Recent content by Arborway

Commercial buildings are often used to secure loans. The valuation of a structure is largely determined by the asking price of the space within. If you lower rents, the value of the building drops. If you've used it as collateral, you can expect a call from your bank.

Why would you do that to a building?

All I can be sure of is that the pavement was visibly crumbling, uneven as hell, and permanently waterlogged in 2007. It felt like an ancient piece of infrastructure less than three years after it opened. If you told me it was paved by a shop class with a few hundred bags of Quikrete, I'd...

I feel like that design got very far along before someone remembered they needed to put a huge Alucobond frame around the windows to give it that stale colossal order touch.

Kendall Square turned out so inviting and aesthetically pleasing they built another one.

This is so bland.

The "wet cardboard" precast look fell out of fashion a bit. I guess it's time for a revival.

No. Boston buildings can either have one façade style or eight. It's the rules.

Imagine grabbing a design from 1976 and building it in 1991.

He's merely recharging his immense posting power.

This building looks like it arrived through a time portal from 2006.

I'd really love to see pre-renovation photos of that weird mezzanine floor with the bright panels.

Most new developments over the past 15 years or so have a "why couldn't you make the whole building look like that?" section.

Align the windows, drop the colossal order framing of the windows and this building becomes a winner.

I dig it. It's a nice change from the usual choices of: flat, white / gray aluminum, or wet cardboard concrete. On the other hand, the café façade looks wrong to me. I can't put my finger on it.