Boston at 'Exciting Point' in Architectural Evolution

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Boston at 'exciting' point in architectural evolution

Boston Business Journal - January 26, 2007
by Roberta Holland - Special to the Journal

Boston is hitting an exciting point in its aesthetic evolution, according to local architects heralding the prospect of bold new buildings on the city's landscape.

Development opportunities in the Seaport District and the Rose Kennedy Greenway as well as the prospect of a new skyscraper all hold potential to transform the city's look. Recent additions like the Institute of Contemporary Art also will help shape the city.

"I think people are really excited about the forward-lookingness of that part of the city," Carole Wedge, president of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott, said about the Seaport District. Wedge's firm, one of the oldest firms in the country and founded by the architect of Trinity Church, moved its offices into the Seaport District last year. "I think people are ready for a higher level of architecture."

Wedge pointed to the more global influence of architecture today, adding that it is important for Boston to be ambitious in its design.

"We are at a very exciting moment for Boston architecture," agreed Howard F. Elkus, co-founding principal of Elkus/Manfredi Architects in Boston. "We have areas like the Seaport, which is far less constrained. Also, if you look at the architecture of the greenway, this is going to showcase buildings really new to Boston. It's more sculptural than previously seen, and I welcome that."

While Boston is not known for any singular style of architecture, it is characterized more by historic neighborhoods. High-quality masonry, from brick to sandstone, is a common theme, Elkus said.

As development moves forward, including the possibility of a 1,000-foot tower at 115 Winthrop Square, the city and builders need to stay faithful to design elements that have made Boston what it is today, Elkus said.

"It's important to continue to build the fabric of the city, and that buildings recognize they contribute to that fabric," Elkus said.

City planners say one of Boston's strengths has been blending the old with the new while retaining its hallmark feeling of a walking city. Prataap Patrose, deputy director of urban design for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, said that ability is due in large part to the city's street grid. That smaller footprint has shaped development here, Patrose said. Aggressive historic preservation also has helped maintain that feel, he said.

"The feel of the city is still defined by the original street grid and layout," Patrose said. The city is going to be vigilant "to keep the underpinnings of what makes Boston uniquely Boston."

Old and new, the city's architecture shares a common denominator of innovation, Patrose and others said. The massive landfilling efforts to build the city and construction of the first high-rise were only two examples of bold design moves. Elkus said many of Boston's buildings represent a "high point" in the evolution of architecture.

"Just as Trinity Church or Boston Public Library seized the moment and lived up to it, our age is producing new similar opportunities," Elkus said.

While city planners want to maintain the same feel of Boston as a walking city on the street level, they are looking to the skyline to "draw a punctuation mark," Patrose said.

The proposal for 115 Winthrop Square calls for a large public open space on the ground, with the building erected three stories above it. The plan from Steven Belkin, the only developer to respond to the mayor's request for proposals for a new tower, is still under review.

Patrose argues that Boston's skyline matters as competition between cities for capital and talent increases. "You're having to use every tool in the book to market the city, and the image of the city is becoming a very important aspect of how you market the city," Patrose said.

Edward Tsoi, founding principal of Tsoi/Kobus & Associates in Cambridge, supports the idea of a new high-rise on the Boston skyline. While not as massive as New York's or homogeneous as Seattle's, Boston's skyline has a flavor of its own, he said.

"What I love about Boston is it has this depth of history evident in the different high-rise buildings," Tsoi said. "I think that's distinctly Boston. I think if the (skyline) ever became static, the city would become static."

 

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Boston architecture: Moving beyond the bay windows


The Springstep Building in Medford is almost entirely glass on one side, enabling passers by to glimpse the activity inside.

Boston Business Journal - January 26, 2007
by Joyce Pellino Crane - Special to the Journal

The newly built Institute of Contemporary Art was touted at its December opening as a dramatic departure from Boston's traditional architectural style -- a unique modern structure among what some call classic and others term stodgy.

"We don't have enough truly unique architecture," said Wayne Koch, principal of ADD Inc., "and we tend to be conservative in our outlook in what's acceptable here."

Love 'em or hate 'em, nontraditional buildings generate strong emotions in Boston's architects, who are acutely aware of the pride taken in the neoclassical styles of Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival so prevalent in this region.

The Boston Business Journal recently asked a few Boston-area architects to list what they consider unique, offbeat or non-traditional styles throughout Greater Boston. Amidst brick and slate, concrete and cobblestone, there's a growing list of buildings that twist to the left or step to the right and generally don't fit the standard look of brick and slate.

Among them is the Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center at Wellesley College, designed by Mack Scoggin Merrill Elam Architects of Atlanta. The building won the 2006 Harleston Parker Medal, which honors aesthetically pleasing buildings constructed within the past 10 years in the Greater Boston area.

"Wellesley (College) has such a rich historic campus of buildings that are slate and brick and precast sandstone," said Robert Brown, Principal of Boston-based CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares Inc. "These are very traditional materials. Very rooted in the English side of New England."

But the new student center, said Brown, uses those traditional materials in different ways, with slate on the walls, copper downspouts and flashing, and "brick as a thin skin instead of masonry bearing."

"If you're a traditionalist," he said, "you might wonder what it is. It's not a building that has a natural order. It's balanced, but not in a symmetrical, geometric way."

The Institute of Contemporary Art, located on Fan Pier in Boston was designed by the New York architectural firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro. Its fourth-story cantilever extends to the water's edge.
A sense of history

Designing a building in New England presents challenges that go beyond weather conditions and spatial limitations. The emotional connection to the region's history sometimes limits creativity, say architects, and leads to modified designs even for the area's most imaginative structures and the world's most creative architects.

For Brown, the building that springs to mind as truly unique is the Ray and Maria Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Designed by world renowned architect Frank Gehry, the jarring angles, bright colors and varied textures are mixed with a brick front and popping bay windows that are designed to surprise as well as comfort, because they are similar in style to those used in the Back Bay's brownstone townhouses.

Compared to other buildings designed by Gehry, said Koch, the Stata is relatively staid, suggesting that the architect toned down his creativity to connect some elements to Boston tradition.

"What we view as being totally ecstatic and exuberant may be relatively tame compared to what's happening in other places," Koch said. "I would contend that the buildings we think are unique, like the Stata Center, are much more conservative pieces than what that architect has done (elsewhere in country)."
Beyond Boston

Though buildings in Boston and Cambridge fall under the spotlight, suburban locations are adding more nouveau styles to the mix.

Architect Hubert Murray of Hubert Murray Architect & Planner in Cambridge pointed to downtown Medford as a study in contrasts from traditional to inspirational. The city hall is a stone's throw from the newly constructed Springstep, a center for community participation in dance and music.

"Medford City Hall is quite a nice building and now it's got a fairly close neighbor," he said, "but the relationship between the two buildings is acres of black top and parking."

The Springstep "neighbor" was designed by Andrew Cohen Architects of Wayland. Murray called it "a beautiful diamond in the rough," because it sits next to Interstate 93 and its surrounded by "an architectural desert" of asphalt.

According to the Springstep organization's Web site, "the building is almost entirely glass on one side, allowing passersby to glimpse the activity inside. It is crowned by a sweeping, 2 1/2-story atrium."

For Roger Shepley, principal of Dyer/Brown & Associates of Boston, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University is unique because it was a replica of a villa in Italy, and the Carpenter Center by Le Corbusier, of Switzerland, completed at Harvard in 1964, is also unusual, he added.

"Like the Stata Building," said Shepley, The Carpenter Center "is a major signature building by an architect who is one of the most famous architects in the world and it is completely different from every building around it."

On the back side of Beacon Hill is the "quirky" State Health Education and Welfare Services building that, like Boston City Hall, was built in the Brutalist style, said Shepley.

Though not widely loved, according to Shepley, the building is notable because its style matches that of City Hall's, which has generated a great deal of comment lately in the wake of Mayor Thomas Menino's announced intention to move the municipal offices to South Boston.

Saying some outsiders view Boston's architecture as stodgy, Brown speculated that the region's unique buildings are getting built because some of their financial supporters come from outside of Boston.

"There's a likelihood that the money coming for these buildings is from a donor whose saying, 'let's play more, let's be creative, let's find a more interesting piece of work,'" he said. "It may be why these buildings stand out so much."

 

[briv]

This whole notion that Boston is somehow especially conservative when it comes to architecture is absolutely ridiculous. Boston has embraced the latest architectural fads as enthusiatically as any other city, and in many cases MUCH MORE. Harvard was the beachhead from which the International Style invaded America, and from Gropius and Co, we never looked back:

Rudolph, Botta, Pei, Sert, Maki, Saarinan, Aalto, Corbusier. CORBUSIER! And on, Johnson, Stern, Gehry, Cobb, Venturi, Safdie, Stirling. And on, Holl, Foster, Piano, Diller+Scofidio, and on, etc., etc...

Before architecture became a facet of global civic marketing, Id say Boston was far more architecturally adventurous than most cities in America. Even today, in the age of Bilboa Effect when every third-tier shit-kicking burgh is erecting some multi-million dollar architectural oddball in the middle of their dysfunctional cities, I think Boston still holds her own. I believe this whole notion that Boston is stuffy architecturally stems from the fact that the city has been -- as far as American cities go -- adamantly protective about its FABRIC. Which is fine with me, because a few hyper-indulgent architectural statements do not make a city worth living in. Its the fabric that makes the place, IMO.

We certainly dont go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame or the Pompidou. We go there to see Paris.

 

[Scott]

I like Contemporary structures and feel there is a place for them in this city but, like Briv said, that is not what the tourists come to see and also not the reason that people are moving back into the South End.
Some Bostonians feel protective of the city's fabric because it is a unique urban environment, built by our ancestors that we are stewards of, be it rows of 19th Century townhouses or rows of 3 Deckers. We have learned from the mistakes of the past that once you tear down a building or the whole friggin neighborhood it is gone forever and the building(s) and streetscape that replace it will always be compared to whatever came before. Robert Campbell makes that point quite clearly in his Cityscape's series.

Another thing people don't understand is the underlying narrative of a city that was dead in the water 40 years ago and has risen from the ashes. I found it ironic that someone said the Pru should be torn down and "start over" because if it wasn't for the Pru there would be no starting over in this city just urban scenes reminiscent of Detroit or Gary Indiana.