Search results

This is the architectural connoisseur’s forum.

Endless dead streets of replaceable vinyl architecture doesn’t seem like a great way to build a city.

I mean the fact that every sleazy developer wants to use this kind of construction is proof positive that it is cheap. Wood chips, formaldehyde binders, fire retardant chemicals. Tape the whole thing together with cheap laborers and cover it in vinyl. The interiors can have onyx and brass so...

Remember folks, wind turbines kill whales but offshore drilling doesn’t.

Something about LMA (especially the area around Binney, Blackfan, etc.) is like a slice out of another country’s urbanism. It makes me think of like Ginza, Tokyo. Very dense, imposing architecture, narrow streets, but also strangely clean and dead half the time. I do like walking around here...

I genuinely believe that a significant amount of NIMBYism is healthy and correct revulsion toward the design of these kinds of buildings. They make arguments about traffic and infrastructure and equity and whatever, but some part of it actually stems from the completely accurate prediction that...

It’s not even about bowing down, it’s about dollars and cents. Investments occur in friendly, safe environments, not openly hostile ones.

Nearly 100% of the residential development is being done in this cheap way, and the triple deckers (most of which need to go) aren’t large apartment buildings. Big cities like Chicago and New York have banned this kind of construction for a reason.

We will come to regret building our city out of 2x4s and paper.

This article is worth reading - a bit about how blue state and local governments have built places with very high QOL and then have effectively banned people from living there. I feel a lot of the MA NIMBY problem here. https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-crisis-of-democratic-governance/

The projects discussed on this very website are almost all for the very poor, very rich, or students, or are in outer and less desirable areas of the city. You claim that there are “thousands of units” that have been built, which is bragging about gaining two yards on a run play while down 30...

Who? The people living in the oil slicks in Everett?

It’s really nasty stuff. They can’t just decide on one facade palette - they need to use all of them.

The garage needs to go. The nexus of all the city’s subway lines leads to….automobile parking.

If someone in the federal government needs to sign a single piece of paper to allow for an offshore wind project to happen, it's not going to happen until 2029 at the absolute earliest. If you're one of these offshore wind companies, is it really a good bet to invest in one of these projects...

The actual gist of that story is that it took THREE YEARS to get the necessary permits and fight off the pointless legal battles. The factory could be spitting out cable right now, but instead Massachusetts gets nothing.

The facade of a hospital should be rational, orderly, and clean, like the work that goes on inside. Even a pediatric hospital or wing should share these design principles, but those should have some kind of large kid-friendly artwork or fountain.

Within desirable areas, this city only builds housing for three kinds of people: students, the very rich, and the very poor.

It’s truly galling that during such a dire housing crisis, the city is okaying a glue and paper building that leaves literally 200 approved units on the table. Heads should be rolling.

Alarm bells should be going off at how small (and crappy) this project is.