The Hub on Causeway (née TD Garden Towers) | 80 Causeway Street | West End

tysmith95 said:
Millennium Tower, Four Seasons.

We are getting good designs, just not on every parcel. No city is getting great designs everywhere.
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49'er Syndrome. 4's everywhere else are 9's in Boston.
 
tobyjug said:
49'er Syndrome. 4's everywhere else are 9's in Boston.
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I don't know man. Toronto and Miami have probably been the 2 most booming cities in the last decade. I can't think of a single building from either one's boom that is better than 1 Dalton appears to be turning out, or than MT is (aside from looking at the open roof side).
 
Those are great towers. But some well placed duds like north station can make that moot. Thats why its a big deal. A few good buildings can make a skyline nicer, 1 well placed dud can destroy it (115 fed). We were on such a roll we need to keep that going. MT and 1 Dalton are great towers, why not get some more great towers at winthrop and north station...or south station. Hell we all forgot about the worst of them all at the hancock garage, thats a joke over there. We need to keep the great towers coming not get a couple then settle as it being good enough.
 
I'm guilty of provocative hyperbole there. But only to launch the proposition that 1 Dalton is very nice:

Tall: check.
Slender: check
Well placed: check
Doesn't wipe out some worthy existing feature: check

However...
When you look at something like, for instance, that neo-deco tower in Brooklyn that Beton posted, 1 Dalton looks anodyne.

We so seldom get anything that ticks the boxes that 1 Dalton does, that we overlook things about it that could be better. And then there are things like 115 Winthrop and The Flub on the Causeway, well, our best hope is that things go better with coke.
 
Things are getting awfully frothy here. For every 1 beautiful tower going up in NYC, there are at least 4 glass boxes going up. I am moving into a new building that is a 700+ foot tall glass rectangle. The interior and amenities are amazing, but the exterior is nonexistent.
 
this ^^^

i've made this point before. anyone who thinks that each new tower in every other city is AMAZING and boston -- and boston, alone -- gets saddled with an over-abundance of crap either never travels or remembers their travels through rose-tinted glasses.

OR, more likely, people just don't remember the boring towers they encounter in other cities b/c they're... unmemorable.

visitors who come to boston (those who care about skyscrapers in the first place) likely remember the custom house tower, the hancock, maybe international place and MT. just as visitors to nashville likely recall the "bat" at&t building and nothing else, visitors to san fran remember the transamerica pyramid and salesforce tower and nothing else, etc etc.
 
Well, no shit, there is no Emerald City outside of Oz.

That doesn't take away from the point that the Flub and 115 ought to be better, and that MT and Dalton aren't the best skyscrapers in history of architecture.
 
There's a really specific reason why One Dalton "works." Henry Cobb returns to the geometry, grammar, and materials palate of his most famous tall building, (our) John Hancock Tower. And even though this new tower is roughly 700' tall, its shape and clean lines demure to the I.M. Pei's Christian Science Center. Great architecture is the result of thoughtfulness as well as imaginative form-making.

(For all these same reasons, Renzo Piano's Gardiner Museum Annex is a failure. It's a masterful building that belongs in a different zip code than Isabella's Palace.)
 
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chrisbrat said:
this ^^^

i've made this point before. anyone who thinks that each new tower in every other city is AMAZING and boston -- and boston, alone -- gets saddled with an over-abundance of crap either never travels or remembers their travels through rose-tinted glasses.

OR, more likely, people just don't remember the boring towers they encounter in other cities b/c they're... unmemorable.

visitors who come to boston (those who care about skyscrapers in the first place) likely remember the custom house tower, the hancock, maybe international place and MT. just as visitors to nashville likely recall the "bat" at&t building and nothing else, visitors to san fran remember the transamerica pyramid and salesforce tower and nothing else, etc etc.
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Ny is a sea of towers though so the bad is lost immediately. We dont have many towers so each one is very noticeable. Ny is putting up a lot of great towers though, the tall ones in prominent locations so they stand out. They also put up 30 park a 900ft liberty mutual in another prominent location. They have the luxury that their duds fade into obscurity immediately. We dont have that luxury our duds are prominent and very noticeable so its more important to get it right here. We have so many great minds and so much pride that we should be setting the architecture example for the world to copy. Especially since were height limited we shoud be making up for that with high quality.
 
This thing looked awesome. I really hope they reconsider or get some serious pressure from the BDC and just go with this. Stick, I agree with everything you wrote. All of the angles were solid.

stick n move said:
At least it had one.... unlike the new tower. Plus it was from the most important side that it looked the best. I think they should have moved the tower over to the right and continued the facade down to ground level in the corner. That way you get to see the tower in its entirety making it non stumpy, but still get the podium. Also Im going to have to disagree with your one good angle comment.

The-Hub-on-Causeway-Mixed-Use-Development-Bulfinch-Triangle-Boston-TD-Garden-North-Station-Boston-Properties-Delaware-North-John-Moriarty-and-Associates-Construction.jpg

..............
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Czervik.Construction said:
Things are getting awfully frothy here. For every 1 beautiful tower going up in NYC, there are at least 4 glass boxes going up. I am moving into a new building that is a 700+ foot tall glass rectangle. The interior and amenities are amazing, but the exterior is nonexistent.
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Honestly, I take 4 glass boxes going up over 4 boxes that have an identity crisis. When trying to compare this to NYC, the 1 beautiful tower is a 10, the glass boxes are a 6. In Boston, the one beautiful tower is a 7, the other 4 buildings are a 3.

The thing is, we all know that not every tower will be amazing. I mean, nearly every high-rise in the seaport is average or below average. In Boston, it's more like, for every 1 above average design we get, we get 10 mediocre ones.
 
chrisbrat said:
this ^^^

i've made this point before. anyone who thinks that each new tower in every other city is AMAZING and boston -- and boston, alone -- gets saddled with an over-abundance of crap either never travels or remembers their travels through rose-tinted glasses.

OR, more likely, people just don't remember the boring towers they encounter in other cities b/c they're... unmemorable.

visitors who come to boston (those who care about skyscrapers in the first place) likely remember the custom house tower, the hancock, maybe international place and MT. just as visitors to nashville likely recall the "bat" at&t building and nothing else, visitors to san fran remember the transamerica pyramid and salesforce tower and nothing else, etc etc.
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The responses I get from my friends from out of state on what they remember Boston's skyline includes words such as "brown", "short", "small", "ugly", and "plain." However, the good news is they remember Boston apart from the skyline as charming, clean, and aesthetically pleasing (street level wise).
 
i'll take shit for this. The skyline in Queens will soon be better than downtown Boston.

It's already almost there
 
KentXie said:
The responses I get from my friends from out of state on what they remember Boston's skyline includes words such as "brown", "short", "small", "ugly", and "plain." However, the good news is they remember Boston apart from the skyline as charming, clean, and aesthetically pleasing (street level wise).
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opinions differ, i suppose. i've never heard anyone apply those adjectives to boston's skyline -- outside of folks on AB.

quoting a user/member over at skyscrapercity.com re: the most recent winthrop tower design:

"This is pathetic, and it shames the clean and stoic towers around it. This will be an awful blight on the Boston skyline. One of the cleanest and classiest skylines in the world."
 
odurandina said:
i'll take shit for this. The skyline in Queens will soon be better than downtown Boston.
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As well you should. Who cares?

First I assume that you're talking Long Island City / Queens(boro) Plaza, not Astoria/Steinway/Flushing/Archie Bunkerland.

Second, "Better" is completely subjective. Why should I (or anyone) make any general urban policy based on your call about better? I don't know how you can ever say anything other than that Boston's skyline should be better for Bostonians, not better than _______.

Third as for whether Boston can/should keep up with Queens, I'd say that this is once again a case of NYC being in a league of its own...even its boros individually. Queens, second only to Brooklyn's 2.6m, has a pop of 2.3m, all by itself, which is more than Boston inside 128

Long Island City / Queensboro Plaza area doesn't really function as downtown Queens...it really is more like a [Jersey City/Newport/Exchange Place] full of folks priced out of Manhattan...a chunk of Manhattan's Midtown skyline that's just 1 or two stops from the Plaza Hotel. And better than [Jersey City] (which only extends Downtown) LIC/QP extend Midtown, with 8 subway lines converging, 7 of which sit at the midpoint between outer Queens and Midtown Manhattan.

Not a fight or comparison even worth having.

*Edited to change Hoboken to Jersey City
 
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We cannot deny that something as physically present and prominent as a skyline is part of a city's aesthetic and is something from which people will draw inferences.

The thing that complicates this (and is being lost in a lot of ArchBos discussion) is that this argument doesn't have a simple "right" vs. "wrong." It's just that different skyline configurations convey different things (and, of course, there's variance in interpretation among people).

I work with college students, and they definitely judge boston's and other cities' skylines. They judge the happening-ness / the edginess / the vitality of the local economy. Its just what they do. I do not personally like the SF salesforce tower, but there's no doubt it adds a high-tech zing to SF's skyline. And yes, it is a talent recruitment world. I am tired of the articles saying we don't have a talent pipeline issue in boston because the graduates we lose aren't the ones from here, and that we fill all our positions, etc...that totally misses the point: we compete with other cities for the best; and it would only benefit boston if the ones who weren't from here stayed and added some diversity of thought to this place.

When I was graduating from college many years ago, my then-girlfriend couldn't wait to get out of boston. She thought it looked like "Albany."

We don't need boston to be manhattan. And we certainly don't want it to lose it's unique old-school charm. But all it would take is a few fresh, well-executed towers in/around our downtown to totally change the inferences drawn about our city.
 
Same, I worked with a girl from asia for a while and she kept asking me where the tall buildings were (I dont really care), and where all the "happening" spots were. We worked in Cambridge so I brought her to porter sq and a couple other spots close to work and she was disappointed. I had to explain its a lot different here especially if you dont know people and its not like overseas where you just jump into a crowd of people n go nuts with no regard. I lived in japan for 7 months and theres like 10 million things going on at every street corner, your not really going to find that in any city like Boston, hell you wont find what I saw there in NYC. She did keep mentioning that we don't build tall towers here though. Which again I care more about quality than height, but people do notice and she mentioned this whenever we were out n could see the city. Its not a huge deal but people do notice, especially someone from asia where supertalls are the new low rise.
 
stick n move said:
Same, I worked with a girl from asia for a while and she kept asking me where the tall buildings were (I dont really care), and where all the "happening" spots were. We worked in Cambridge so I brought her to porter sq and a couple other spots close to work and she was disappointed. I had to explain its a lot different here especially if you dont know people and its not like overseas where you just jump into a crowd of people n go nuts with no regard. I lived in japan for 7 months and theres like 10 million things going on at every street corner, your not really going to find that in any city like Boston, hell you wont find what I saw there in NYC. She did keep mentioning that we don't build tall towers here though. Which again I care more about quality than height, but people do notice and she mentioned this whenever we were out n could see the city. Its not a huge deal but people do notice, especially someone from asia where supertalls are the new low rise.
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I mean if you're going to compare Boston to Tokyo, Tokyo is of course going to be a lot larger. But Tokyo is actually pretty lacking with regards to tall towers for a city of its size. The Tokyo Skytree is 2k feet tall, but it's more similar to the CN Tower in Toronto and isn't a true skyscraper. The Tokyo Tower is 1092 feet tall, and is just a glorified antenna that looks like an ugly Effiel Tower.

The tallest skyscraper in Tokyo is 838 feet tall. The tallest in Boston is 790 feet tall. But Tokyo has a metro area population of over 38 million, Boston's is just 4.6 million. Per capita we do much better on the skyscraper front compared to Tokyo.
 
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