BU Development Thread

odurandina said:
What the hell is that supposed to be?

If that's a render, it scores a 0.00001 on a scale of 0.00 to 10.00.

Dead on arrival @ BCDC.
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First, let me stand with BU in supporting a tall and "remarkable", "iconic" building to bring these departments under one commingling roof. But let's support "remarkable" and "iconic" as a POSITIVE, not negatively remarkable and iconic.

This is just godawful and misanthropic. And those diagonal red slats are like shields to block the windows. Just put up curtains or walls if you want to make it ugly and barricade-like. It is passive-aggressive fortressing.

If a building could be arrested for urinating in a public place, this would be it.
 
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Well, that certainly makes a statement. Not sure what else to say, other than please, please, let this be a massing model only, and preferably one that is ultimately rejected. It has no place directly across the street from the neo-gothic College of Arts and Science.
 
Fuking YIKES is all I have to say. It looks like a weird parking garage.
 
I dig it and hope it's built as rendered. Do any of us prefer the anodyne artifacts of the Silber-era? Lugubrious brick PoMo wedding cakes? Architecture for authoritarian stuffed shirts? No thanks...

The program deserves an imaginative and challenging high-tech building. It's a "machine" building, where the design implicitly and explicitly participates in the activities it houses. It looks how it is - transparent, orderly, intelligent, and a bit confrontational.

And in terms of raw aesthetics, (other than scale) is this any great departure from the new-minted Booth Theatre?
 
If this was going up in any other city, you'd be crying 'why can't we buildings like that'.

It is directly across from the commie block Warren Towers, and doesn't involve tear down of anything, so why not be bold or weird? It plays vertically against the horizontal jumbled blocks of the Law building and Mugar Library and Sherman Union, acting as an eastern counterweight to that. It's about time BU did something beyond Silber-era conservative PoMo, and shows the Booth Theatre wasn't a one off fluke.

Perhaps the new science complex at NEU is making competitor schools up the ante with bold designs, and that is something we should celebrate.
 
All right BU. If Silber would hate it (and he would loathe this) then it must be doing something right. And this gets a lot right.
 
I love the idea of great architecture, bold design in Boston. This, however, is bizarrely generic. If it weren't for the red fins it could be anywhere there is nothing that relates to Boston, to BU, to Comm Ave--and this is worst at the ground level. The tower is super internalize and self-referential but designing the base of the building to look like a parking garage is just not good design.

Bos77 said:
If this was going up in any other city, you'd be crying 'why can't we buildings like that'.

It is directly across from the commie block Warren Towers, and doesn't involve tear down of anything, so why not be bold or weird? It plays vertically against the horizontal jumbled blocks of the Law building and Mugar Library and Sherman Union, acting as an eastern counterweight to that. It's about time BU did something beyond Silber-era conservative PoMo, and shows the Booth Theater wasn't a one off fluke.

Perhaps the new science complex at NEU is making competitor schools up the ante with bold designs, and that is something we should celebrate.
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i feared you would like this.....

:)


cjbski said:
I don't hate it....
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well, there's actually (1) building that resembles something that might be built in the City of Boston.

http://www.kpmb.com/project/manitoba-hydro-place/

Beton Brut said:
Do any of us prefer the anodyne artifacts of the Silber-era?
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God no.

Beton Brut said:
The program deserves an imaginative and challenging high-tech building.
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And this ain't it.

Beton Brut said:
It looks how it is - transparent, orderly, intelligent....
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huh??

Beton Brut said:
a bit confrontational.
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There's confrontational.... and there's sticking up your middle finger to every pickup truck with gun racks and smokestacks in Western PA and not expecting blowback.
 
Interesting. But I would suggest that the ICA was built with almost no built context. It was floating in a sea of parking lots and Anthony's Pier 4. And the design responds to the context that was there--the very water oriented design. And the neighborhood that has grown up around it is also very new and bulky and glass so it fits right in.

Another argument could be that the brutalist/heroic movement of the 1960s and 70s was acontextual (excepting City Hall). And I love a lot of these buildings and think they add to the richness of the city, many of them try to make a relationship to the weird new streets around them, or to create spaces for people. Yes, they don't always work and they haven't been maintained but the design intention was there.

The BU building, by contrast, is in the middle of a well established area that happens to be a university campus embedded in the city. I don't think they should be building some sort of weird stacked rowhouse thing or another monster disaster like the Questrom building. But at the ground level where people will interact with it, and people who aren't students, it needs a lot of work. It's not doing anything for the city other than being big and bulky--Why is pulled back so far at the ground level to create expanses of concrete sidewalk?

Why can't it be cool and unusual and placemaking? BU apparently has the money and the president wants his phallic symbol on the skyline. Fantastic. That doesn't happen that often so it's a great opportunity. Now make it a great building.

My bet is this will be built exactly as shown unless the landscape architect actually gets involved and they fix the ground level. And honestly, that's about all we can hope for these days. (Looking at you, Hub on Causeway office tower).

Beton Brut said:
Your assertion reminded me that this scheme shares some DNA with one of Boston's most popular and acclaimed pieces of contemporary architecture.
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It makes me wonder if they're trying to accomplish more space than its lot or height, and somehow arrived at this abysmal creature that i wouldn't wish on Pyongyang...... Just build it tall/sexy a/r. If it needs to go 28 stories, go 28 stories. ...... If you want confrontational try some type of attractive curtain wall, like onyx or some attractive JHT style mirrored glass.
 
estyle said:
I don't think they should be building some sort of weird stacked rowhouse thing or another monster disaster like the Questrom building.
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Questrom was peak Silber reactionary, a gigantic historicist brick wart. From the Cambridge side of the Charles it is overwhelming in size. There could be some moderating of the tower cantilevers so they jut out a bit less but something bold like this will take a lot of the sting out of Questrom.
 
datadyne007 said:
KPMB is better than this. I liked their Concordia University tower in Montreal:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BIPrcG5BBl3/
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That is actually a 3 building complex at Concordia: 2 new buildings and a recladding of a third done by KPMB. It is very impressive but is in what had been a bleak corner of downtown Montréal. BTW Concordia is "the other" English university in Montréal.
 
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