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  1. B

    Cambridge Infill and Small Developments

    Fascinating project. I don't think I've ever seen a renovation like this before. Can you point to any more info on this one?
  2. B

    South Boston Infill and Small Developments

    I think it's pretty understandable. Since WWII, architecture in America has become increasingly ugly and bereft of any art or humanity. Likewise for our urban planning. It's only natural that people are now instinctually weary of development, especially large-scale development.
  3. B

    Milton infill and small development

    The MBTA Communities Act may be law, but its legality is yet to be tested. Granted I'm just a layman, but the selectiveness of the "MBTA Community" designation, as well as the arbitrariness of the requirement formulation lead me to believe that this statute won't survive a court challenge. This...
  4. B

    Milton infill and small development

    Lol. Is there a Godwin's Law for racism? I'm on Milton's side here. A town resisting state-level preemption and wanting to retain local control over the zoning within its boundaries is a perfectly valid and understandable position to hold. The hysterical invective being directed at Milton is...
  5. B

    1400 Boylston Street | Star Market & Gulf | Fenway

    I disagree. The uniform color only emphasizes this landscraper's landscraperness. I find it totally gross. The former scheme was almost certainly a half-assed riff on Renzo Piano's Central St. Giles in London. I didn't love it, but I thought it was about a thousand times better than this...
  6. B

    MGH Ragon Building | 55 Fruit Street | West End

    These buildings have all the humanity of a electrical box. It's incredible how ugly most hospital architecture has become. It's as if these institutions have made it part of their corporate mission to deface the public realm. I can't decide whether it's incompetence or sabotage.
  7. B

    American Repertory Theater | 175 North Harvard Street | Allston

    The new ART building looks like a poultry processing facility. Harvard is clearly unconcerned with providing any kind of positive aesthetic experience to anyone who has to look at this crap on a regular basis.
  8. B

    Eli Lilly IGM | 15 Necco Street | Fort Point

    This building looks like it was designed by Homer Simpson.
  9. B

    ISQ3 | 22 Drydock Avenue | Seaport

    This is soul-smothering, office park suburbanism. What a waste.
  10. B

    State Street HQ | One Congress | Bulfinch Crossing | West End

    This building is way too wide. Grotesquely wide. And that curtain wall looks like something out of the 70s. The raised, metallic mullions contrast starkly with the blue glass, making the skin look busy and negating any sensual effect the building's smoothly curving facade might have had...
  11. B

    South Boston Infill and Small Developments

    My thoughts exactly. This kind of dramatic deviation from the established urban fabric is a hallmark of public housing projects. It seems like the whole point of it is to visually announce to everyone that this is subsidized housing for poor people and it is separate and distinct from the...
  12. B

    Kendall/MIT Infill and Small Developments

    WOW! What an outrageous act of vandalism that addition to the Green Building is.
  13. B

    Open Space | Turnpike Parcel 21 | Chinatown

    What neighborhood are you talking about? Chinatown? The South End? Bay Village? I wouldn't say these parcels are in any of them, but isolated on the periphery of all 3, in no man's land. How about bringing some vitality and desperately needed housing to the place before mindlessly plopping down...
  14. B

    Open Space | Turnpike Parcel 21 | Chinatown

    I'm on the side of more housing. Boston doesnt need any more superfluous, haphazardly placed parks--especially astronomically expensive ones like these would be. What a terrible idea.
  15. B

    401 Park Drive (née Landmark Center) | Fenway

    Stefal, I was not criticizing the size of the buildings' floor plates (which are another issue), but the scale at which their facades are arranged. I'm talking about the seemingly reflexive tendency for architects to lamely try to disguise a building as one half (or a third, or a quarter -- or...
  16. B

    401 Park Drive (née Landmark Center) | Fenway

    Yes! I totally agree. The city is more than starting to be "thrown off" by these types of cartoonishly over-scaled, oafish buildings. It's been thoroughly disfigured at this point. These buildings are everywhere you turn in Boston. They look like they have been transported from an alternately...
  17. B

    Harvard SEC (Science & Engineering Complex) | Western Ave | Allston

    This one looks like a Rt 128 Special wearing tin foil chain mail. Doesn't really project any bravura at all, despite all its apparent effort -- actually, quite the opposite. And the paired-down industrial chic of that atrium is so played out at this point that it's just lazy. Take away the...
  18. B

    The Aubrey | 149-153 Newbury Street | Back Bay

    I'm liking this one. It's definitely nothing to get excited about, but I think we're getting the best of the several iterations that were presented. Those earlier designs with the triangular facets at the corner were tacky and would have aged quite badly, IMO. This design being built doesn't...
  19. B

    Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial | Boston Common | Downtown

    Embrace... the D! Looking forward to seeing the countless forced perspective photos in front of this, à la the Leaning Tower of Pisa, posted online in the future.

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