Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

AmericanFolkLegend said:
Didn't you hear??? Mission Accomplished!
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Great to have a memorial, but an obelisk and reflecting pools? Jeez, seems pretty bound-and-determined to be overlookable. Boston so badly needs significant sculpture and/or fountains. This looks very bargain-basement.
 
The greenway has a fountain but it is certainly not monumental in scale . I agree, with all the open space here on the waterfront they certainly had the room for a significant fountain such as Buckingham Fountain in Chicago.
 
Not to minimize any military deaths during a war, but the number of Massachusetts men and women who have died in Afghanistan/Iraq is small compared to other conflicts. In the Civil War, 14,000 from Massachusetts died, nearly 1 in 10 of those who filled the ranks. For them, a monumental Saint Gaudens on less than a thousand (?) square feet.

Done properly, memorials should evoke reflective and contemplative feelings about sacrifice. This park, while very nice, does neither.
 
The greenway has a fountain but it is certainly not monumental in scale . I agree, with all the open space here on the waterfront they certainly had the room for a significant fountain such as Buckingham Fountain in Chicago.
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I couldn't agree more. I have been lamenting for some time the lack of fountains in the emerging district. At least this park will have what looks like a decent water feature, but a monumental fountain of some sort would be a terrific amenity. Given the park space already there and proposed, there are plenty of opportunities. Hopefully a future proposal will incorporate one.

stellarfun said:
Done properly, memorials should evoke reflective and contemplative feelings about sacrifice. This park, while very nice, does neither.
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Not quite sure how you can tell from these renderings that the park will not evoke reflective and contemplative feelings about sacrifice. I think it will depend in large part upon the details.
 
I think the Brewer Fountain in the Common is the best fountain in Boston followed closely by the City Square Park fountain. After that there's a huge drop off.
 
The Ring Fountain, the PO Square Fountain, and the Christopher Columbus Park Fountain aren't exactly slouches.
 
Most of the fountains maintained by the city run dry after a few years due to neglect, such as the great fountain in City Hall Plaza years ago, now a concrete bunker cover. I love fountains but ONLY if they're maintained by private firms, such as PO Sq.. The Brewer is a present-day exception...let's see what happens to it in a few years. Meanwhile I agree totally that the seaport dist. deserves a massive destination fountain as the one cited in Chicago.
 
I think this profile of Hynes fits here.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/wor...south-korea/EfbvWwApxdkDuAnTDeaURI/story.html

My two takeaways:

1.) The South Koreans are idiots for having engaged in an idiotic selection process.

2.) Hynes had unbridled chutzpah to even take on a project way beyond his experience and capabilities, in a far-away country to boot. (He had never traveled overseas before taking on this project.)
 
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New Songdo City, as the development is called, hasn’t yet turned out the way Hynes and his business partners envisioned, and he left the project four years ago. It currently feels more like a small Midwestern city than a giant international hub, with wide boulevards and newly planted trees but little hustle and bustle.
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Sigh. It's a continually recurring syndrome. Every idiot architect, it seems, wants to build yet-another-Parisian-boulevard. But without any actual "city of Paris" surrounding the wide boulevard, it fails to attract street life. Gee whiz, how many times does this farce need to be repeated?

The city was planned to be about the size of downtown Boston, and the vision was grand: A wide boulevard would be like the Champs-Elysees in Paris, an opera house like the one in Sydney, and canals that would take a visitor to Venice.
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ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Matthew said:
Sigh. It's a continually recurring syndrome. Every idiot architect, it seems, wants to build yet-another-Parisian-boulevard. But without any actual "city of Paris" surrounding the wide boulevard, it fails to attract street life. Gee whiz, how many times does this farce need to be repeated?



ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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That's what you get when you put in charge of building a foreign city someone who has never set foot outside his own country.

Was this some kind of social experiment to see what would happen if you flew a bumpkin halfway across the planet to see what kind of city he would build??? I would have loved to be a fly on the wall of that selection process: "Well, Palin is busy on another book tour, so let's go with THIS mental midget....."
 
shmessy said:
That's what you get when you put in charge of building a foreign city someone who has never set foot outside his own country.

Was this some kind of social experiment to see what would happen if you flew a bumpkin halfway across the planet to see what kind of city he would build??? I would have loved to be a fly on the wall of that selection process: "Well, Palin is busy on another book tour, so let's go with THIS mental midget....."
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Harsh. I wasn't aware you had to leave the country to no longer be a bumpkin or a mental midget....

However, I think he oversells the Boston as a model a bit much. The model for New Songdo seems more like some big wigs from Seoul went to Vegas. They saw a taste of Paris, New York New York, Canals like in Venice, world class golf courses everywhere.... The Central Park portion has always been described as being based on Central Park in NYC. The only reference to Boston I ever saw back when I had any involvement in New Songdo, was it being a similar size to Boston, and built on reclaimed land like Boston. Oh, and some bumpkin from Boston, was in charge :)
 
SeamusMcFly said:
Harsh. I wasn't aware you had to leave the country to no longer be a bumpkin or a mental midget....

However, I think he oversells the Boston as a model a bit much. The model for New Songdo seems more like some big wigs from Seoul went to Vegas. They saw a taste of Paris, New York New York, Canals like in Venice, world class golf courses everywhere.... The Central Park portion has always been described as being based on Central Park in NYC. The only reference to Boston I ever saw back when I had any involvement in New Songdo, was it being a similar size to Boston, and built on reclaimed land like Boston. Oh, and some bumpkin from Boston, was in charge :)
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I agree. That was harsh. Let's just leave it at a very bad idea to rely on someone who in over 40 years of life never traveled outside his country to be in charge of envisioning a $35 billion city on the other side of the planet.

Historically bad decision.
 
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