Fenway Center (One Kenmore) | Turnpike Parcel 7, Beacon Street | Fenway

Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

Where are you getting that this doesn't fully cover the Pike? What might be taken as empty space over the Pike is actually the parking garage, I think...

At some point we're going to have to recognize that sometimes people need to build actual buildings, not produce fawned-over architect's renderings. These buildings look fine. They got approved. Not everything can be designed by the starchitects you guys idolize so much.

Will this project as currently designed, replace a wind tunnel and sunken highway with a street wall and ground-level retail? Will it make my walk from Kenmore T to Fenway for the game a little more pleasant. Yes. Therefore, I am happy.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

Carlos Zapata IS a starchitect. And these buildings stink.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

Equilibria said:
Where are you getting that this doesn't fully cover the Pike?
Click to expand...

kenmore2.jpg
 
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Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

Zapata may be, but this project was probably more designed by others in his studio. The real "visionary projects" - the TransBay Towers and WTC complexes - are designed (overall) by the guys themselves. I may have an inaccurate impression of how these things work, but that's my take.

A trifling point, though. My issue is not that people don't like how these buildings look, but that the standard complaint seems to be "you could have done so much more." If you find these buildings ugly, then fine. Everyone has their own tastes. I'm tired, however, of hearing how boring every new development looks.

If every new development was 'cool', Boston would become Dubai. In the real world, we typically have to sacrifice the cool factor (which to my taste usually translates to ugly) in the name of building anything at all. Frankly, I don't really find that unfortunate.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

I think the main problem seems to be isn't that it looks 'uncool' but rather that it looks 'anti-urban'.

Who knows, maybe they will somehow dress up the ground level to be somehow urban, but based on these renderings you can't deny it look like a typical suburban office park. (Its mostly the HUGE, unarticulated foot prints that give it away.)
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

'Boring' is usually OK -- most buildings should be background buildings. 'Ugly' should be avoided, though.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

By definition, not all buildings can be the most important.

The most important should be flashy and exhibitionistic, like both State Houses and City Hall. The rest can be content with what the undiscerning might call "boring", like a North End tenement.

In centuries past, important buildings were termed "high architecture", and low architecture was generally not done by architects at all; a builder was enough. So architects were all more or less artists.

These days, the state requires an architect's seal even on loading dock canopies, along with row houses and McDonald's.

Though even these can in theory be finely-detailed and well-proportioned, that usually costs money and is nixed by the client.

When no-talents presume to boost their unimportant commissions into the realm of the exhibitionistic and flashy, true ugliness rears its head in the form of pretension. One Post Office Square and the Transportation Building are examples, with their flashy cantilevers.

And it also happens when an unimportant building is too plain or cheaply detailed, like most public housing or the brick garage at the Public Garden end of Newbury Street.

A little ornament helps in such cases, though you often can't get it by whoever is paying the bills, because without doubt it bumps the cost.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

ablarc said:
kenmore2.jpg
Click to expand...

Are you talking about the bottom? Because that's a different parcel, that may not even be for sale because of the way mountfort street slopes
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

Other than that Route 128 office building on the lower right, it really isn't that bad. I hope that the ground floor space glass can open to the street and plaza. But without an Obama stimulator, I don't see this getting built because the market is demanding this square footage.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

I don't know. I think the middle one would blend in quite well on 128 as well. Maybe a little tall but not enough to really stick out.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

Yeah, I see what you mean. Maybe they could do a little Chubbie Checker on that one too.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

Here's another, slightly different rendering. From the cover of this week's Courant:

Fenway_center_courant.jpg
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

Full headline:
Finally! An Office Park To Call Our Own!
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

I'd cover much of it with electric signs.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

And then hope the signs start an electric fire and burn the place down?
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

I like the glass tower alot
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

It fits perfectly with BU's new buildings, if anything it's better than anything BU has built along the pike
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

Call up Mr. Fairey. This is repulsive.
 
Re: Fenway Center (One Kenmore, Mass Turnpike PARCEL 7)

briv said:
Here's another, slightly different rendering. From the cover of this week's Courant:

Fenway_center_courant.jpg
Click to expand...
They should have just gone taller on the back two and skipped the 1st one all together! Or just stuck to the 2 original 36 story towers
 
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