MassDOT Pike Parcels 12 - 15 | Boylston St. and Mass. Ave | Back Bay

I'm obviously biased by my location, but I feel like Boston needs to show it's Brazilian colors more. Greater Boston/Eastern Massachusetts has the largest population of Brazilians in the world (even moreso than Florida), yet you'd never know it in the city of Boston. You can find the influence in Allston, Somerville, Framingham, etc. but there's very little influence downtown outside of people working in kitchens, etc.

This would be a perfect place for a balada/dance bar...something that focuses on Brazilian style music & food. The food is incredible (and perfect for social situations) and the music, as you'd expect from a Latin culture, is great for dancing regardless of whether it's sertaneja, samba/pagode, funk (though some funk makes you want to rip your ears off), whatever--it's all really cool.

It would certainly break out of the mold of what Boston normally offers.
 
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choo said:
^cafe 939.

although more good live music spots are always welcome.
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IMO you can never have enough live music spots in the city, and this is doubly true here considering one of the world's premier music schools is across the street.
 
Guys, let's be realistic; it's a new construction building in a major downtown area. We'll be lucky if we get anything other than an ATM and a corporate bar.
 
tmac9wr said:
I'm obviously biased by my location, but I feel like Boston needs to show it's Brazilian colors more. Greater Boston/Eastern Massachusetts has the largest population of Brazilians in the world (even moreso than Florida), yet you'd never know it in the city of Boston. You can find the influence in Allston, Somerville, Framingham, etc. but there's very little influence downtown outside of people working in kitchens, etc.

This would be a perfect place for a balada/dance bar...something that focuses on Brazilian style music & food. The food is incredible (and perfect for social situations) and the music, as you'd expect from a Latin culture, is great for dancing regardless of whether it's sertaneja, samba/pagode, funk (though some funk makes you want to rip your ears off), whatever--it's all really cool.

It would certainly break out of the mold of what Boston normally offers.
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I've been to brazil a few times and was there for the world cup. Brazilian culture is fantastic and the food is absolutely amazing. I've been missing the food lately. I'd love this.
 
coleslaw said:
I've been to brazil a few times and was there for the world cup. Brazilian culture is fantastic and the food is absolutely amazing. I've been missing the food lately. I'd love this.
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I'm in Rio at the moment (Carioca girlfriend brought me for my birthday) so I'm especially liking this suggestion. When I first came to Brazil 30 years ago (god, I'm old), I loved the tiny, self-contained pocket counters set up everywhere where you could get a shot of espresso for 25-cents and a cappuccino for 50. In the back of my mind, I thought this would be a great idea for the right US city: small "pod" cafes that only needed basic utilities run by a generator (this was before food trucks) that were produced en masse (by my calculations in 1987 dollars, they would cost about $3000 to fabricate) that could be sprinkled throughout city parks to both lend an air of civility as well as much needed amenities to most of our parks (3 pods in various parts of the Fens, for instance, would do a lot to create a more "public" sense of space). The pods would be equipped with great espresso machines (of course) but also sell decent baguettes (made off-site but delivered to pods every hour from 6 to 8am). I even had a name: Pow! (a play on the Portuguese word for bread, pão). :) They'd operate from 6am to 6pm for people wanting fresh baguette for breakfast either early in the morning or buy one on the way home from the office for the following morning.

Forgive this complete and utter tangent, but your and tmac9wr's comments (and the 3 caipirinhas I just had in Ipanema a couple hours ago...sorry, yeah, I'm rubbing it in ;)) reminded me of the fact that we all need a little more Brazil in our lives.
 
Oasis in Medford for those craving Brazilian food.

Man, this thread has really gone awry...
 
Tombstoner said:
I'm in Rio at the moment (Carioca girlfriend brought me for my birthday) so I'm especially liking this suggestion. When I first came to Brazil 30 years ago (god, I'm old), I loved the tiny, self-contained pocket counters set up everywhere where you could get a shot of espresso for 25-cents and a cappuccino for 50. In the back of my mind, I thought this would be a great idea for the right US city: small "pod" cafes that only needed basic utilities run by a generator (this was before food trucks) that were produced en masse (by my calculations in 1987 dollars, they would cost about $3000 to fabricate) that could be sprinkled throughout city parks to both lend an air of civility as well as much needed amenities to most of our parks (3 pods in various parts of the Fens, for instance, would do a lot to create a more "public" sense of space). The pods would be equipped with great espresso machines (of course) but also sell decent baguettes (made off-site but delivered to pods every hour from 6 to 8am). I even had a name: Pow! (a play on the Portuguese word for bread, pão). :) They'd operate from 6am to 6pm for people wanting fresh baguette for breakfast either early in the morning or buy one on the way home from the office for the following morning.

Forgive this complete and utter tangent, but your and tmac9wr's comments (and the 3 caipirinhas I just had in Ipanema a couple hours ago...sorry, yeah, I'm rubbing it in ;)) reminded me of the fact that we all need a little more Brazil in our lives.
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I love it! The only problem with using the name "pow!" as a play on pão, is that the pronunciation of "pow" is the same as pau, which means....ahem....dick. Haha

P.S. Let me know if you make it to São Paulo...I'll buy you a caipirinha!
 
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tmac9wr said:
I love it! The only problem with using the name "pow!" as a play on pão, is that the pronunciation of "pow" is the same as pau, which means....ahem....dick. Haha

P.S. Let me know if you make it to São Paulo...I'll buy you a caipirinha!
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Well... it would be selling baguettes so maybe the association works on both levels. :D

Unfortunately am headed back to Fenway tomorrow night, or I'd take you up on the caipirinha (though cariocas think paulista caipirinhas are a waste of perfectly good limes...) ;)

And to get us back on track: Berklee has such great Brazilian music programming, it would make sense that there could be a kind of dance and performance space for samba/forro. Deft, não é?
 
Tombstoner said:
Well... it would be selling baguettes so maybe the association works on both levels. :D
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That's true too! Either way, it'd be good, quick food.

Unfortunately am headed back to Fenway tomorrow night, or I'd take you up on the caipirinha (though cariocas think paulista caipirinhas are a waste of perfectly good limes...) ;)
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Ah that's too bad! That caipirinhas are nice here, but the cariocas have the built in advantage of being able to drink them on the beach haha. It's definitely a nice beach drink, though if you're not paying attention to the speed you're drinking them, you can get yourself into some trouble (spoken from experience).

And to get us back on track: Berklee has such great Brazilian music programming, it would make sense that there could be a kind of dance and performance space for samba/forro. Deft, não é?
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That would definitely make sense...everything about this works. When do we break ground on the archBoston restaurante brasileiro?
 
Hutchison said:
No news, but I stumbled across the power point presentation on this and it includes a fair amount of information and number of renderings I hadn't seen before.

http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/f73ac3f5-c112-48e3-8e2e-439ffd98cacd
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Bless you, that pdf is a treasure trove. There's tons of contextual diagrams in there. Does anyone know if, to take just one example, the height for 888 Boylston (on page 22) is correct? 345 feet is nothing to sneeze at.

As to the three proposals, BRG all the way for me. (Though the rendering of the Viola from Boylston, across the street from the firehouse, looks awfully nice.)
 
GW said:
Does anyone know if, to take just one example, the height for 888 Boylston (on page 22) is correct? 345 feet is nothing to sneeze at.
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If you look closely at page 22 you will see a number of mistakes. For instance, Avalon Exeter is not 365'. Also, the 699' Four Seasons is only drawn to about 400'.

888, as drawn, is clearly much shorter than the nearby Sheraton, which stands at 310'. I would take this whole page with a grain of salt.

Interestingly, it lists the newly built Berklee dorm at 199', the first height figure I have seen for this building. Again though, grain of salt.
 
Boston Residential Group (#3) leads the pack for me, too. Followed by Handel Architects (#2). It's time Boston started getting more consistently architecturally interesting buildings, and Trinity's proposal (#1) is just boring as hell.
 
timsox6 said:
Boston Residential Group (#3) leads the pack for me, too. Followed by Handel Architects (#2). It's time Boston started getting more consistently architecturally interesting buildings, and Trinity's proposal (#1) is just boring as hell.
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All of the designs are abusive and overbearing in how they relate to the old Police Substation (now Dillion's) & the Fire House / Architectural College

Those historic Boylston buildings along with the old Tower Records building on the corner of Newbury and Mass Ave need to be protected and isolated from the mass of the new construction

Handel does the best in the renders and perhaps after the excellent Burnham / Tower work and if chosen Handel will make further modifications to the east facade and the street near to the 1-story

The best approach would be to wrap the tower front and east side in glass and recess it from the Eastern edge by about 1 bay with the whole thing sitting on a 2 story glass podium where the current Boylston T entrance is located

I do however think that BRG has the best overall massing and the circular corner structure is novel

Seriously disappointed in Trinity as they have the best local experience that is relevant to the project
 
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