Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

I shared it before, but idk how they first changed the building to look like this.
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Which is nothing spectacular, but is also a pretty acceptable background building, and then changed it again into the final superturd configuration. One congress is pretty clearly the star of the show here, why throw up a jumbled disaster right at its door step at the last minute?

Background and filler buildings get a lot of hate on architectural forums, but theres definitely a lot of skill required to create something that seamlessly blends into the color pallette and architectural fabric of a city, disappearing in plain view to allow the better buildings to stand out. Its why Dubai’s sheikh zayed road supertalls look like a bag of ass, with every tower screaming look at me, and why nyc’s skyline which arguably has 1000 times more “shitty” filler buildings than Dubai is arguably the best skyline on earth.

Those hundreds of crappy 1950’s brick and concrete towers are anonymous, the correct color/shape etc, and dont try too hard to stand out. The net effect is they create a general white noise that is soft and disarming that allows appropriately crafted spikes in the noise to shine through. This building takes all of that and throws it in the trash. Building this thing directly against the greenway is like placing a permanent trash bin directly in the best sight line of the empire state building, blocking it from view. Its ridiculous. I agree that if they cant get it right the city should take it and build a park.
Maybe it's just me, but the curviness of the building itself and also the wavy surface design (on the current iteration) is what bothers me the most. Just make a decent building with square edges, a straight alignment, some interesting setbacks, and some understated variety to its surfaces, and it would unoffensively fit into its context pretty well.
 
It's the most massive and uninteresting facade for (dare I say) miles. Why can't lab buildings in downtown look better? Even Bell Telephone buildings tried harder with windows and detail.

Why do we need lab buildings directly downtown at all?! Can't fit enough into Kendall, Seaport, North Point, Fenway, South End, Longwood, Assembly, Union, Suffolk Downs, and Fort Point that we need to also blow the most prime parcels in the city for these?
 
Why do we need lab buildings directly downtown at all?! Can't fit enough into Kendall, Seaport, North Point, Fenway, South End, Longwood, Assembly, Union, Suffolk Downs, and Fort Point that we need to also blow the most prime parcels in the city for these?

Can't secure funding for offices right now and the city (well whole regions really) is hell bent against building residential.
 
Permanent. A lot fewer spaces than the original garage obviously, but there will still be a garage.
 
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A Salute to Aerial Bombardment?
Y'see.... it looks like this part of my city has been bombed,

If HYM isn't going to take this crap pile down with any purpose or priority, they might as well spin its' continued omnipresence into something else. So.... art exhibit?

How about a big banner that says "WHOOPSIEDOODLE!"
Or a face-palm emoji.
Or a big middle finger.
Or "Were leaving this here until you apologize"

How long was Vornado allowed to leave the hole in DTC where One Franklin is now? This is heading for the same type of thing. Like HYM comes out tomorrow and says it's going to need tax breaks or some other crap -- or they keep this thing in place.... you know, like blackmail?
 

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