At Columbia, two years later, he encountered the assistant professor German architect Gerhard Kallmann, who would soon become a mentor figure. The pair joined forces to enter a competition, to design a new city hall for Boston, and developed a design that drew on elements of the Brutalist movement
They won the City Hall competition out of nearly 300 entrants. Their unexpected victory, both were unlicensed and neither had designed a building on their own at that point, served as a launching pad for Kallmann McKinnell & Wood, a Boston office in 1962, a practice that would go on to practice for decades to wide acclaim.
Their joint practice continues to this day, with a rich portfolio of largely institutional buildings. Yet the firm—and McKinnell—remains associated with Boston City Hall, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary last year.
They won the City Hall competition out of nearly 300 entrants. Their unexpected victory, both were unlicensed and neither had designed a building on their own at that point, served as a launching pad for Kallmann McKinnell & Wood, a Boston office in 1962, a practice that would go on to practice for decades to wide acclaim.
Their joint practice continues to this day, with a rich portfolio of largely institutional buildings. Yet the firm—and McKinnell—remains associated with Boston City Hall, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary last year.
"This isn’t a building where the pattern is frozen, where if you move one detail, you ruin everything. The process of democratic government is the meaning of City Hall. It should never be finished.”
The Boston Globe reported, 1969 description by McKinnell about the city hall building.
The city hall was fully restored by Boston-based architects Utile in anticipation of its 50th anniversary in 2019.
McKinnell was also a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). McKinnell taught at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning.
Aside from the city hall building, Kallmann McKinnell & Wood designed buildings including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences building in Cambridge, the Boston Five Cents Savings Bank, the Back Bay Station, the Boston's Hynes Convention Center, the Dickinson and Company corporate headquarters in New Jersey, and the School of Business and Public Administration at Washington University in St. Louis, The Boston Globe reports.
In 1988, describing Kallmann McKinnell & Wood's buildings, Boston Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell described the firm's buildings:
“If there is a common theme, it is one of paradox and conflict. KMW’s buildings are never serene. There is usually, for one thing, a conflict between order and disorder in the floor plan, often in the sense that an orderly grid at the center disintegrates into something more random at the edges.”
