State Street HQ | One Congress | Bulfinch Crossing | West End

3.10.21 - Rising downtown angles

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It's still amazing to me this is getting built. This was first put on the market in 2006, but I feel like I remember competitions around then involving a lot of different proposals (including one from Foster+Partners?). Maybe not, we're talking over a decade ago...

When going back to check if there were any images of the possible competition designs, I came across this comment from 2008. Surprisingly accurate.

pelhamhall said:
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

These past few posts crystallized it for me:

The Government Center Garage stays for at least ten more years.

Sigh.

I love Boston, I do, but I wish we had some real leadership in this city.
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bren924 said:
From earlier today

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Did anyone else think the underside of the seams was also glass? I feel like the opaque panels will detract from the elegance of the design similar to how I feel like the white and gray borders do so for Pierce.
 
ccole said:
Did anyone else think the underside of the seams was also glass? I feel like the opaque panels will detract from the elegance of the design similar to how I feel like the white and gray borders do so for Pierce.
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Yeah, looking at the below renderings from a couple years ago it does look like they were glass in the previous designs. As long as the nighttime lighting scheme still highlights the seams, I ain't complaining.

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ccole said:
Did anyone else think the underside of the seams was also glass? I feel like the opaque panels will detract from the elegance of the design similar to how I feel like the white and gray borders do so for Pierce.
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I had that same thought when I was there on Monday. At the time I was hopeful that those underside panels were "placeholders" for some reason, but the more I think about it the less likely that seems.
 
I like the glass carrying over on the pleats. It reminds me of the CGI effects in the first Matrix movie, in a good way.
 
Just so happens to address my complaint from last week haha.
I actually prefer the solid panels over the glass. It looks more articulated instead of just a total copy-paste of a gridded glass over the curvilinear form. That solid surface will also allow some good potential for lighting if they go that route - illuminated highlights showing off each pleat at night (not some strip LED, but up-lighting).

The Pierce building uses the solid panels as volumetric borders around its edges (underside and face) so it's a lot chunkier looking. I think this may end up much nicer as a single plane.

I'm more concerned now with just how mirror-like that glass looks. But the proportion of each panel is much nicer than the rendering. Less squat, but that was probably an effect of the distorted lens in those ground-level images.
 
So is State Street moving from One Lincoln, or will they just be an anchor tenant for this building?
 
squidman1 said:
So is State Street moving from One Lincoln, or will they just be an anchor tenant for this building?
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Moving away - https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...age-project/Tgjr1yyEVDs8hiLQ25F76M/story.html

State Street Corp. is relocating its headquarters in a blockbuster deal that will launch construction of a new office tower near City Hall and pave the way for the demolition of much of the hulking Government Center Garage, which has spanned Congress Street for decades.
State Street will occupy the bottom half of a 1 million-square-foot tower that HYM Investment Group is developing at One Congress St.

The financial services giant has signed a 15-year lease for 510,000 square feet in the 43-story tower and will move from its current home by South Station around the time its lease there expires in 2023.
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I don't mind solid panels vs glass. I do mind their color though. I think it would've been better to blend instead of articulating edges.
 
3/9 from Woburn. You can see the steel by the lower right of the Sudbury. Looks like SST might fully obscure it from this angle. Sudbury, we hardly knew ye!

IMG_6932 by David Z, on Flickr
 
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