Kenmore Square North (WHOOP) | 533-541 Commonwealth Ave | Fenway

Given that the precast panels are joined together as cheaply as a Lincoln Logs assemblage, clearly our only hope here is that we are in some kind of wormhole to an alternate universe, and that this "project" is actually the product of a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man-sized toddler, who was given a colossal Lincoln Logs set to play with by its Brobdingnagian parents. Hopefully said gargantuan child soon suffers a meltdown and smashes the set--but with zero loss of life or surrounding property/infrastructure damage, and the wormhole closes immediately after, teleporting the colossal beings back to whatever Lovecraftian scenario they belong in.

(seriously, though, if the question hasn't been asked in this thread yet, which piece of *architecture* has inflicted the worse injury on Kenmore--this or Hotel Commonwealth? Check out this exquisitely detailed architectural review-essay, which I just found, that describes just what a hideous fiasco the Hotel Commonwealth was.

I guess the question is: would you rather have excruciatingly bland, dull, monotonous--or horribly garish, schizoid pastiche?)
 
Yesterday @ Fenway was the longest set of time I've ever gotten to (balefully) stare at the thing. I see it frequently enough...but up to this point always from a distant viewpoint walking around on the other side of the river or walking around the center of BU campus...or craning neck extremely briefly while driving through the Square. None of those vantage points offer any true appreciation of just how awful it is.

I swear to god it looks like they substituted a cardboard cutout for where a building should go...and that the cardboard got all wet and mushy in the rain until it started slowly disintegrating at the individual fiber level. It looks like it could keel over and pancake on itself in the slightest breeze. Absolutely no depth, no presence to it whatsoever. Hollow abyss-filled windows. Total antimatter massing amid the Square.

I'll underscore what so many others have said: it is so much worse up close and in-person than the online pics could ever do justice to.
 
I swear to god it looks like they substituted a cardboard cutout for where a building should go...and that the cardboard got all wet and mushy in the rain until it started slowly disintegrating at the individual fiber level. It looks like it could keel over and pancake on itself in the slightest breeze. Absolutely no depth, no presence to it whatsoever. Hollow abyss-filled windows. Total antimatter massing amid the Square.

That's giving them too much credit - a wet cardboard building would have more interesting features than this...
 
With the up-close look yesterday, I find the windows way more objectionable than the "brick" panel cladding and the proctology lab-sample color selection. That might be the je nais se quois element that the online pics miss vs. being there in-person that make it look so much worse in-person vs. in-photo. Yesterday high-noon it was just about the sunniest it's been all year in Boston...and those giant windows were just soul-destroying black voids in spite of it all. No reflection, no ray angulature. No shadow effects from the 'finned' sides of the building. No glare effect whatsoever from what cheap toothpicks pass as dividers for the panes. *Just* enough general reflection that you can tell that there are actual panes of glass in there...but absolute anti-distinction in every other aspect. The windows being so extremely big relative to all else in the building but so extremely anti-charm just makes the whole structure seem paper-thin. That cardboard-cutout vibe I alluded to earlier. Or...as others have alluded...great big parking garage stink vibes on the single most nationally-ID'able street corner in all of Boston (as if it were, like, a sealed climate-controlled garage just for EV's). The windows are totally what makes the whole dev anti-work...the broth of the whole shit-soup being served up, so to speak.

I can't recall any building with windows that uniformly big that didn't do *some* sort of window treatment for reflecting the light, playing with sun/shadow angles, something. Nope...it's just (per prior post) the soul-sucking "void(s) that stare back." I took lots of great shots of the Boston skyline from the street-facing balconies of Fenway during the tour...and the sun just *dazzled* all over the city. Against the structures both grand and mediocre. Except here. Singularly except here. Total unrelenting "dead eyes" look with those windows.

And I can't imagine it's going to get any better once it's occupied, as all you're going to see instead is static office furniture and people near-motionlessly working in their cubes. Not even anything remotely eye-catching. Like...I vividly remember the floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor of one of the storefronts Hotel Commonwealth nuked on the other side of the Square, where the fitness gym and Blaine beauty school were housed. You could catch, while waiting for a crosswalk signal to turn green, a sense of motion from the folks on treadmills and the beauty students doing up a client subject in the hairdresser chairs...and it made for interesting people watching in that moment. What the hell is the equivalent here...some desk jockey talking into a phone with one hand, trying to eat a brown-bag lunch with the other, while being harrangued by a hovering supervisor standing next to the wall??? Void that stares back indeed!


Just a fractally dissatisfying monument to shit.
 
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Oh no, the iconic Citgo sign is going to be partially blocked. The horror.
 
I also hate the way that the silly angling of the window bays actually flatten out the corner of the streets and make the building look like a flat blob trying to attract attention to itself. Only it's the wrong kind of attention. This is one of those buildings that will look better in a swirling blizzard that cuts visibility down to 2 feet. I wonder of the architects and owners have bothered to wonder if they made a huge error in judgment.
 
Total unrelenting "dead eyes" look with those windows.

"You know the thing about 533 Commonwealth Ave? It's got lifeless eyes; black eyes... like a doll's eyes. When 533 Commonwealth comes at ya, it doesn't seem to be living... until it bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white..."

[with apologies to Captain Quint and his USS Indianapolis sinking-related PTSD]
 

aB probably doesn't draw many arborists, but if anyone can explain why it is that prominent Boston streets are blessed with an overabundance of puny little trees that are always 1/3 struggling, 1/3 dying and 1/3 dead I'd really appreciate it. For me the very best thing about the BPL renovation was the awesome trees they planted out front. If they can do it there why not in other prominent streetscapes? It may be expensive, but it's worth it.
 
I also hate the way that the silly angling of the window bays actually flatten out the corner of the streets and make the building look like a flat blob trying to attract attention to itself. Only it's the wrong kind of attention. This is one of those buildings that will look better in a swirling blizzard that cuts visibility down to 2 feet. I wonder of the architects and owners have bothered to wonder if they made a huge error in judgment. Worse even than the Transportation Building in Park Sq. I always hated the proportion of brick to trim and the unrelenting boredom of design....even the atrium ended up feeling like a subway station.
 
Every time I see activity in this thread I wonder which building it is because the name is so odd to me. Aside from the north side of Comm Ave, what makes this building Kenmore Square North?

Also, the bike lane being gone for construction is extremely annoying.
 
Whoops...There it is...Whoops...Laugh-a-lotta...Laugh-a-lotta...Laught-a-lotta
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I can't get over how Saran Wrappy those windows look. I don't know if it's the glass itself or the size of them, but they look so cheap and so thin.
 
aB probably doesn't draw many arborists, but if anyone can explain why it is that prominent Boston streets are blessed with an overabundance of puny little trees that are always 1/3 struggling, 1/3 dying and 1/3 dead I'd really appreciate it. For me the very best thing about the BPL renovation was the awesome trees they planted out front. If they can do it there why not in other prominent streetscapes? It may be expensive, but it's worth it.
Xec: I agree completely and have been following the fate of Boston trees for 5 decades. The streets of Boston and beyond used to be covered in American Elms and and many Black Walnut trees. We all know what happed to those. Bugs and fungus killed them off and denuded many of Boston's residential neighborhoods, the ?Common, and certainly nearly all suburban main streets. Then was a time when Linden trees were the rage (the kind at the Christian Science Center). They could be trimmed and were very hearty against winters and salt and smelled great in the spring. But they gave off tons of sap (all over cars parked under them) and were prone to a terrible fungus. Then came the great London Plane Tree efforts (the kind that used to grow in Copley Square and along the street of Govt. Center). They had a short life due to mildew disease and also dropped a lot of messy leaves. Good-bye Plane trees. Then there was the Bradford Pear Tree phase, which were hearty and flowering, small and compact. But they were discovered to be invasive, non-native to NE, smelled poopy when blooming, cross-pollinated with other species, and an environmental problem. Good-bye pears. Then the Locust tree phase (as seen in Quincy Market). These grow very large, have small leaves that are more manageable to sweep up, and resist pollution. But they seem to be better suited for off-street planting where the branches can spread without having to be pruned back. And of course we can't forget the huge efforts made by Menino to plant street trees all over the city. I watched as openings were dug in all the sidewalks and many of the holes never got a tree. Sidewalks were often too narrow and trees robbed people of easy access. And then about half of the new trees that actually got planted were put in the shade of buildings and were not happy.

Narrow streets/sidewalks, snow, ice, salt, lack of water, impaction of the tiny earthen areas around roots, vandalism, trucks breaking branches, and leaf accumulation in gutters and sidewalks (causing a slipping hazard)...this and more have conspired to kill Boston's street trees before they get a chance to thrive. Oddly enough if you look at old pics of downtown, aside from the Common and Public Garden and parks around the city, there were very few, if any trees on the sidewalks and streets. (Whoever came up with the idea to put trees in front of Faneuil Hall didn't think ahead to when they would get large, block the view, and attract lots of pooping birds. Now they are all gone, cut down ignominiously through the years. And don't get me started with the use of rounded cobble stones as a great pavement for walkers!).

The idea for street/plaza trees, IMO, came about in part as a way of making large, open plazas more acceptable to the public, as many newer buildings manipulated the system to build tall by creating useless voids around their base (aside of lunch time crowds in good weather who hangs around these plazas, that often have no where nice to sit and have been marred by the grease used by skateboarders?) I'd rather have no trees along most streets and just have sidewalks that aren't tripping hazards. Beacon hill has done just fine. The Back Bay's residential streets are an exception. But not every section of commercial Boston can look like the Back Bay.
 
^^ Cambridge doesn't seem to have this problem and has areas that are very similar.
 

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