Tree House Residence Hall Tower @ MassArt | 578 Huntington Avenue | Fenway

Re: Mass Art Dormitory

Constructin to start June, 2010, completion August 2012

http://www.bankerandtradesman.com/news138056.html
Suffolk Education, a Suffolk Construction team that specializes in managing construction projects in the education sector, will build a new residence hall for the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.
The $61 million, 21-story residence hall will add 493 beds and 145,000 square feet of dormitory space to the school campus. The residence hall will also include a new health center that will serve students of MassArt, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and Wentworth Institute of Technology.
The new building will feature eco-friendly elements designed to achieve LEED Silver certification, according to a statement.

Once completed, the building will allow the college to guarantee housing to all first- and second-year students and will provide housing to 38 percent of the entire student body on campus, an increase from 22 percent.

The Massachusetts State College Building Authority will be the project developer for the new MassArt residence hall, and ADD Inc. is the project architect. Construction of the new residence hall is scheduled to begin in June and will be completed in August 2012.
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http://www.massart.edu/Support_MassArt/The_Campaign/Capital_Projects/Residence_Hall.html

http://www.massart.edu/About_MassArt/News/New_Residence_Hall.html

Also Center for Design and New Media:

http://www.massart.edu/Support_Mass...Projects/Center_for_Design_and_New_Media.html
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

What is currently on this site (or, if it's now vacant, what was formerly there)?
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

massartresidencehall800x759.jpg


I think it's great that these lots are getting built on, but the way this tower is situated is awful. The setback and plazas just preserve the interruption of Huntington Ave's streetwall. What is the justification for this?

This stretch of Huntington is a mess, and this could have been a great opportunity to restore some of its lost cohesion. They should have took a lesson from NEU's Building H.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

That rendering is stunning. Seriously, renderings never look that good. They either try too hard to look realistic or try too hard to look like a sketch - this is right in the middle and I'm loving it.

I'm not awfully familiar with that stretch of Huntington, but the rendering, which is obviously quite flattering, makes me think the discontinuity could work. That plaza out front actually looks like an effective space, and the tower seems to be situated just at enough of an angle to break it from the streetwall and give it a sculptural quality. Maybe that ground level could have been extended to the adjacent building, where that slatted fence-like structure is in the back, but other than that I really like this design.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

Architecture really says a lot about a school. MassArt = mediocre. Hell, even those Wentworth dorms are boring but at least attempt urban cohesion and scaling.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

The setback is unforgivable. This is just as bad as the tower in the park by the Longwood E line stop.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

well, at least we now have something we can follow progress on.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

For whatever little it's worth, I disagree about the judgments being passed on the setback. The building is much more usefully aligned with Vancouver Street than Huntington given the footprint, and to come right up to Vancouver would have been completely out of scale. Setting it back solves that, and the resulting plaza - which based on the render actually looks more like a superwide sidewalk - will, I think, be a net positive for urban life and activity on that stretch.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

Overhead of the current site.

I'm uncertain what's gained by orienting the building to Vancouver St. I think the perception is that the plaza will be activated by a variety of student uses, and that this sort of public space does not currently exist on the MassArt campus.

So smoking and hacky-sack in September and May, trash in the winter...
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

Or installation art throughout the year.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

Is anything slated for that concrete/sand triangle on the north section of Vancouver (across Huntington)? Streetview shows it as fenced in, possibly getting ready for some sort of work... If not, that parcel will continue to blight this short stretch even after this tower goes up.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

vanshnookenraggen said:
Architecture really says a lot about a school. MassArt = mediocre. Hell, even those Wentworth dorms are boring but at least attempt urban cohesion and scaling.
Click to expand...

I can appreciate what they are trying to do, but the rendering is proabably too clean for it's own good. I fear it will end up looking like a super value-engineered love child of One Western, and NEU's International Village. It's an architectural awkward family photo waiting in the wings. http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/2009/11/04/garbage-pail-kid/
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

Huntington Avenue will never amount to anything unless they get rid of the parking lots.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

ablarc said:
Huntington Avenue will never amount to anything unless they get rid of the parking lots.
Click to expand...

I think this rendering proves that won't go far enough. Besides there really aren't many parking lots on Huntington left. This is probably the biggest one.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

Don't forget that Wentworth has a proposal in the works to build on the athletic field at the intersection of Huntington and Ruggles. That would go a long way towards fixing the broken Huntington streetwall.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

I actually like that field being there. It creates a good vista where you can see Wentworth, Northeastern, the Fenway, MFA, and that Greek Cathedrial. It's open space that works.
 
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