, which regards artificial light as pollution. And what about revenue? Should digital images be taxed if their messages are commercial? If so, how?

Two factors are key. Where, if anywhere, should this new architecture be allowed, and where should it be banned? Second, how in a First Amendment society does government go about regulating the contents of the messages?

I'd like to see the WGBH design go ahead. I think it would be great. But as both WGBH and the city know well, it needs to happen in a way that will enhance the Brighton neighborhood. And it needs to happen in the framework of some kind of overall city policy. Digital architecture shouldn't run rampant with inappropriate messages in inappropriate places.

I think it was Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, who, when he went to Las Vegas for the first time, looked in astonishment at the neon wonderland of the casinos on the Strip. Then he said, "If only I could not read, I would think I was in Paradise."

Maybe that's the important question. Will digital architecture be worth reading? Or will it be visual spam?

Robert Campbell can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.