Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Foster and only Foster.....the rest are too gimmicky, too weird or dense at the base or just asking for the review process to strip them down to banality.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Agreed...only Foster. I'm not overly opposed to Cooke and Fox, but as rendered, the way the towers relate to the base and how the base looks like it relates to the street leave much to be desired.

Foster is magnificant in every way for Boston. It screams modern and sophisticated, yet it doesn't strive to be over-the-top which would run counter to Boston sensabilites. In a sense, the Foster tower is a modern day John Hancock (with the street presence considered) It is bold and forward thinking for the time, but also some sense of refinement.

Gensler belongs in an emerging Asian city that is trying to make a statement and has no contextual urban fabric to begin with, or possibly as an bio-outpost on Mars.

SOM belongs in Century City, LA.

OMA belongs in the back of a filing cabinet to never see the light of day.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

While the last design seems exceptionally cool and I'd be so happy if it gets approved without objection and expeditiously (like the Filenes development approval process), I am already so pessimistic about the nimbys dragging this on for 2-3 years and bastardizing the plans so that in the end the developers decide to abandon the project. It's a very common them in Boston, the worst city for development.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

And the winner is... CBT!
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

I agree about Foster's being the 'most suitable' and the classiest; the only question to me is that 'does it look too similar to the Millenium Towers downtown?'
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Beton - thank you so much for the photos!

I am going to withhold all judgment until I see a full set of clear renderings and models.

You have to give Raymond Properties credit for trying, but the complete lack of media coverage in the two dailies today screams volumes.

Everyone knows by now that none of this matters unless Boss Menino is dethroned.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

No need to be so pessimistic about the prospects...

if Menino turns away from a $2billion development that has solid and powerful backing in a time of economic stagnation.....he should be filleted

NIMBYs can't supress such a good project in such dour times
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

This is something I would definitely fight for.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

What are the hieghts of these towers?
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

You know what OMA's proposal reminds me of?

Tetris...

It is as if God just dumped a bunch of Tetris blocks onto downtown Boston.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

I'm sorry to say that the Koolhaas proposal looks to be the densest and most urban out of them all. No idea how the street level would work, but it looks promising.

The SOM proposal appears to be little more than generic glass and Alcobond junk that has less than zero street presence, and looks like it involves the same kind of cheap trash low-rise construction that has gone up at North Point.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Arborway said:
I'm sorry to say that the Koolhaas proposal looks to be the densest and most urban out of them all. No idea how the street level would work, but it looks promising.

The SOM proposal appears to be little more than generic glass and Alcobond junk that has less than zero street presence, and looks like it involves the same kind of cheap trash low-rise construction that has gone up at North Point.
Click to expand...

The problem with Koolhaas's proposal is that not only is it a box, it's a proposal with many boxes stacked on top of each other. We do not need any more boxes.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Do you think Koolhaas himself has given this proposal anything more than a cursory glance?
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

I've read people's thoughts on these proposals with great interest -- maybe I said too much about my own opinions, as we don't have proper renderings and site-plans to pass judgment (and I've no interest in being a taste-maker). Interestingly, the developers indicated that they didn't intend to put the renderings online at the project's website. I think there may be some value in emailing the project team and letting them know that the designs are actively being discussed and debated online.

I asked one of the project execs if they studied the San Francisco Transbay Project as they developed the RFP and worked with the competing firms; though they were very aware of that process, they seem more interested in what communities like ours have to say than a hand-picked jury of experts. That's why their decision to not display the proposals seemed a bit odd.

I did edit myself a bit as I was posting the renderings last night: because of the overall scale of the project (and present-state economics), it will likely be done in phases, so it is entirely possible that multiple firms will be involved in the project. I don't know how I feel about that. Could be cool, could be contrived and hokey, could be utterly sickening.

Keep talking, people...
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Still don't get the enthusiasm for the Foster. Why can't Boston have design on par with European or Asian cities? Why do we have to go with the "restraint" of Lord Foster of Thames Bank and the gurtel of corporate austerity that seems to hold back most of his work?

Doing something truly bold here would finally catapult the city over the notion that it still can't get over the traditionalist reactionism against 60s brutalism.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

We were never going to get some sort of iconic peacock...Just a world class professionaly designed building that is quasi-unique. The scope of this project sort of came out of left field...the easiest way to ge tsomething built is to not tread too far from the main line.

The garage at the aquarium would be a great spot for somehting truly iconic
 
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Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

CZ, it's not that we love Foster (I certainly think everything he draws are uninspired, recycled designs with new materials and the LEED label), it is that we are so pessimistic that anything grander would be never be approved, or it would be absolutely razed by NIMBYs. Cook and Fox is unbelievable, but if it were actually chosen to be built, I'd say we have a good chance the world is coming to an end.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

I'm all for doing anything to get the garage demolished, but the "let's just get it built" mentality on this forum is sometimes a bit obtuse. We'd be better off with a skyline that was nothing but the Custom House Tower than 99% of the boxes downtown. Peacocks aside, can't we root for quality over quantity, and not just (at best) both?

London, for example, seems to have adopted a policy of building only the most inspired towers. Boston's has always seemed like the opposite.

Oh well, may my beloved Gensler find a home on the south bank of the Thames.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Man, I don't know what you see in the Gensler proposal. It doesn't have form OR function.

My mentality (and what seems like the rest of the board) is that if we don't push our favorites now, the NIMBYs will soon swarm around SOM and defend it to the death, and we'll end up with another low-quality box.
 
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