kz's Photos from Various Skyscrapers

[ablarc]

This view makes me aware that Rowe's Wharf's out-of-town designers must have been inspired by Batterymarch's mighty arch. (Never made the connection before.)

 

[ablarc]

What a truly boring lineup of buildings.




World class mediocrity on display from the home of two of the world's premier universities --both with architecture schools and planning departments.

 

[ablarc]

Brutalism at its best.

 

[ablarc]

Philip Johnson's idea of a joke.

(Some others: AT&T/Sony, Lipstick Building.)


Humor doesn't work too well in architecture. How many times can you be amused by the same joke?

.

 

[kz1000ps]

Is this perhaps the city's best square?

Probably. I'm highly partial to Liberty Square for its coziness, but Post Office Square (Park) is a close second, not to mention the true heart of the 9-to-5 city. I just wish there was a bit more pizazz in the architecture surrounding it (just a little bit more), but the park easily makes up for that. Seriously, that park is just sublime.

 

[ablarc]

I just wish there was a bit more pizazz in the architecture surrounding it (just a little bit more), but the park easily makes up for that. Seriously, that park is just sublime.

Agreed.

Partly that's because spatially it's almost fully contained --like Siena or San Marco.

It needs a definitive campanile. Will the Winthrop Square skyscraper partly fill the need? Oh, I guess it's too far away.

That stupid Jung/Brannen skyscraper on the square at Milk Street could have played the role if it weren't so incompetent and if it were a whole lot taller. It'd be nice to replace that with something taller and better.

 

[statler]

Is this perhaps the city's best square.

I love this park as well, but as I walk through it daily I often wonder:
If this board was around when this park was proposed how many posters would have been tearing their hair out, screaming about how the city doesn't need another park. The Common is so close! This would be the perfect place for an 800+ footer!, etc..

This is why you'll often hear refrains of, "Wait, let see how it turns out..."

 

[ablarc]

I love this park as well, but as I walk through it daily I often wonder:
If this board was around when this park was proposed how many posters would have been tearing their hair out, screaming about how the city doesn't need another park. The Common is so close! This would be the perfect place for an 800+ footer!, etc..

Not this poster. Any thinking person who'd been on the roof of the Post Office Square garage could see that here was Boston's best unrealized park.

See the Greenway thread for partial elaboration.

 

[chumbolly]

Is this perhaps the city's best square?

What a place this would be to emerge from the subway.

I think so, yes, but looking at this picture, it makes me realize that there is virtually no ground-floor retail at all in PO Square except for one dingy CVS and the cafe in the park. Perhaps retail isn't necessary?
Here are some haphazard ideas--the old Federal Reserve, now Langham Hotel, should put a restaurant with outdoor seating out front. The sidewalk is plenty wide. One Post Office Square should throw open it's lobby with something, anything. Perhaps, given the tony location, some obnoxious golf store, or better yet, a stable selling polo ponies (the smell would blend in with the reek of horse urine that already befouls that corner, I think from the tourist carriages). Get the Post Office to install a street level branch in the Post Office building open to the street. The now shuttered Post Office branch, because it was hidden inside a building containing courthouses, meant that to buy a stamp one would have to get Homeland Securitied. Lastly, and I can't believe I'm writing this, get Verizon to open a mobile phone store in the Bell Telephone building. Actually, scratch that, that building shouldn't be touched.

 

[chumbolly]

What a truly boring lineup of buildings.




World class mediocrity on display from the home of two of the world's premier universities --both with architecture schools and planning departments.

Actually, I've always liked that power plant.

 

[chumbolly]

Is this perhaps the city's best square?

What a place this would be to emerge from the subway.

That little patch of astroturf on the roof in the foreground is hilarious. To think, I could pay FitCorp money to walk around in circles on fake grass (mind the HVAC!), or I could walk around one of the best downtowns in America for free. Maybe I'm just a cheap bastard....

 

[ablarc]

Actually, I've always liked that power plant.

Power plant as architectural standout. Raw function trumps architects' best efforts. Actually, this happens often: Battersea and Bankside, London; East River, New York; Charles River, Cambridge. Has that last one been converted to some other use?

 

[FastLane]

That's the Mirant Kendall Power Plant. Began service in 1949.
http://www.mirant.com/our_business/where_we_work/kendall.htm

 

[Ron Newman]

formerly Cambridge Electric, definitely still in operation.

 

[ablarc]

Sorry, I meant the one at the Western Avenue Bridge. Is that one operating as a power plant?

 

[ablarc]

I'm highly partial to Liberty Square for its coziness...

...and the Appleton Building does it no harm either. An eloquent essay on scale. Agreed: understated though this may be --and beneath most folks' radar-- this may be Boston's finest single urban moment. Atmospheric as hell on a Hopper Sunday morning.

 

[FastLane]

^^ The plant on Western Ave and Memorial drive is a Harvard owned steam plant that supplies heat to 80% of Harvard buildings through a 10 mile system of tunnels.
Interestingly, part of the plant is being turned into affordable housing in a deal that allowed Harvard to build across the street.

Also as part of the deal that allowed this construction project to move forward, Harvard agreed to build and turn over to the city, after all the building permits it needed were in hand, 34 units of affordable housing in a nearby former industrial building that is part of the Harvard-owned Blackstone power plant just across Western Avenue..

Here's some history of the Blackstone plant.

I never knew there were so many power plants in Cambridge! That makes at least three if you include the nuke on Mass Ave and Albany St. that MIT runs as a research reactor.

 

[kz1000ps]

Today, floor 21, 222 Berkeley, one of the most stunning views I've captured thus far. You step off the elevator and you see all of downtown laid out like in the first photo -- very very impressive!

 

[KentXie]

Philip Johnson's idea of a joke.

(Some others: AT&T/Sony, Lipstick Building.)


Humor doesn't work too well in architecture. How many times can you be amused by the same joke?

.

I have to disagree. I think International Place is actually i pretty well design complex. It certainly differs from most cylindrical towers and the windows has a very unique design to it. Plus I love that glass strip that comes down on a side of each tower. The top of the shorter tower also makes it look more interesting.

 

[czsz]

Post Office Square perfect? It's bereft with problems. The traffic sewers on either side. The ridiculous pastoralist landscaping, which attempts to create an "escape" for the city in far too small a space (squares of this size should embrace urban bustle, not fence, or in this case, shrub it out). The lack of reason for anyone to be there save a lunching office worker on a sunny day. The consequent lack of diversity among those populating it, and its deadness any other time of day - and in cooler seasons. The monotony (if well-framing) of the architecture, particularly at sidewalk level. I wonder how long until its primary function (bag lunch garden for cube farmers) is supplanted by the infamous Greenway, the limitations of which are not too dissimilar.

Copley is fully enclosed and already has its campanile - Hancock. The architecture is better, the uses more diverse, and the foot traffic more regular, to boot. It actually feels like a hub. POSq (perhaps I should abbreviate it POX) feels like an afterthought...which it is.