MIT.nano | Kendall Square | Cambridge

BeeLine said:
https://flic.kr/p/GX2KNh
Click to expand...

Thanks for the great photos, as always.

I work near this and can attest that the materials and finishes are just top notch. At quick glance it may look like a glass box, but it's just really well executed. I think it's one of the prettier glass curtainwalls that's gone up this cycle...you know how most residential buildings have some visible wavey-ness to the glass from certain angles? There's none of that here...the glass seems to be exceptionally high quality and the embedded black gridlines are a really nice touch (it's unusual to have the black gridlines but yet have a totally smooth outer surface). The masonry materials and other finishes are great too.

Kudos to the designers all around.
 
bigpicture7 said:
Thanks for the great photos, as always.

I work near this and can attest that the materials and finishes are just top notch. At quick glance it may look like a glass box, but it's just really well executed. I think it's one of the prettier glass curtainwalls that's gone up this cycle...you know how most residential buildings have some visible wavey-ness to the glass from certain angles? There's none of that here...the glass seems to be exceptionally high quality and the embedded black gridlines are a really nice touch (it's unusual to have the black gridlines but yet have a totally smooth outer surface). The masonry materials and other finishes are great too.

Kudos to the designers all around.
Click to expand...


I think it is a testament to good design that my only complaint is that I wish there were more sight-lines to be able to see it or I wish the surrounding and attached buildings looked nearly as good.
 
bigpicture7 said:
At quick glance it may look like a glass box, but it's just really well executed. I think it's one of the prettier glass curtainwalls that's gone up this cycle...
Click to expand...

I've only seen it in pictures, but I'd say the quality is obvious. The overall design language, if not massing, is quite similar to Novartis' 2007 building on Mass Ave just across from their new campus, and it too benefited from high quality materials and execution. More of this, please.

26963435108_6711ca54db_b.jpg
 
I don’t think the new power plant is really part of the nanotechnology complex. Is there a separate thread for that project?
 
What's the rationale for the power plant in the center of campus? Those generally tend to be a hidden on-the-side building, as far as I'm concerned. Just your typical engineer practicality>aesthetics thinking?
 
Well, when the campus was originally laid out the physical plant was out in the industrial hinterlands, and it's only over time that that spot has turned into more of a main drag. One would have to assume they're looked into moving it, so it would seem adding onto it makes the most sense for the next 20+ years.

So there it stays, a legacy of the first master plan. This shows it in 1916, when the campus was neatly divided between academic, recreation, housing and service:

42863149534_52b8f551e7_b.jpg
 


For me, the most amazing feature about BeeLine’s photo was not of the building itself but what was going on inside the building in terms of MIT’s human activity! It encapsulates everything about MIT and Kendall Square!
 
Here is an intro on why one of the reason these science buildings get high quality facades. Think of it this way:

The building with all of its systems and interior fit out is already a building at around $500/sf if not more in the case of the nano building. If you think that the exterior skin of these buildings are something like 1% of the buildings cost, there is no need to ever think of VE of the exterior of the building as having any serious budget impact. Thus ... institutional (and some commercial) research/lab facilities tend to have better exteriors. Some of that is to protect the investment (high quality unitize curtain wall is a waterproof swiss watch) but the exterior of this buildings is seen as an acceptable way of expressing the value contained within.

Commercial Buildings like office buildings are almost completely shell and core costs so if you want to drop $500,000 out of the budget, you go right to the facade. How many times we have heard "no one will every see the difference between this glass and that glass, no one!" Well ... come over to AB ... that is who.

cca
 
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