Boston College Master Plan

Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Padre Mike said:
What a wonderful use for the former Cardinal's Residence! I always thought it looked and felt like a museum...the spacious rooms, the wide hallways, the basement pool turned into storage! I had mixed feelings of my visits there....sometimes to celebrate, sometimes to be castigated...Now I'm safe in FL!
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And the once and current Cardinal is safer in Rome ;)
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

2150 Comm Ave

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And one of this handsome fella

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Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

No news or pics, but indulge me for a minute while I give a little rant.

This building is huge. Huge. It sprawls every which way. With major setbacks on all sides. Why? Why couldn't this have filled in Comm Ave's streetwall and activated that side of the street with retail? Why do we allow campuses to withdraw into themselves and build as if they aren't part of a city? Think what a difference a few more storefronts would make to that stretch - right there at the B Line terminus. That's the difference between an (existing) lonely row of retail and an actual neighborhood hub. So now we're consigned to more dead space.

This isn't just a BC problem. Essentially, we allow all colleges and universities to do this. At great cost to our neighborhoods. Why?
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Shepard said:
This isn't just a BC problem. Essentially, we allow all colleges and universities to do this. At great cost to our neighborhoods. Why?
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Because as much as we fetishize neighborhoods, street retail, and urbanism in these conversations, many other people fetishize the college campus as a green space full of lawns, gardens and set-back buildings in a historic architectural style. Many colleges do have an interest in fitting into urban settings. MIT is trying to do it in Kendall, and Harvard tries to do it in Harvard Square (though both could do much more than they've done). BU does it a fair amount as well. All of those schools, however, have elements of the proto-Oxford campus that they jealously guard.

The other issue at play is that, frankly, every university is perpetually out of space, and that's by design. They build what they need, for their own use. They're simply not in the business of being landlords to local retailers or other outside folks except in very limited situations. Any street-level space that can be a cafe can also be an office for a professor working out of a converted janitor's closet in a building from 1895, and the professor's going to get the footage.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Equilibria said:
Because as much as we fetishize neighborhoods, street retail, and urbanism in these conversations, many other people fetishize the college campus as a green space full of lawns, gardens and set-back buildings in a historic architectural style. Many colleges do have an interest in fitting into urban settings. MIT is trying to do it in Kendall, and Harvard tries to do it in Harvard Square (though both could do much more than they've done). BU does it a fair amount as well. All of those schools, however, have elements of the proto-Oxford campus that they jealously guard.

The other issue at play is that, frankly, every university is perpetually out of space, and that's by design. They build what they need, for their own use. They're simply not in the business of being landlords to local retailers or other outside folks except in very limited situations. Any street-level space that can be a cafe can also be an office for a professor working out of a converted janitor's closet in a building from 1895, and the professor's going to get the footage.
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Good response. Full of reality. Thanks.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

I'm Assuming there are some tax implications when a non-profit university becomes a landlord for unrelated for profit businesses as well.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Colleges and universities are non-profits (Univ. of Phoenix and some others aside). They should not be in the business of competing with the private sector because in most instances they have a significant financial advantage when it comes to constructing and owning a building. This new BC dorm is being financed with tax exempt bonds.

That does not mean a college or university will never put commercial or retail into a building that it owns, and which is otherwise used for school purposes, or that a college or university won't build and lease a building in its entirety to the private sector, but these will be the exception rather than the rule.

Hypothetically, or maybe not so hypothetically, if MIT were to bid and be selected as the developer of the Volpe Center, it almost certainly would build properties that paid property taxes to the city.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

Hmm, Neo-Renaissance palazzo with 21st Century glass addition stuck on it. What an aesthetic contrast! I would have stuck with the palazzo...
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

It's marginally better than the usual Disney gothic.
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

See my post about faux harvard square. Faux gothic is faux because its not real and CANNOT BY LAW be done the way it was done in the 12th century. Is it good design? Does it solve problems elegantly? This is what I care about, and I am guessing it is what you are railing against. If it is purposeless other than thick wallpaper ... it is bad design.

The question is ... is the character of an institution enough of a criteria to put in all that effort to affect a style like this. The people who run this school say yes ... so to them it IS good design. To the people that pay their tuition the answer is YES by proxy.

So ... there you go.

cca
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

cca said:
See my post about faux harvard square. Faux gothic is faux because its not real and CANNOT BY LAW be done the way it was done in the 12th century. Is it good design? Does it solve problems elegantly? This is what I care about, and I am guessing it is what you are railing against. If it is purposeless other than thick wallpaper ... it is bad design.

The question is ... is the character of an institution enough of a criteria to put in all that effort to affect a style like this. The people who run this school say yes ... so to them it IS good design. To the people that pay their tuition the answer is YES by proxy.

So ... there you go.

cca
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Del Boca Vista Phase II

(For any Seinfeld fans)
 
Re: Boston College Master Plan debut

cca said:
See my post about faux harvard square. Faux gothic is faux because its not real and CANNOT BY LAW be done the way it was done in the 12th century. Is it good design? Does it solve problems elegantly? This is what I care about, and I am guessing it is what you are railing against. If it is purposeless other than thick wallpaper ... it is bad design.

The question is ... is the character of an institution enough of a criteria to put in all that effort to affect a style like this. The people who run this school say yes ... so to them it IS good design. To the people that pay their tuition the answer is YES by proxy.

So ... there you go.

cca
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Yes, this.
 
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