I HAD seen this 60s-brutalist office building rushing by in a cab, wondered about it, and today I got up close to it. The signs say Murray Building. (It’s right next to the Citibank tower.) I had looked it up on Google and found that it was built by the Public Works Dept. in ’69, but was recently sold for half a billion USD. Instead of being torn down, it’s going to become a hotel.

Redevelopment may give it another 40 years. Hong Kong cares little enough for its older landmarks, never mind a 27-storey 60s hulk that doesn’t rise to its height limit (a negotiable concept here.) This was an early energy-conscious high-rise: The angled windows reduce direct sunlight (i.e. heat gain). I can imagine the new owner replacing the partial windows with a full sheets of glass, but I hope they keep those angles.

Google Maps has some good street view pictures.

I can’t find an architect’s credit, but it looks a whole lot like Gordon Bunschaft’s work for SOM during that time. I love his First City National building in Houston, or the Bienecke Library at Yale, or 9W57 in New York. Murray recalls the later work of Wallace Harrison (who my dad I always called Wally K.), Lincoln Center and the stupefying Empire State Mall in Albany. That may have been the obvious conclusion of this syle, which of course started with the Italian Fascist architecture of the EUR. During an ATypI conference a few years ago, we stayed next door to the the Palazzo della Civiltà in Rome. All is not forgiven, il Duce, but I think it’s okay to like your de Chirican architecture.

Victims of political correctness and changing fashions, these buildings got way out of style for a while, but they’re looking good again. Let’s try not to tear them all down before they look even better.