Forgive me for backtracking here - forgive me if you folks have spent pages arguing about this hundreds of pages ago; when I originally joined ArchBoston, I did my best to scan through and read the more engaging discussions.
I know full well we're pretty much stuck with the design and I can appreciate the fact that we're getting some considerable height added to our skyline. However, I feel like I'm the only one who cannot celebrate this tower's design on height, building material quality, and similarity to a glass prism alone.
I've recently fallen behind on following the thread and coincidentally came across the original designs for One Franklin before the retrospective posts on here. TBH, Millennium Tower still irks me for its missed opportunity at architectural and human scale contribution to the streetscape at DTX.
This rendering may show the hyper-realistic glow of the activities inside, but in reality, if the podium glass is going to be as highly reflective, smooth and consistent as the mock, it will be adding little texture to the building at the scale that matters.
For its architectural 'zaniness' and 'schizophrenia', I very much appreciated how the podium of One Franklin made the building better reflect its varied neighbours and in turn brought scale and a respectful architectural 'echo' to the Burnham Building.
As I was walking from my office to Fanueil Hall for the Boston Bikes Update, I remembered another building that irks me for what feels like a lazy and irreverent interface of modern glass curtainwall and historical preservation:
Exchange Place
Someone walk me off the edge of my soapbox if everyone's already metered their expectations for this building and the enthusiasm is mainly over the fact that
something is happening. Sometimes I feel like we're throwing a ticker tape parade in here over a sadly (architecturally) underwhelming building that is just filling the void and will be something tall to look at...
