Cambridge Infill and Small Developments

No, but it appears that at least some folks in the neighborhood want an alternative plan. That's why we're having this discussion.
 
MIT forum presents options for reshaping school’s eastern campus, Kendall Square

MIT’s campus around the Kendall Square T stop could sprout a lush green park and a half-dozen new buildings in the next two decades, according to an urban planning report the institute is readying to comply with a city zoning requirement.

This month, design consultants Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam presented the preliminary results of an East Campus Urban Design Study at a public forum. On Feb. 12, about a month later than scheduled, Scogin and Elam showed off three principal schemes for how buildings might look on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s campus east of Ames Street and south of Main Street one or two decades into the future as MIT adds 800,000 square feet of development. The schemes included not only the construction of buildings but the potential demolition or removal of some existing buildings.
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The article contains some interesting massing models as well.

http://www.cambridgeday.com/2014/02...haping-schools-eastern-campus-kendall-square/
 
Scheme C is a much more significant change – Eastgate would be demolished and the married students potentially relocated to dorm space in a building on the site of Cambridge Trust.

But, as a graduate student commented at a December forum, the Eastgate population is family housing, and particularly vulnerable: Many residents are spouses of students and can’t work because of immigration restrictions, and others cannot afford child care easily. The current Eastgate is relatively affordable, in part due to its age and quality compared with the rest of MIT’s graduate housing portfolio. New housing would necessarily be priced higher, and be difficult for many current inhabitants to afford.
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Makes plenty of sense. You have a housing crisis in one of the most expensive areas of the city, so lets demolish a high amount of affordable, funtional apartments with a small footprint as part of some "grander vision". :rolleyes: and diminish Cambridge's already puny skyline by eliminating one of it's few 300 footers (admittedly just my problem as a tower nerd, the loss of housing is more critical).

At least the architect agrees;


Russell said he was ”really pleased” that all the schemes focused around open space, and he favored heavily schemes A and B for buildings – “The loss of Eastgate is a major problem, because there’s a big price tag to replace all of those units,” he said – and Landscape Scheme B. Russell was critical of Landscape Scheme C, disliking its character.
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I'd love to see the Eastgate building redone in the same vein as the Courthouse or what they did to the LJB Apartments in Cambridgeport. Also, does anybody have further info on this project;


MIT says it expects to start construction with its market-rate residential extension to the One Broadway office building, dubbed ”Innovation Landing,” which includes a retail component that wraps around One Broadway to the Broad Canal. Innovation Landing was not a part of the study area, but Gallop said MIT needed to make sure it fit in with the rest of the plans.
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Mostly I'm wondering the proposed height (if that's been determined) and where exactly it's going in relation to the other buildings in the area. My guess is the surface behind the parking garage but that's kind of far for it to be the same address. Is it going up on top of the garage somehow?
 
pixelsand8 said:
Makes plenty of sense. You have a housing crisis in one of the most expensive areas of the city, so lets demolish a high amount of affordable, funtional apartments with a small footprint as part of some "grander vision". :rolleyes: and diminish Cambridge's already puny skyline by eliminating one of it's few 300 footers (admittedly just my problem as a tower nerd, the loss of housing is more critical).

At least the architect agrees;

I'd love to see the Eastgate building redone in the same vein as the Courthouse or what they did to the LJB Apartments in Cambridgeport. Also, does anybody have further info on this project;

Mostly I'm wondering the proposed height (if that's been determined) and where exactly it's going in relation to the other buildings in the area. My guess is the surface behind the parking garage but that's kind of far for it to be the same address. Is it going up on top of the garage somehow?
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Pixels -- My guess is that they will complete what was originally planned when the building was designed and built for Badger Construction in the 1970's. There was to be a 2nd tower on the other end of the parking garage. You can even see how it was to interface as the construction stopped and they never even finished the wall of the garage.
 
Unless Eastgate is falling apart, I don't see a compelling case for demolishing it.
 
I usually don't get on board with the greenspace and landscaping plans, but this side of the campus really needs it.

I went over there for some lunchtime reading, and it was awful. The whole open space in the Stata - Green Bldg. area is painful. Lots of open space, but nothing inviting about it. Lack of trees and good places to sit and enjoy the outdoors. Basically I was hoping for something closer to what is available at Harvard (I know the yard won't be replicated), or even over at Northeastern. MIT just seems to be built to keep everyone indoors. Makes me think that its plan is reinforce stereotypes about the super smart elites who study there. No social skills, so stay in the lab and study.
 
The next Lechmere Square

Even a tentative closing date for the current Lechmere station renews questions about what will become of its 72,000 square feet afterward. Development rights are held by HYM Investments – also one the partners developing the 44-acre NorthPoint neighborhood.

A vision for the space released in October 2009 by the East Cambridge Planning Team’s Lechmere Square Working Group included a 12-story hotel; a commercial building of up to four stories, with retail or restaurant space at ground level; and between those a plaza and year-round, 30-stall public market under a refurbished T garage roof. The city’s Community Development Department released a feasibility study in August 2010 that called it “an idea worthy of continued support” for an estimated daytime population of 100,362 people.

Tom Palmer, a publicist working with HYM, said the company saw the Lechmere space as being primarily residential, although a public market could be incorporated as it has been at Haymarket, the so-called Parcel 9 in Boston.

“The market is still a possibility,” he said Tuesday.
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http://www.cambridgeday.com/2014/02...-for-lechmere-public-market-idea-still-alive/
 
SeamusMcFly said:
I usually don't get on board with the greenspace and landscaping plans, but this side of the campus really needs it.

I went over there for some lunchtime reading, and it was awful. The whole open space in the Stata - Green Bldg. area is painful. Lots of open space, but nothing inviting about it. Lack of trees and good places to sit and enjoy the outdoors. Basically I was hoping for something closer to what is available at Harvard (I know the yard won't be replicated), or even over at Northeastern. MIT just seems to be built to keep everyone indoors. Makes me think that its plan is reinforce stereotypes about the super smart elites who study there. No social skills, so stay in the lab and study.
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Seamus -- MIT layout was designed and constructed to allow maximum flexibility of the lab, classroom and office space over time and also to encourage maximum interaction of people in the intersecting corridors -- leading to cross fertilization of ideas and projects

This and the Vanevar Bush-era creation of multidisciplinary laboratories such as the Research Laboratory of Electronics has been eminently successful

Hahhhhvd on the other hand with the Yaaaaahd and its individual mostly small buildings encourages neither -- so as a result the more modern parts of HU more resemble MIT than they do clones of the Yaahhhd
 
Makes plenty of sense. You have a housing crisis in one of the most expensive areas of the city, so lets demolish a high amount of affordable, funtional apartments with a small footprint as part of some "grander vision". :rolleyes: and diminish Cambridge's already puny skyline by eliminating one of it's few 300 footers (admittedly just my problem as a tower nerd, the loss of housing is more critical).
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Couldn't agree more. Planning in places like Cambridge is too influenced by touchy, feely utopianism that translates poorly to the real world. It's outright lunacy to seriously propose demolishing a 30(?) story tower to accomplish what exactly? Remove a building that some extremists think is oppressively tall? It's a very important existing resource that's home to hundreds of people but let them be displaced anyway because of dysfunctional ideology.

And there's too much open space proposed here, way too much. It's a faux environmentalism wasting land that should be occupied by, in one of the world's most important research hot spots, facilities that can improve the lives of people everywhere.
 
whighlander said:
Seamus -- MIT layout was designed and constructed to allow maximum flexibility of the lab, classroom and office space over time and also to encourage maximum interaction of people in the intersecting corridors -- leading to cross fertilization of ideas and projects

This and the Vanevar Bush-era creation of multidisciplinary laboratories such as the Research Laboratory of Electronics has been eminently successful

Hahhhhvd on the other hand with the Yaaaaahd and its individual mostly small buildings encourages neither -- so as a result the more modern parts of HU more resemble MIT than they do clones of the Yaahhhd
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I understand why it was done. I only say it's an awful urban campus. Major fail in that direction which is being a good neighbor and encouraging the overall growth and interweaving of the campus with the surrounding neighborhood (yes they have been a great neighbor by pumping the area full of new startups, bit brains, and big loot).

The Yard encourages interaction, just outside. MIT attempts to encourage interaction indoors, but I think mainly encourages the introverted nature of the students to continue and become more so (I spend a lot of times in labs and see that my thoughts come to fruition with the final product of these students...). They treat it as a business with the students as the employees as opposed to introducing them to the big wide world as one might expect from an institution of higher learning, they are introducing them to the world of MIT and future technologies. Ultimately I guess that's what the tuition is for.

Obviously it works for them. I just hate how it interacts with the rest of Kendall, and find it a cold, uninviting campus that is a very bad example of urban design and development.
 
SeamusMcFly said:
I understand why it was done. I only say it's an awful urban campus. Major fail in that direction which is being a good neighbor and encouraging the overall growth and interweaving of the campus with the surrounding neighborhood (yes they have been a great neighbor by pumping the area full of new startups, bit brains, and big loot).

The Yard encourages interaction, just outside. MIT attempts to encourage interaction indoors, but I think mainly encourages the introverted nature of the students to continue and become more so (I spend a lot of times in labs and see that my thoughts come to fruition with the final product of these students...). They treat it as a business with the students as the employees as opposed to introducing them to the big wide world as one might expect from an institution of higher learning, they are introducing them to the world of MIT and future technologies. Ultimately I guess that's what the tuition is for.

Obviously it works for them. I just hate how it interacts with the rest of Kendall, and find it a cold, uninviting campus that is a very bad example of urban design and development.
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I fully agree with you Seamus.

And not to beat a dead horse, but the difference between the lively street life (and night life) around Harvard and the dead street and nightlife around MIT is ......repeat after me....ground floor retail/restaurants.

The solution is quite simple. Build street levels that INVITE humanoids, not repel them.
 
Horrible picture, but this is on Pacific St (the new building is in the background, between Sidney and Brookline).
 
There is a new crane in East Cambridge that I believe is for the apartments at 22 Water Street. I have a few photos to post but am having problems since they updated Image Shack. I cannot get them to post as before.
 
v6inV1Y.jpg
 
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