Rose Kennedy Greenway

Yeah, it looks pretty active to me.

Robert Campbell did a long series on how other cities' projects ought to influence the design of the Greenway...I'm sure it's in this thread somewhere. His advice was not followed.
 
Boston Globe - April 8, 2009
Museum-market building proposed alongside Greenway
Focus would be on state's history - along with food

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Cambridge Seven Associates was selected to design the proposed five-floor museum and marketplace building. (The Boston Museum)

Executives of Boston Museum, a nonprofit group, are bidding to build a five-story, 100,000-square-foot glass and terra cotta facility on a sliver of land at the corner of Blackstone and North streets. The ground floor would be reserved for a food market, while the top four floors would contain exhibits focused on Massachusetts history. There would also be a gift shop, cafe, theater, and classroom and community space. "It's important for the city to evolve and give people reasons to come back," said Frank Keefe, chief executive of Boston Museum. "This will be a great educational institution to expand tourism and help school kids become literate about local history."

The museum would house five galleries with interactive exhibits focused on different themes throughout the state's 400-year history: innovation, politics, sports, growth and development, and people and immigration.

The building was designed by Cambridge Seven Associates.

The organization filed its development plan yesterday with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which owns the property and is seeking proposals from developers. Boston Museum's proposal is the first to become public. A winner will not be selected for several months.

A spokesman for the Turnpike Authority declined to comment.

If selected, Boston Museum's plan would be part of a broader effort by city officials to create a district focused on Boston's history, arts, and cuisine.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority is also backing plans for a food market in a vacant office building next to the proposed museum site.

"The vision is to have indoor and outdoor market uses like Pike Place Market in Seattle," said the BRA's chief planner, Kairos Shen, referring to the successful food-and-culture district in that city.

The museum and market building would operate alongside the Haymarket pushcart vendors, who sell produce and seafood on Blackstone Street on weekends.

Keefe said the building would be fitted with large awnings to help protect the pushcart vendors from the weather and would seek to create a synergy between indoor and outdoor food stands.

"It would be more like the intimate food markets one sees all over Europe," he said. "We think we can create that setting in Boston."

Representatives of the Haymarket Pushcart Association, which represents the weekend street vendors, could not be reached for comment late yesterday.

The Boston Museum organization was founded in 1998 and has been searching for a site for several years. It was selected to build a museum near Christopher Columbus Park in the North End, but never moved forward with construction.

Keefe said the group now wants to build at Blackstone and North, with a footbridge connecting the new building to Columbus Park.

At the earliest, construction of the museum and market building would be completed in 2014.

Casey Ross can be reached at cross@globe.com.
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The C7 project page with more renderings. (The Bobby Orr thing is more creepy than cool.)
 
I liked the rendering in the Globe?the head is very chic?.though the body seems to lack purpose or unity?.is it just a mall or a more meaningful and ambitious museum?

The location is also an issue. You don?t want this type of building to blend in with the neighborhood?you want it to stand out. The glass does it's job but then....

I looked at the other renderings on the C7 website and saw the other side of the building and instantly thought wtf?!

Too much terra cotta!

?why do they have to contextualize this building to such a degree? That huge t.c. wall instantly ages the building 15 years?.they throw in some slabs of glass so it isn?t overly monotonous but it doesn?t work. It is still too bland and blended. The building from that angle does not rise out of its location.

I mean are there no other options for that side?? I assume it's because of the parcel being so close to another building that they decided to go that route but it really needs a design change?.

On the all glass side?hopefully there is an LED system?I dunno if they are depicting one at the top of the structure?.

Overall I like the design but really dislike the terra cotta. The entire envelope should be as seamless and transparent as possible?.

I am also not against some Boston-New England themed art-ornamentation for the outside to help give the building some real identity. Either on the envelope itself or aroud it....It definetely can be done without being schlocky...

And one last thought....WHY THE HELL WOULD THIS TAKE SO LONG TO BUILD??? 2014? Are you kidding me??
 
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The building from that angle does not rise out of its location.
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That's because the windows are situated horizontally, rather than vertically. Probably makes for a better experience inside but kills the outside.
 
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I think it's a handsome project...I just hope it gets built. Raising money for such an initiative wil not be easy in this economic climate.
 
Nice building, but Jesus Christ, MARKETS EVERYWHERE! Is this further proof of the "Farmers Markets Are Voter Crack" Theory?
 
What do you guys think about the footbridge? You can see it in the last rendering - I think that parcel, the one with the interstate highway ramps, really needs this. To me, the series of median strips will never be a singular anything until the parcels that are blocked are somehow opened up.
 
pelhamhall said:
What do you guys think about the footbridge? You can see it in the last rendering - I think that parcel, the one with the interstate highway ramps, really needs this. To me, the series of median strips will never be a singular anything until the parcels that are blocked are somehow opened up.
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The Calatrava in Miliwaukee does a good job with that...our building doesn't have to be as nice obviously but the bridge should try to be just as 'dramatic'....

MilwaukeeArtMuseum-01.jpg
 
Mmm...Calatrava. When is he going to do a Boston project?
 
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Keefe is the Commonwealth Hotel Keefe, remeber that fiasco was caused by a faulty paint chip.
 
When is the YMCA supposed to start construction? I haven't heard anything about it in a while.
 
pelhamhall said:
What do you guys think about the footbridge? You can see it in the last rendering - I think that parcel, the one with the interstate highway ramps, really needs this. To me, the series of median strips will never be a singular anything until the parcels that are blocked are somehow opened up.
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I think the bridge idea is interesting, but I wish it was taken a bit further -- like attempting to address the bad connections with the N. End Park parcel and doing a little more with the actual bridge parcel.

Here's another view of that bridge. At its highest point it's only a few feet above the ground, just enough to clear traffic on the ramp below:

boston_museum_bridge.jpg
 
I have to say that based on the renderings on C7A's website, this would be one of the best new buildings in Boston. (Doubtful that reality will match the renderings, but one can dream.)

Sorry, Bubbybu, but I think that glass facing the Greenway and a combination of masonry and glass on the Blackstone side is entirely appropriate, and would ultimately be more dramatic than an unrepentant glass box. The city needs to clean up and better open some of the cobblestone alleys that meander through the Blackstone block.

As for uses, an actual market here would be the best possible solution; Faneuil Hall is touristy crap, and Haymarket is in shambles. With all of the slow-food or organic and locally grown food movements running rampant, one would think that Boston could sustain one dedicated food market.

Presumably the city museum is the only way to finance a market building.

I'm not really sure that the footbridge does much in terms of useful circulation, but it looks like it would be a nice icon and would be a good way to draw attention away from the vehicular-oriented nature of the ramp parcel.

Love it.
 
I've never been a huge C7 fan but I think this could be really nice. At night it will light up the park and add a visual energy that will be more attractive than just some brick or glass office building.

Personally though I think they should scrap that bridge all together and build something over the ramps. This side of the parks desperately needs to be defined, otherwise it will continue to have a highway median strip feel to it.
 
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