BU Data Sciences Center | 665 Commonwealth Avenue | BU Central

TomOfBoston said:
One question about this building and Northeastern's ISEC and EXP: With all the fins, how do they wash the windows?
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The answer is very carefully, and rarely. If One Dalton's windows look like garbage most of the time, and they have an easy set up for washing windows, I see these silly vanity projects with their needless fenestration (Harvard's science landscraper sings the same tune) as beyond hope of regular squeegee service.
 
urbanmansprawler said:
The answer is very carefully, and rarely. If One Dalton's windows look like garbage most of the time, and they have an easy set up for washing windows, I see these silly vanity projects with their needless fenestration (Harvard's science landscraper sings the same tune) as beyond hope of regular squeegee service.
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I'm (honestly) confused. At least once a week, usually more, I walk by 1 Dalton and, being a fan, I always check it out -- up close and from further away -- and usually snap a few pix. Aside fromt the glass, itself, being lovely (and probably the most "luxe" aspect of the tower), it's also never appeared anything but exceptionally clean.

What are you seeing that I'm missing? I'm there often, both during the week and weekends, nights and mornings and afternoons, so (again): your assessment is very confusing to me.
 
chrisbrat said:
I'm (honestly) confused. At least once a week, usually more, I walk by 1 Dalton and, being a fan, I always check it out -- up close and from further away -- and usually snap a few pix. Aside fromt the glass, itself, being lovely (and probably the most "luxe" aspect of the tower), it's also never appeared anything but exceptionally clean.

What are you seeing that I'm missing? I'm there often, both during the week and weekends, nights and mornings and afternoons, so (again): your assessment is very confusing to me.
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Totally same reaction - confused
 
Yeah, I have a good view of it from my office window and also walk close by fairly often. The glass always looks spectacular.
 
Excerpts from a critique by a retired Globe columnist, and BU gard.

The great medieval cathedrals, the sculptor Auguste Rodin wrote, are built on “the principle of living bodies,” the bodily harmony that results from “the counterbalancing of masses that move.” The Jenga building — its suggestion of unbalanced mass — throws off my own sense of balance. It does more than disrupt the skyline — it disrupts the relationship of my body to the earth.

Meanwhile, Jenga-style buildings are a thing — there are examples in New York, Austin, and Vancouver, and more on the way. (BU prefers comparison to a stack of books.) Andrew Witt, an associate professor in practice of architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, said in an e-mail that the building “invites you to see it in the round” and lauded the spiral arrangement of those Jenga blocks. “Together,” he wrote, “the shuffled volumes, spiral twist, and shimmering facade allow the building to show many faces to the city, creating an effect that is both rational and elusive.”

OK, so maybe I’ll get used to — or even learn to love — BU’s new building. When I recently took a walk around the building, I was surprised to find it less imposing from the sidewalk and not nearly as unsettling. I took in the play of light on its reflective surfaces, the alternating patterns of verticals and diagonals. It was dazzling. So maybe Boston’s most spectacular new building will also someday not be its scariest.
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www.bostonglobe.com

Boston Universityâs Jenga building creeps me out - The Boston Globe

Is it going to fall over? Is it going to grow arms and legs and walk like a Transformer?
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
 
curcuas said:
This is *precisely* the attitude why we have no new or interesting architecture in Boston. Anything remotely new or interesting gets savaged in the press and in public. Vive la difference.
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I wonder how many people praising this BU building have condemned Boston City Hall and/or called for its demolition. City Hall was considered new, interesting and groundbreaking when built in the 1960's.
 
RandomWalk said:
However, constructing this BU building didn’t involve leveling an entire neighborhood. Personally, I dislike City Hall, but I dislike the loss of Scollay Square and environs even more.
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But that is not why most people hate the City Hall building.
 
TomOfBoston said:
But that is not why most people hate the City Hall building.
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There are other buildings that look similar and don't get quite the same level of hate, such as the New York State Museum in Albany and the Hawaii State House. The bad reputation of Boston's started by the demolition of an entire historic neighborhood, most of which was replaced by an empty brick plaza. If they retained 75% of the neighborhood instead of that plaza, the building wouldn't get half the hate it does now.
 
TomOfBoston said:
But that is not why most people hate the City Hall building.
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It’s partially why. Not as many people would hate the building if it was nestled among others. It still wouldn’t be beautiful but it’d be an interesting oddity. Brutalist public buildings often have wide, paved plazas and the attempt to create an open space for public gathering often created the opposite. Airiness became windsweptness. Paving welcoming one to walk across and approach ended up a harshness discouraging one from lingering. The mass and centrality of the building intended to be a marker for the people ended up an intimidating hulkingness encouraging them to flee from it.

Many of these problems stem from the neighborhood around city hall being destroyed.
 
Critical discussion about the BU law tower and City Hall would be a more appropriate topic — same era, style, and loved / hated depending on who you speak with (I’m in the “love” category which I’m sure surprises no one here). But BU did drastically improve the law tower with the addition and the improved outdoor areas within the last decade.

The BU data sciences building replaced a parking lot and a long demolished Burger King drive thru. Given the massive popularity it seems to be receiving among the student population, it’s a success as the intention of the layout was for cross functional collaboration. And this is just in the winter months before the improved outdoor areas (the alleyway, the “grove”, are put to use.
 
I’m curiously awaiting a rendering for the proposed Pardee school expansion building at central campus as it will be telling if BU continues to push the architectural envelope.
 
bdurden said:
I’m curiously awaiting a rendering for the proposed Pardee school expansion building at central campus as it will be telling if BU continues to push the architectural envelope.
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Pardee gets a new building while COM will be kicked out of its dumpy old building with no published plans for a new site.
 
TomOfBoston said:
Pardee gets a new building while COM will be kicked out of its dumpy old building with no published plans for a new site.
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That is a false statement. No school gets “kicked out” of a space. But I enjoy your misinformation campaign.
 
bdurden said:
Critical discussion about the BU law tower and City Hall would be a more appropriate topic — same era, style, and loved / hated depending on who you speak with (I’m in the “love” category which I’m sure surprises no one here). But BU did drastically improve the law tower with the addition and the improved outdoor areas within the last decade.

The BU data sciences building replaced a parking lot and a long demolished Burger King drive thru. Given the massive popularity it seems to be receiving among the student population, it’s a success as the intention of the layout was for cross functional collaboration. And this is just in the winter months before the improved outdoor areas (the alleyway, the “grove”, are put to use.
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I absolutely love the law tower and I think the contrast between the data science center and the law tower is really fun. I like how the BU campus has a proper spine from Kenmore nearly all the way to Packards!
 
RandomWalk said:
However, constructing this BU building didn’t involve leveling an entire neighborhood. Personally, I dislike City Hall, but I dislike the loss of Scollay Square and environs even more.
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Yep! And City Hall would be not even particularly horrendous if it weren't surrounded by a vast, windswept plaza devoid of life, shopping, or movement. If it were surrounded by neighboring buildings and had ground floor activation, it would feel like an odd, ugly duck, but not a problematic creation.
 
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