401 Park Drive (née Landmark Center) | Fenway

Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

cadetcarl said:
I'm gonna start calling that move the Boston window. It's the architectural equivalent of your mom telling the person at the ticket counter you were still 9 so you could get children's prices even though you were clearly in middle school.
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The juxtaposition with the Landmark's central tower is fascinating (middle renders) - that tower is actually not that tall, but its architecture has the opposite effect: making it seem much taller and grander than it really is. We'll soon have two opposite effects right next to each other.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

This box is pretty lame. We're gonna have a wall of 200 foot midrises here too?. Every neighborhood in Boston is a poster child of awesomeness and pc squat planning.

How did that god-damned neighborhood supertall (Harry Agganis) ever slip thru at 339'?
 
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Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

Why is everything about height with you?
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

Cuz squat planning renders an incredibly butt ugly aestetic from all points of view. Every city seems to understand this reality -- but 1 continues to lag. An appropriate variety of heght is years overdue. By trying to be perfect, we end up with ugly.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

How many super talls (or even over 200') are they building over in your suburb? The height and density in the Fenway area is great now, especially compared to what it was before. But, someone better tell Paris or even Tokyo they need to build taller, too, to become a great city.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

Ok, the dull box is fine.

Sign here.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

This looks better than most of the taller buildings going up in boston. I also think the fetish on height is bizarre. I would much rather have better activated and more walkable streets and more consistent density than I would have one or two giant buildings.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

bigpicture7 said:
The juxtaposition with the Landmark's central tower is fascinating (middle renders) - that tower is actually not that tall, but its architecture has the opposite effect: making it seem much taller and grander than it really is. We'll soon have two opposite effects right next to each other.
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^ to clarify: my comment had nothing to do whatsoever with height fetishizing or height advocacy. I merely meant to point out the coincidence of two contrasting optical illusion effects being positioned right next to each other (one that makes a building seem taller; one that makes a building seem shorter).
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

odurandina said:
Cuz squat planning renders an incredibly butt ugly aestetic from all points of view. Every city seems to understand this reality -- but 1 continues to lag. An appropriate variety of heght is years overdue. By trying to be perfect, we end up with ugly.
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Point 1 = opinion
Point 2 = opinion
Point 3 = assumption
Point 4 = opinion
Point 5 = wacky hypothesis

Tall does not always equal beautiful. You can have lots of tall ugly things. Some of the most beloved urban environments in the world are ones where there is a low datum with special moments popping up. The super-tall environments of Shanghai ... Dubai .. Hong Kong ... and Singapore are not what one would consider model urban environments. Yet .. tall they are.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

FK4 said:
Looks very nice. Love the nod to industrial windows.

Interesting to notice how the design - at first glance - makes the floor number look like half of what it actually is due to the window divisions only every other floor.
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Yea youll see that a lot around here if you look. Theyre even doing it on 115 winthrop. Its an attempt to make a building look shorter than it really is. Its actually 14 stories tall even though they attempt to hide it here (not including the roof).

To the people who dont like this, I do, and I think its appropriate for the area.

Its also much different than anything in the area and its very industrial looking. I think they do a good job here of making it look rugged, they also hide the height well, which is a bad thing for many people on here, but I think in this situation it works.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

I have to agree with Stick on this one. I think this is a well done design.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

Manhattan's upper East Side has had a huge influence on my love for an increased dissimilarity in height, and emphasizing slender building... Some projects going up between 140 and 200' such as can be found on the New York Streets, Fenway, and Allston/Brighton along the Pike Wall, Harvard Campus, Train Yards, Longwood Medical Campus, Dot Ave, Mission Hill, Roxbury etc, could benefit to have a bit more variance, and simply being less fat imo.

Take the changes to the Flower Exchange main tower. Nice change; but why not go even less fat, and get a bit narrower and taller?

The day is coming when we will be so scarce with land, that we may (HOLY CHRIST) begin to actually do this. Take Brookline Ave near John Henry Park; Why not start now?
 
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Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

Theres plenty of land. Theres also plenty of crap to replace once we do run out (not in our lifetimes).
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

The windows and material of this one look awesome. However, I absolutely understand lamenting the wall-effect. For instance, this building is going to completely block the old Landmark Center tower from both the river and Fenway. If it was turned on its side (ie went more vertical) there would be more space around it to maintain views of the rest of the older building. Instead, many of these huge wall buildings proposed in Boston are going to be acting more as barriers to the rest of the city, rather than melding in seamlessly.

Another good example is the stacked cube building proposed for the Back Bay Garage. If it went taller and thinner, it would also maintain more view on either side of it. Instead it will completely block the Hancock from a ton of angles, and overwhelm the area with its girth.

I feel like from too many angles, we are allowing single monstrous buildings to wall off the rest of the city. It throws everything out of scale for me, and almost isolates the areas by not being able to see around these gigantic barriers to the rest of the city. My least favorite building in Boston is probably Tremont on the Common, and too many buildings seem to be emulating the general shape of it, if not the atrocious design.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

If construction is happening and BeeLine doesn't take its picture, does anything get built?
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

Looks like there may be a lot of work left to be done. Wasn't this supposed to open this spring? Or at least the Time Out food court?
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

BosDevelop said:
Looks like there may be a lot of work left to be done. Wasn't this supposed to open this spring? Or at least the Time Out food court?
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This project has been characterized by months of no visible progress (despite lots of workers actively working), then tons of visible progress appearing in just a week or two. The past couple of weeks has been one of those periods of lots of visible progress. For example, progress on the the front landscaping appears to go quickly one they shift their attention to it. If this keeps up, I could still imagine a late-spring/early-summer opening.
 
Re: Landmark Center Expansion | Fenway

JumboBuc said:
^ I think it's a pretty safe bet that once "Phase II" is complete we'll see a residential "Phase III" proposed for the NW portion of this site along the GL tracks where BB&B is now.

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I thought there was always a second tower planned for that spot - is that in the master plan, and just not applied for yet, or is there actually no formal plan for an eventual second new tower here?
 
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