The generating ideas of most traditional cities are pedestrian and vehicular circulation, streets, squares, terminuses, with their space clearly defined by buildings. This means linked buildings united to form comprehensible exterior spaces. The Boston Government Service Center is the opposite of Le Corbusier’s dictum “down with the street.” It started with three separate buildings, their clients, architects and methods of financing. We didn’t build three separate buildings, as others had proposed, but one continuous building which defined the street, formed a pedestrian plaza, and utilized a multi-storied building (not yet built) to announce the development from a great distance. The scale of the lower buildings was heightened at the exterior perimeter (street) so that it read in conjunction with automobile traffic (columns 60-70 feet high plus toilet and stair cores at the corners were used). The scale at the plaza was much more intimate using stepped floors which revealed each floor level, making a bowl of space. As one approaches the stepped six-story-high building it reduces itself to only one story. Since the high-rise building is an integral part of the whole, it calls for a particular kind of high-rise building.

You would prefer to finish the project yourself?

The architect must understand the role the multi-storied building plays in the ensemble. The multi-storied building was designed as a cluster of pivoting shafts, each turning at the corners so that it leads the pedestrian into the plaza. It was not just another skyscraper. The ensemble illustrates partially the principles of a mega structure. It is multi-functional; it accepts the car by defining the space of the street plus treating the garage as an entrance to the complex; it is integrated into the surrounding fabric (at the street intersections there are small piazzas, one of Boston’s traditions). The bowl of the plaza is the counterpart of Beacon Hill and its state house one block away. It has nothing to do with stylistic elements (you could add classical details to the columns and cornices and it wouldn’t matter very much – I don’t know what could happen at the multi-storied building). When finished properly it will be “a place.”
[The building referred to as “multi-storied” and “high rise” was designed by Rudolph but never built]
Davern, Jeanne M. "A Conversation with Paul Rudolph." Architectural Record 170 (March 1982): 90-97.

"SMU is a new commuter campus on a very large piece of land well removed from other structures. Its design started with Jefferson's University of Virginia and his defined "lawn" surrounded by pavilions connected with covered walks on two sides with the rotunda addressing the view on the opposite side. SMU's "lawn" is a spiralling space, defined by a series of connected buildings on opposites sides, with a narrowed entry at one end and an open ended space at the other where the spiral becomes much larger, is marked by a campanile, and turns towards the lake. This central pedestrian complex was set in a mile diameter access drive connecting to an inner ring of parking. I got fired before the "spiral" was finished but fortunately I had some friends in other architectual offices who saw it through.

Desmond and Lord?

Desmond and Lord, yes - they believed in the scheme and carried out most of the buildings which define the central space."
Davern, Jeanne M. "A Conversation with Paul Rudolph." Architectural Record 170 (March 1982): 90-97.

“The central organization of this campus is purposely a moving, or dynamic, one. That’s the very nature of what is needed, as I see it. When one gets beyond the spiraling mall, with its defining buildings, walks, terraces, plantings, etc., then other architects will take over, and indeed they already have. In that sense, I’ve thought of it as similar to Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia, wherein he made a fixed, well-defined, marvelous central core for the campus. But, beyond the core, other architects took over, building very inferior structures. The idea, the central core, must be strong enough as a center of the campus, and other architects will add on to that. But the cohesiveness of the center remains intact.”
Cook, John Wesley. Conversations with Architects : Philip Johnson, Kevin Roche, Paul Rudolph, Bertrand Goldberg, Morris Lapidus, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore, Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown. New York: Praeger, 1973.

John Peter:

What in your opinion, are three of some of the greatest works of modern architecture and why?

Paul Rudolph:

I feel the Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie [Poissy, France, 1929] demonstrated the sense of continuity of space, the unfolding space, in an admirable way. It also stated eloquently Le Corbusier’s feeling about man’s relationship to nature, which has proved to be prophetic.

John Peter:

What is an architect?