Mixed Use Complex | 345 Harrison Ave | South End

This project reminds me of Beverly+Victor+Avenir. It's like you took all the new stuff in the Bulfinch Triangle and smashed it up into one project.

Hopefully the street level is better.
 
https://flic.kr/p/Zq3CjV

https://flic.kr/p/21HJV6h

https://flic.kr/p/21Kkgjj


[url=https://flic.kr/p/GRzfPi]https://flic.kr/p/GRzfPi

26795996159_fd537fff51_b.jpg
[/url]https://flic.kr/p/GPSu6M
 
Last edited:
Gotta agree with you here... there's no reason the south end blocks right next to downtown should be 150', master plan be damned.
 
It'd like the hybrid offspring of the McAllen building and The Victor
 
The façade looks like a pile of leftovers. There's no coherence to it, and the proportions feel really, really off to me.
 
Wow, this is so awkward looking.
 
I'm going to make a couple of disclaimers:

1. We need projects of this (and all) scales to fill in the city and add density, and I'm appreciative of that.
2. I understand the economic drivers which force megablocks upon all of us, and the challenge this poses for designers trying to bring human scale to outsized massing. It's not easy.
3. Taken together, I accept that this building is happening because of (1) and (2).

HOWEVER, this is ugly in ways I'm struggling to articulate. Take the glazing.I count in the last photo alone at least 3 different kinds, with different levels of reflectivity and color, and framing (though the assembly might be similar). The only relationship they have to each other is that they're different enough to "break up the massing", which we talk about a lot here and which I imagine is the architect's primary design goal. It's just lazy here.

There are too many other things to even name, but I'll call your attention to one more thing I find irksome here and in general. Look in Drew's photo, at the corner where the orange panels meet the brick veneer. That flat surface application of brick gives me fits whenever I see it. They couldn't have returned the brick even a couple of courses around the corner to give it the illusion of proper depth? The world we live in now is one of veneer and curtain facade assemblies, and in most ways that matter, we're better for it. I'm not complaining that it's not an old-fashioned masonry wall. But you'd think it's still an architect's job to think about the way people think about materials and expect them to work. You don't expect a brick wall to be one wythe thin at this scale; it's something that only happens once a designer can just click-apply a texture in a computer program. It's what happens when they didn't pay attention in school, and don't care about delivering a meaningful architecture anymore. And you can tell because of the slap-dash application of materials everywhere else on this thing that they aren't doing it thoughtfully, or playfully. Someone just thought, purely in elevation, that brick would look good on that surface and that was the end of the thought.

Sorry to go on a rant, and sorry to leave out the colors of those panels, the angles with no reasoning, the failure to consider how any one element meets any other all over the place, but this just sucks from a purely exterior perspective.
 
Call me crazy, but I don't find this as visually offensive as the rest of you. Except those orange panels. Why does anyone think orange is going to look good?
 
i agree. something i hate? 888 Boylston.... the back side of the Yotel (that faces toward the general direction of Congress St).

& the windows popping out at the Bullfinch Triangle residences.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top