Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.
First-off, it was more of a display than a meeting or presentation; there were about a hundred people, and the crowd turned over (I arrived at 6:30).
The renderings were up on stands and there were models. I chatted up a few of the project people and some of the locals. People are interested in seeing this go forward. Only one person (of maybe twenty I spoke with) was opposed to the idea of replacing the garage with something in line with these proposals.
They didn't want folks taking pictures so I had to be a bit surreptitious. I took a ton of pix, but not all are winners. I was unable to shoot the models, only the renderings.
So here goes:
Cook & Fox
In interesting design, strongly influenced by
Norman Foster's design for WTC2. The street-level (not visible in the photo) seems to need work. I don't hate it, but it needs some work.
Gensler
Not too shabby. Reminds me both of the
proposed tower for Copley Square, as well as Zaha Hadid's unbuilt proposal for the
NYC 2012 Olympic Village in Queens. Another Alvar Aalto vase, inside a fishnet stocking.
Office of Metropolitan Architecture (Rem Koolhaas)
Koolhaas and his team are always hit or miss with me. This is a miss.
S.O.M.
Another disapointment.
SOM's proposal for Transbay in San Francisco was breathtaking. This looks like they didn't even try.
It's a design in four gestures:
- Two Modernist towers that look disturbingly similar to the JFK Building (contextualism?);
- A boot-shaped geode (Koolhaas) with random windows (Machado + Silvetti);
- A hokey ground-plane running up the facades of the low-rises;
- Gausey space-frame atria
Rubbish. Dismissed.
Foster & Partners
Well thought out (not the best rendering). Circulation and the public realm look pretty good. Boston could have its own
Barad-dur and
Isengard. My pick.