Hancock Plaza: the future Glass Garden

You have to pay Rudy Giuliani $5 every time you say it if you don't acknowledge the trademark
 
Hmm. Must have missed the news the day that came out. For what reason is this?
 
Re: Windcock Plaza

Some basics

While the Wind blows around the earth everywhere at some time and some strength -- it blows more stongly in some places more than others -- Boston for instance is actually windier than the Windy City of Chicago

The Wind also blows more strongly at higher levels of the Troposphere than at sea level {e.g. ?Jet Stream?} -- friction with the surface slows it and collisions with obstacles {e.g. Mountains}divert and moderate it -- that's why Mt. Washington is the place with the Wind Speed Record {nothing to stop any wind from any direction}

In the case of the Cob's Iconic Structure -- aka Hancock Tower -- The high speed wind 600 to 800 feet up {unimpeded by anything except the Pru and Great Blue Hill} hits the tower and because there are no set backs it is expressed down to ground level - -where it turns one more corner and swishes and swirls across the plaza and on toward Copley Square Park

Anything that sticks out from the building {1 to 2 story Lobby Extension}will divert the wind from the remainder of the plaza ? see the base of One Financial Center as a small-scale model

Ideally they would build something with a scoop shape to send the wind back up and away not only from the plaza but also Copley Square as well

Westy
 
From the Globe:

Towering opposition

Protests kill plan for a glass-walled garden at Hancock

By Casey Ross, Globe Staff | June 27, 2008

The Hancock Tower's owners dropped plans to build a glass-enclosed public square outside the Clarendon Street doors after neighbors and the famed building's architect protested that the addition would mar the tower's slender design and the views of neighboring Trinity Church.

Architect Henry Cobb, who designed the 60-floor Hancock in the 1960s, strongly objected to Broadway Partners Fund Manager LLC's plan for a 12,000-square-foot glass "winter garden" on the plaza at the base of the building.

Back Bay residents were also marshaling opposition, arguing the changes would have ruined the tower's architectural integrity.

Parties involved in negotiations over the plaza said Cobb, who is known to be particular about the iconic Hancock, was immediately concerned that an addition would block views of Trinity Church across the street.

The addition would have fundamentally changed the forbidding, half-acre plaza, long known for umbrella-buckling wind gusts that torment passers-by.

Now, Broadway Partners and Elkus | Manfredi Architects are instead proposing to add only landscaping and glass benches. A pair of restaurants would still be opened underground, on the concourse level, but they would be entered through the tower's lobby, not through a winter garden.

"That's certainly what I had been urging. They have been very respectful of my views," Cobb said yesterday about the end of the plan for a new structure.

Alan G. Rubenstein, director of asset management for Broadway Partners, said the plaza will remain open and views of Trinity Church unobstructed. "The constituent groups with whom we spoke led us to the realization that less would be more," he said.

Broadway Partners also faced opposition from politicians and a powerful residents' group.

"There was tremendous concern about changing the face of the building," said state Representative Marty Walz, a Cambridge Democrat whose district includes the Back Bay. "It's world famous for a reason, and there was a consistent feeling that the new structure would not be a good addition."
The initial plan, announced in January, included an enclosed seating area with a small bar for drinks or coffee. Under the new concept, that lounge would be in the Hancock's lobby, where patrons could congregate before heading down to the concourse.

Rubenstein said new portals on the north and south sides of the lobby will help patrons get to the restaurants.

Broadway may file its revised design with the Boston Redevelopment Authority as early as next week, with construction of the restaurants to be completed in about 12 months. Rubenstein said Broadway Partners has not begun speaking with potential tenants but suggested at least one occupant would be a "white tablecloth" restaurant in the mold of the nearby Davio's or Grill 23.

While there was considerable opposition to a glass-walled structure, some of the business neighbors supported the idea as a way to enliven the barren plaza, which has never realized its potential as a public gathering place.

"I thought the new structure would help with the [windy] conditions," said Meg Mainzer-Cohen, president of the Back Bay Association, which represents business and property owners. "I still think adding the restaurants is a great way to open the Hancock to Bostonians. Right now, unless you have a business meeting, most people don't go there."

The public's connection to the monolithic skyscraper diminished after its observatory was shuttered amid terrorism concerns following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Broadway Partners' initial plan was designed to make the plaza a destination for residents and visitors. Cobb and others argued that the way to enhance the space is to preserve sight lines with the sandstone and granite facade of Trinity Church, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson.

Broadway Partners sought to accommodate those concerns with the all-glass structure, but Cobb fretted that even that would block outdoor views and interfere with the tranquility of the plaza. The glass design was inspired by spaces such as the atrium at the IBM Building and the Apple store at the General Motors Building, both in New York.

Cobb has long been concerned about changes to the Hancock, a masterpiece whose concept he finished over two harried weeks in the fall of 1967.

In a 2006 retrospective on the building's opening, he told the Globe that the building's interior had been wrecked: "The last time I was in it, I turned on my heel and walked out. . . . I'm happy that the external statement of the building is so completely independent of what happens inside it."
Casey Ross can be reached at cross@globe.com.
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? Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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This is absolutely the right move. Although I don't think the views of Trinity deserve as much consideration as the article raises, I've thought the idea of changing the entrance to the Hancock to be a dangerous one. Those ultra-'70s entry doors are just as much a part of the Hancock's design language as are the endless reflective glass panels or the cuts in the north and south facades.
 
Whereas I'm disappointed. The plaza has proved useless as a public space, so why not build upon it? I also don't see how it would interfere with the view of Trinity Church from Copley Square.

The Hancock is a lovely building from the second or third floor up, but this would have improved its relationship to the street.
 
I have mixed emotions - having seen the renderings for the "winter garden" I really felt they diminished the overall impact of the building - but - I think the wasted front space is a terrible use of city real estate.

Cobb sounds like a real d-bag to me - like an artist who doesn't care about how people might actually have to "use" his architecture. Sometimes architects like this need to be put in their place... would have been nice to hear the owner say "The Hancock Tower is a performing asset for Broadway Partners and a building that is used by thousands of people a day in the heart of our city. Additionally, it's flawed design impacts thousands of passerby with its incredible wind tunnel effect - a direct result of Cobb's grand-artistic but very poor-utilitarian design. And let's not even bring up how Cobb's flawed design caused shards of glass to rain on Bostonians for all those years, leading to the world's tallest plywood tower. He has much to be proud of, but if I were him, the time to keep my mouth shut would be now - we are fixing his errors and he has some nerve to complain about the windy disaster that he created. This is a real estate asset in a city, not a glass-and-steel sculpture in a museum! Go pound sand.

That being said, I'll go get some coffee, wake up a little bit and recant these sentiments because the Winter Garden would have been a tacky add-on to this great icon in our city.
 
I don't have mixed emotions. Whether or not the building should be changed is one thing, but bowing to pressure is never a good thing.

I'm taking a gun and putting it in my mouth right now.
 
I second the comment that Cobb sounds like an ass.

While pretty from afar, at ground level the wind-tunnel effect is a disaster, I've seen people literally swept off their feet. It's unfortunately buttressed NIMBY objections about wind to every other tower proposed since. At a minimum he ought to acknowledge the problem and offer high-level ideas about what he'd see as a fitting solution.

Cobb and Pei together had hands in the "holy trinity" of Boston's windswept wastelands,as the Christian Science Plaza and City Hall Plaza also create terrible wind funnels. Are there three worse places to be in Boston on a brisk January afternoon?
 
This is just another example of "elitist architects" never actually using the buildings they design. (I can say this since I'm an architect.) Nothing gets me more upset than all the glossy renderings in architecture magazines that could NEVER be built because of codes and other conditions. ......... but they "look good" in a magazine!

What if the architect of the Prudential Building was upset that his windswept plazas were replaced with glass enclosed arcades? I remember those plazas when I first moved to Boston and that was a place to be avoided at all costs! Now, it's one of my favorite places in the city. It's always busy and it contains nice stores and restaurants.

OK, so my compromise would be to lower the entire plaza to the concourse level. This was done quite successfully at ANOTHER Hancock tower in Chicago. The plaza is below the street level but reached by a grand staircase. The walls have water fountains and the restaurants spill out onto the plaza to make it lively and inviting. (I wasn't there in the winter, so I'm not sure what's there.) Perhaps it's similar to Rockefeller Plaza in NYC. I know the Boston plaza is much smaller, but I think it could work. Views would be preserved and hopefully the wind would be thwarted from the sunken plaza. I'm not usually a fan of plazas below street level, but if it was done RIGHT, it could be a nice attraction for that area.

In summary, I'm a HUGE fan of preservation on many levels. However preservation of architecture that doesn't seem to be working correctly, is not a good idea.
 
I agree with Ron and others on this one. That plaza is useless as it is. It's also pounded nonstop by hurricane force winds thanks to the Hancock's "architectural integrity"--you know, that same "architectural integrity" that caused plate glass to rain down out of the sky when the building was first constructed.

I bet Broadway Partners could have disarmed much of the strongest opposition simply by hiring Pei Cobb and Freed to design the addition rather than Elkus Manfredi. Nothing summons an architect's wrath more effectively than hiring another (lesser) architect to alter his masterpiece. Good move, Broadway Partners.

Penny wise, pound foolish.
 
Unlike the other two, the Christian Science plaza is a genuinely nice place to be in good weather. I'll use the same metric here as in the Greenway thread: do the people there look like they enjoy being there?
 
Cobb could and should have proposed a solution to the wind to improve his "iconic design" of the "iconic John Hancock Tower"

The iconic JH tower's iconic flat vertical walls of iconic flat glass' smooth surface is probably the worst possible structure as far as wind tunnel-effect is concerned. There are no impediments in the way of the wind expresssed down from the high levsls and no friction with the surface.

Cobb should have offered a nice 1 story glass box hugging the base of the tower on the plaza side with an upswept roofline that would have deflected the wind up and over the plaza

The sightlines to Trinity could have been preserved with a bit of thought at the placement of the glass box and its entrance especially if most of the restaurant was below the plaza level

Westy
 
whighlander said:
Cobb could and should have proposed a solution to the wind to improve his "iconic design" of the "iconic John Hancock Tower"
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By doing this he would have been admitting that his big boy "the John Hancock Tower" is somehow flawed and that's something Cobb's ego probably wouldn't allow him to do. Briv is probably correct in saying that if his firm had been hired to do the work, things would have worked out differently. Egos sometimes have a habit of getting in the way of what's truely logical and necessary. Java King's suggestion of sinking the plaza I thought was a good one. I would even suggest topping it with a glass pyramid (similiar to Pei's Louvre pyramid) but smaller. Jeez, if they can do it in front of the Louvre they could do it in front of Trinity Church. But then again, this is the Back Bay and those sight lines are all important.
 
The plaza in front of Trinity Church was sunken as part of the Huntington Ave. realignment and the construction of the Hancock. The barren design and feel of Copley Square then honestly made City Hall Plaza look good. Although upon relfections, with some additional landscaping, the old scheme could have been much better than the current one.






 
atlantaden said:
By doing this he would have been admitting that his big boy "the John Hancock Tower" is somehow flawed and that's something Cobb's ego probably wouldn't allow him to do.
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Obviously I can't speak for Cobb himself, but most architects see their buildings as imperfect creations. Practically every interview I've seen where an architect is asked about a certain building they designed, they'll point out what didn't work, or what they wished they could change.
 
Lurker said:
The barren design and feel of Copley Square then honestly made City Hall Plaza look good. Although upon relfections, with some additional landscaping, the old scheme could have been much better than the current one.

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My eyes gravitated toward this picture before I read your comments, and the first thing I thought was "Ugh! Looks like a proto-City Hall Plaza!"
 
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