Lovejoy Wharf - Hoffman Building | 160 North Washington Street | West End

If I'm not mistaken, Calatrava studied with the Zakim's designer, Swiss engineer Christian Menn.

Most of the exhibited sketches concern a project that preoccupied Menn in the late 1970s: the Ganter Bridge on the Simplon Pass road in the Swiss Canton of Valais. The professional and academic world was fascinated with the innovative suspended box-girder in concrete. At the time Calatrava was completing his last semester with Menn , and being an architect as well as an engineer, began to experiment with the forms his professor had designed. Although he did not voice his opinion out loud, he discerned more potential in the new idea than Menn had realized, and he sketched a series of variants, some simple and some fantastic to prove his point. Calatrava showed these to his mentor, who was intrigued.

That year the International Association of Bridge and Structural Engineers celebrated its 50th anniversary with two events, a symposium in Zurich in the fall of 1979 and an international congress in Vienna the following spring. Menn gave a talk on his new bridge at the symposium to a packed audience. In the back of the hall stood the students, assistants, and lecturers of the ETH, Calatrava among them, together with a few celebrated professionals. All were enthusiastic about the project, when surprisingly Menn paused to tell the audience that a ‘young architect’ had played with his idea and come up with series of interesting variants that he wanted to share with his listeners. He then proceeded to project slides of Calatrava’s sketches to the astonishment of the audience.
http://www.luag.org/pages/viewfull.cfm?ElementID=342
 
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They should hang some art up on that segment.
Or hire a street artist. Or just put up a sign that says "Graffiti me, please, but tastefully."
 
Love it - also, they've started to do some dramatic colored uplighting of the full facade at night, will try to get a pic someday....
 
has this been posted before? I don't remember the tower looking this way?
 
That's adaptive reuse done right.

Nice to see a historic and well architected building moving into its 2nd century

circa 1900 - 1915 -- the building was the original R&D and factory of Submarine Signal [still there arched above the doorway] -- corporate HQ was on State St.
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One of the original High Tech companies created by Reginald Fessenden a true technological genius -- for example the Fessenden Fathometer
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has this been posted before? I don't remember the tower looking this way?

I know that I've personally seen two different renders for the residential portion of this project, neither of which is this one. This looks sort of like an amalgamation of the two that have been posted here before. Looking forward to seeing a final set of renders though, and then watching it rise!
 
Went and checked out the new harbor walkway at Lovejoy Wharf. Also went in and saw how crazy you can go with custom Chucks at the Converse store. Interesting offering.

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Nice pics, Adam. Seems like a few benches along the new walkways on Lovejoy Wharf would be a nice addition.
 
This is my favorite new development. GREAT urban planning.

Now let's see them finish the job and put in benches/restaurants/water taxis, etc. for actually bringing people to this great walking space.

Wouldn't it be great for folks along the North Shore/Lynn/Revere to completely skip the traffic and hop water taxis to Bruins/Celtics games?
 
Beautiful renovation/addition and outdoor space, but nothing says "We should have invested in tree gators" like at least 5 totally dead trees in your new park, all without any sort of direct watering system in place.

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When were they planted? I havent seen anyone talking about it, but there really was a tree massacre this year. Ive never seen so many dead ones.

I blame the idiotic and dangerous levels of salt and chemicals used to clean roads. The problem in out society is we insist on having blacktop immediately after getting 30 inches, rather than allowing a thing, usable layer of snow to remain.
 
A company controlled by Related sold 160 North Washington, today, for $150,000,001. This is the Converse building. 131 Beverly is, as far as I know, still in Related's hands, since it's currently under construction.

Edit: Related LJW Acquisition Company purchased the building for $11,250,000 in 2012. North Washington Wharf Co bought it for $17,250,000 in 2004, which means it either lost value b/w 2004 and 2012 or there may have been differences in land/building sizes.
 

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