Big Blue and the Concrete Wave: IBM Boca Raton & Marcel Breuer's redefinition of modernity

The pre-cast concrete ensemble by Marcel Breuer and Thomas Gatje for the IBM Offices, included also a research laboratory, development and manufacturing facilities. Inaugurated in 1970, it was commissioned by a technological giant, a company that was literally redefining the term “future” through the very new information technology. According to Breuer himself, this project was related to his previous design at La Gaude, France, though the IBM Offices in Boca Raton, in South Florida (USA), represented a progress in relation to it, as it responded to a more complex program. The building ensemble raised on a clean, flat site, with no other buildings in its immediate surroundings, distant from anything that could be considered an urban center. This was a blank space at the time, designated, through a series of local policies, to become a regional technological hub, which IBM would be spearheading. This project was the starting point for expansion not only for IBM, but through this company, to the region, blurring the lines that defined the public and private realms, compacting them within the built ensemble of these facilities with the mission of converging growth and development towards a new reality. The modern language formulates these buildings, specifically framed as Brutalists. The ensemble aligns itself with the movement that aspired to redefine the paths of modernism. Aware of the examples increasingly polished and dogmatic of the International Style, architects such as Breuer make an effort to reinsert the discussion of what should direct the architectural production, without falling into a stylistic jacket that had been so feverishly opposed by the previous generation. This discussion was raised by Mumford, and quickly found echo. The apparently unfinished raw surfaces evoked the original fresh spirit of the modern movement. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to present this project as a one of the main branches of what brutalism signified. It’s incredible subtlety and simplicity as built environment, contributes decisively to represent the term “Brutalist” as it came to be known for. The building was designed to be sufficient; it has a slender body, with a façade worked through its openings and brise-soleil for solar protection. The ensemble snakes over the site as a vertebra, elevated by expressive though solid concrete cast in place columns, which bifurcate to support the volume above, forming a single continuous structure. This monolithic sequence rests lightly and fluidly over the landscape. The elevated buildings allow the uninterrupted view of the site The module that generates the buildings presents incredible vitality and adaptability to the circumstances of the site, or to new functionalities, foreseeing the possibility of changes in the priority of administrative and industrial space configurations that this center shelters. The practicality of this module is at the service of an ambitious future, of unquestioned growth and expansion. The IBM project did not go forward in South Florida as initially expected. Curiously the survival of this complex is compromised today not because of any structural aspect, but due to its perception. These are sober buildings, using this concept not only as an aesthetic appraisal, but also as related to its built integrity. Today this ensemble stands discretely away from the road, and is offered as office space to corporations who some say shy away from it, since these facilities do not offer the visual assault and voracity of facades that blink, oscillate and pulse intermittently to the eye of bystanders.