One Post Office Square Makeover and Expansion | Financial District

[bren924]

From 1/19

 

[Gunner02]

This building is a sneakyyy 511'. No height has been added to this project,correct? Not even on mechanicals. The top has a newly erected mechanical frame. I wasn't sure if it added any marginal height at all.

 

[shmessy]

THIS may actually work. I'm not a fan of the over-glassification/square cornered architecture proliferating in Boston.

However, this - - because of the neighboring context - could work out very well. The glass on this building will be a very welcome change from the styles of the buidings surrounding Post Ofiice Square, and I think this will offer a welcomed new flavor to the box. Kind of like the filling in a jelly donut. Glass works best not as the norm, but as a change of pace. Glass buildings don't work well at all in some parts of the Seaport where they are all in a row of coldness.

The glass building that negatively concerns me right now is Raffles, which is about to start rising - - right across the street from its hulking big brother glass building - the John Hancock. I think it may turn out to be a "Mini Me" situation there.

But Bren924's pictures of One Post Office Square above are striking to me. The glass on this building are a wonderful change of pace to the Square. THIS is how it works best.

 

[whighlander]

THIS may actually work. I'm not a fan of the over-glassification/square cornered architecture proliferating in Boston.

However, this - - because of the neighboring context - could work out very well. The glass on this building will be a very welcome change from the styles of the buidings surrounding Post Ofiice Square, and I think this will offer a welcomed new flavor to the box. Kind of like the filling in a jelly donut. Glass works best not as the norm, but as a change of pace. Glass buildings don't work well at all in some parts of the Seaport where they are all in a row of coldness.

The glass building that negatively concerns me right now is Raffles, which is about to start rising - - right across the street from its hulking big brother glass building - the John Hancock. I think it may turn out to be a "Mini Me" situation there.

But Bren924's pictures of One Post Office Square above are striking to me. The glass on this building are a wonderful change of pace to the Square. THIS is how it works best.

shmessy -- During the daytime -- Glass on the outside of a building is only interesting in the context of what you can see reflected from it -- and that depends on the ambient lighting and the surroundings as well as the angle from which you are seeing whatever
A lot of glass buildings in Boston work well because of the other buildings, church steeples, etc. which are nearby -- the paradigm being 200 Clarendon which because of the acute angle facing Copley provides a fantastic panorama
KSq is starting to be very glassy-genic because of the angles between the planes of the cladding.

I think Raffles and 200 Clarendon will have an interesting optical relationship

The reclad PO Sq doesn't have any glassy neighbors with whom to play hall of mirrors

 

[Boston02124]

 

[JumboBuc]

No height has been added to this project,correct? Not even on mechanicals. The top has a newly erected mechanical frame. I wasn't sure if it added any marginal height at all.

I truly could not care less about height for height’s sake, but the new frame on top of this does rise another 2 floors above the old roof.

 

[Boston02124]

 

[stick n move]

I truly could not care less about height for height’s sake, but the new frame on top of this does rise another 2 floors above the old roof.

That was VE’d out.

This

To this

Unfortunately the “crown thing” was removed, exact same height as before.

 

[JumboBuc]

That was VE’d out.

This

To this

Unfortunately the “crown thing” was removed, exact same height as before.

That two story penthouse--even the VE'd version--is still new. I look across at the roof of this building from my office and I can see the new steel frame that was added on top of the old roof.

 

[type001]

^Same here. I can confirm that this is already higher than the original roof.

 

[stick n move]

I stand corrected, I thought it was VE’d back down to original size.

 

[TomOfBoston]

I prefer the original façade.

 

[DZH22]

2/5 from Charlestown

IMG_6525 by David Z, on Flickr

 

[Jahvon09]

The one that they should've re-facaded is the Pru Tower. Would've went nice with the new obs decks!!

 

[DZH22]

2/5 from Somerville

IMG_6582 by David Z, on Flickr

IMG_6611 by David Z, on Flickr

IMG_6612 by David Z, on Flickr

 

[whighlander]

The one that they should've re-facaded is the Pru Tower. Would've went nice with the new obs decks!!

Jahvon -- Yes that would be a nice "gedanken experiment" -- but how would you pay for it
PO Sq is replacing parking garage with more office space -- not just recladding
You can't do that with the Pru Tower -- recladding would just add cost -- no obvious way to recover that cost

 

[DZH22]

From 2/5

IMG_6682 by David Z, on Flickr

 

[stick n move]

I hope if the pru is ever reclad that it gets a similar facade to the original. Up close its really intricate and a style that Ive never seen anywhere else. We all know if it was reclad it would just become a blue glass box, do we really want that? I dont.

With the inevitable glass Id hope we could at least get something interesting on the lines of 300 n lasalle in chicago. Its glass but they added this metal lattice to the facade that gives it some nice texture vs just plain glass. It would look similar to the original facade but new.

-Anyways back on topic, looking at the renders above its kinda crazy how theres going to be an office floor in the penthouse box thing in the very top floor of the tower. Kinda weird because thats where the mechanicals usually go, but theres just a thin roofline above the top floor. Not sure how that works, it must be the angle and theres gonna be a mech box on the roof thats not as wide as the floor below or something.

 

[JeffDowntown]

I hope if the pru is ever reclad that it gets a similar facade to the original. Up close its really intricate and a style that Ive never seen anywhere else. We all know if it was reclad it would just become a blue glass box, do we really want that? I dont.

With the inevitable glass Id hope we could at least get something interesting on the lines of 300 n lasalle in chicago. Its glass but they added this metal lattice to the facade that gives it some nice texture vs just plain glass. It would look similar to the original facade but new.

-Anyways back on topic, looking at the renders above its kinda crazy how theres going to be an office floor in the penthouse box thing in the very top floor of the tower. Kinda weird because thats where the mechanicals usually go, but theres just a thin roofline above the top floor. Not sure how that works, it must be the angle and theres gonna be a mech box on the roof thats not as wide as the floor below or something.

You raised an interesting question about the penthouse office. I am assuming a penthouse office suite is supposed to be a premium location. Would you really want an office located right next to all the building mechanicals? That has to be noisy, or am I missing something about modern chillers?

 

[bigpicture7]

You raised an interesting question about the penthouse office. I am assuming a penthouse office suite is supposed to be a premium location. Would you really want an office located right next to all the building mechanicals? That has to be noisy, or am I missing something about modern chillers?

Valid question. I don't know enough about this particular building to answer it directly, but there are several general answers that relate to what you ask.

First, do we even know that the mechanicals are going to be near/at the top of this particular tower? (I am sure the plans are somewhere, but I don't have time to look for them). Many older (e.g., pre-21st century sustainability movement) towers situated their mechanicals elsewhere, or distributed them by segments of the tower. Examples abound in Boston, such as Harbor Towers having all their systems in the adjacent garage. Even One International Place doesn't appear to have all its mechanicals at the roof. Consolidating all of the mechanicals at/near roof has been a prevalent design option for a long time, but its shift to being a universal approach is relatively recent, coupled with the concept of not putting any of them in basements for resiliency reasons.

Modern a/c condenser systems are, counterintuitively to some, much larger than legacy systems. The substantial improvements in efficiency actually corresponded to size increases: a huge ass heat exchanger is much more efficient than a compact heat exchanger, all else equal. However, there are other benefits despite the heft. They are often quieter and generate less vibration. Especially gravity fed water exchangers can be (relatively speaking) very quiet.

But perhaps the most relevant point is that we've come a long, long way in vibration damping and sound isolation. It can get expensive, but it's not inconceivable that a substantial mechanical system could be located very close to occupied space with the sound/vibration being barely noticeable. This must surely be the case at Millenium Tower, where a ton of mechanicals sit just above the $30M penthouse. A thick floor, coupled with everything sitting on properly tuned isolators, plus lots of insulation and thick/multi-paned glazing should do the trick. The nice thing about vibration generated by rotating machinery is that it can be very precisely tuned out by frequency. When we experience that not being done well, it's usually just that someone didn't spend the $$ to do it right.