Boston's Best Modern Urbanism

[Beton Brut]

What? No State Transportation Building in Park Square?

Like a Helmut Jahn building, with a "frosting" of bricks to dress it up like MIT's Baker House. Boorish architecture. Only the atrium food court saves it.

Is one of them the Harvard building on Mt. Auburn Street that houses the Globe Corner Bookstore?

Not nearly good enough for this list. Hans Hollein's design was better in every way, a little brother to Holyoke Center.

If we're adding anything to this list, my pick is NikeTown. Handsome, contextual, Deco-inflected.

Bonus: not brick & not insipid.

 

[Dan]

Christian Science Center
Rowe's Warf
Mandarin

While the Hancock is elegant, its impact is purely on the skyline.

Although I didn't vote for it, as an office building, 75 State isn't bad.

 

[bdurden]

I'm surprised the BU Law tower is not on this list.

 

[ablarc]

^ It's mentioned in the intro to this thread, and if you read between the lines, so is the reason it's not on the poll.

 

[statler]

The BU Law tower has the amazing ability to be anti-urban in a rather dense setting. It's almost impressive.

City Hall pulls off a similar feat but is assisted by the plaza.

 

[ablarc]

The BU Law tower has the amazing ability to be anti-urban in a rather dense setting. It's almost impressive.

Whaddya mean "almost"? It's great highway architecture.

It also makes a good, off-center campanile for the little plaza in front of the chapel.

 

[Beton Brut]

^^ The architecture succeeds where the ideology behind it fails. Sert was capable of greatness in the face of truly misguided urbanism. A tragic hero (building and architect).

 

[ablarc]

^ But the urbanism's pretty good at Holyoke Center, eh?

When it's not, why blame Sert --if you take into account that client and zoning precluded anything urban at both BU and Peabody Terrace? After all, if you can't put in stores and the zoning requires setbacks...




(Sert came from Spain, and they know about cities there --ideology or no.)

 

[Beton Brut]

Touche, ablarc.

I was throwing Corbu (and Robert Moses) under the bus more than Sert. The era, the culture, often foiled Sert's best laid plans. If allowed, both projects could have been made better. I like Sert as a craftsman; and I like the abrasive quality of his buildings. Totemic, to use your word.

 

[ablarc]

^ As a matter of fact, till somewhat recently there was a store in Peabody Terrace, and as I recall, it was due to Sert's persistence. To assuage the zoning and the community (which was afraid of increased traffic!), they might have cooked up some canard about limiting use of the store to Peabody Terrace residents --as though that could be enforced! That area is not well-served by convenience shopping. Banishing shops with suburban zoning only serves to encourage driving and the very traffic the community feared.

You can count on people to be fools about such things.

 

[bdurden]

^ It's mentioned in the intro to this thread, and if you read between the lines, so is the reason it's not on the poll.

You are right--though with a little Holyoke Center like treatment or something akin to the Meat Packing district plaza in front of the Apple Store, I could see a nice plaza developing in front of Sert's BU Law tower (there is already a non-functioning plaza there). When the landscape fails but the building does not, how is the building to blame?

 

[ablarc]

Now if they'd only remove that gawd-awful Irish Famine Memorial from the plaza in front of the 5 Cents. That's gotta be the worst, most over-the-top piece of public art in Boston.

A little mawkish, huh?

I think it should find a home on the barren Greenway, along with Partisans.

 

[BarbaricManchurian]

Hancock Tower: has the most striking impact on the skyline, and is essentially the modern symbol of Boston. The street level isn't great, but these two factors more than make up for it.

Apple Store: strikingly modern when we haven't had much of it in recent years. Also activates the streetscape, is a high-traffic retail location, and helps Boylston's urbanity extend westward (once 888, hynes renovation, and the air rights are finished, the urbanity will be consistent all the way to the Fens)

Copley Place/ Prudential Mall - makes a huge area of Boston available to pedestrians, covers an ugly gash through the city, provides convenient indoor walkways in winter (and other seasons, but not as useful), and quite monumental when you look up and see the skyscrapers all around. Also provides a lot of street level retail, sometimes even more than in more conventional examples of urbanity.

 

[czsz]

That's gotta be the worst, most over-the-top piece of public art in Boston.

Can you believe there's a copy in Cambridge? I guess they were trying to cover the board and win "worst" in as many cities as possible.

 

[czsz]

^ As a matter of fact, till somewhat recently there was a store in Peabody Terrace, and as I recall, it was due to Sert's persistence. To assuage the zoning and the community (which was afraid of increased traffic!), they might have cooked up some canard about limiting use of the store to Peabody Terrace residents --as though that could be enforced! That area is not well-served by convenience shopping. Banishing shops with suburban zoning only serves to encourage driving and the very traffic the community feared.

There was also recently a small grocery in the Harvard apts. at 29 Garden St., closed, if I remember correctly, due to local noise complaints or somesuch.

 

[ablarc]

^ There used to be little, isolated storefronts scattered through Cambridgeport/Riverside and Beacon Hill. Most have been converted to residential use or realty offices.

 

[Ron Newman]

And in current economic conditions, I suspect some of those realty offices will close and be converted back to small stores.

 

[ablarc]

^ Zoning won't allow it. It's been amended to incorporate the "community's" concerns about noise, traffic and hoodlumism.

 

[Ron Newman]

Generally a retail use can replace a retail use, and a realty office is retail for that purpose.

 

[ablarc]

No, they have all kinds of categories ranging from adult entertainment through dry cleaning establishments, bars, all the way to realty offices.

Retail is generally classified by noxiousness.