The Beacon | 819 Beacon St. | Fenway

Bananarama said:
Both of the "plazas" seem very private to me and not successfully urban. There's no connection through/over them - they just dead-end into the residential entrances.
This new plan does better at creating an edge along Beacon and breaks down the scale well enough. But it lost some of the more public gestures of the old one.

Luckily this is a half block further away from the pike, but the usability of outdoor space in general here is pretty f'd by noise pollution. The plaza and passthrough of the direct neighbor, 725 Beacon, is always a ghost town (albeit they're in the absolute worse spot). If a proposal for Parcel 6 would come in soon I'd be sooooo happy...
Click to expand...

A plaza doesn't need to be a connection or connect two places. Infill plazas are great areas for rest and relaxation. This plaza seems like it was designed straight from watching The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. It's just up to Scape to include Landscape Elements (chairs and activities) that invite you in and up from the street). Though as you note, noise is going to be a pain, but hopefully the area will fill in and mature over time, and with it, lose some of the noise.

Czervik.Construction said:
Is it too soon to be all negative and worry all that textured brick facade will be VE'd and look like Kenmore North?
Click to expand...

Kenmore North comparisons at this phase are quite an insult. We haven't seen a facade sampler for Scape's other ongoing project (which includes a copper facade); I'd hold on until there's something up for 1252 Boylston Street before making assumptions about Scape's VE abilities, then hold off until this project has a sampler.

However, construction prices are going up, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised.
 
stefal said:
A plaza doesn't need to be a connection or connect two places. Infill plazas are great areas for rest and relaxation. This plaza seems like it was designed straight from watching The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. It's just up to Scape to include Landscape Elements (chairs and activities) that invite you in and up from the street). Though as you note, noise is going to be a pain, but hopefully the area will fill in and mature over time, and with it, lose some of the noise.
Click to expand...

Perhaps it's calling it a "plaza" that I'm hung up on. It's really a courtyard. The article you even says "A good plaza starts at the street corner." It needs movement and crossings that are natural to the public realm. This is just an isolated pocket within it's own block that a few residents will pass through.

There's nothing wrong with a perfectly fine pocket park/courtyard. I'm just being petty about overstating it. The building and plan look fine.
 
Equilibria said:
BCDC: https://bpda.app.box.com/s/27fufw6kztfxid6oghg3bbfatxie0qva

Makes the Fenway Center look even more awful by comparison.
Click to expand...
What really strikes me about this project is the degree to which it feels like it was truly designed. So many projects in recent years leave the feeling that not much actual design effort went into them. They're semi-standardized cut-and-paste off-the-shelf developments that could have worked on any of many potential sites. Draw up a rectangular massing, add a few angles/setbacks/cantilevers so it's not a total box, sprinkle in 6 different cladding materials, and call it a day. Practically every single Elkus building gives me this feeling, for example.

But this project was very clearly designed for its specific use at its specific location, and a lot of thought and problem solving has gone into it. This building wouldn't make sense anywhere else, and just about any other building wouldn't make sense here. That's something to be commended.

Also, this building actually keeps getting better with revision. All too often we see the opposite happen. Call me naive, but the consistent improvement of design here gives me hope that this won't suffer the same VE degradation that we see with so many other "how it started -> how it's going" projects.
 
Czervik.Construction said:
Is it too soon to be all negative and worry all that textured brick facade will be VE'd and look like Kenmore North?
Click to expand...

I dont think so because the building actually matches what they rendered very closely and theres nothing showing we got something other than what was rendered.
resize-Kenmore-Rendering.jpg

545-Commonwealth-Ave-Boston-MA-Building-Photo-1-Large.jpg


The development here however shows very close up renders which show a very high quality brick facade and the massing is also much better, plus its not replacing any historic structure. The renders here look much more the quinn or lovejoy wharf and much less kenmore north.
 
Last edited:
This project was delayed/cancelled? The same place 3.5 months later, no equipment, no workers, not even a bunch of sand from the groundbreaking photo

childrens_groundbreaking.png
photo_2023-08-28 17.49.40.jpeg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top