Tufts Development Projects

It could be worse, such as the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

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Not my picture but you can see part of the glass barriers at the top of the Tufts library. This glass encircles the entire plaza. Not only does it create an unwelcome sense of enclosure, but look at how poor the quality is. They ruined it!

Boston by Linda Custer, on Flickr
 
DZH22 said:
Not my picture but you can see part of the glass barriers at the top of the Tufts library. This glass encircles the entire plaza. Not only does it create an unwelcome sense of enclosure, but look at how poor the quality is. They ruined it!

Boston by Linda Custer, on Flickr
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Sign of the times, I guess. Northeastern's new EXP building has a rooftop lounge and it too has a glass wall which I do not believe was shown in the original drawings.

Legal safeguard to prevent jumpers and lawsuits??
 
Some construction photos from today of Blakeley Hall, Eaton Hall, and 123 Packard.

Blakeley is being repurposed into dorms for 100 first-year undergrads (hopefully replacing the temporary mods). The fire escapes which used to cover the back three sides of the building have been removed, which is a good change. Blakeley's renovation is mentioned here.

Eaton's new elevator core seems to have gone up, not covering the existing windows. Overall, I like the new design. I remember as a student being very confused about where to enter the building, and I think then new addition will help with that. I also like the glass curtain wall which will allow views through the building to the existing brick walls when completed.

123 Packard is being converted into dorms for the Fletcher school. I don't love the big concrete wall they put up, blocking some of the views of the building, but I understand the need for excavation to create an accessible entrance. The article on Tufts' capital projects page mentions a 3-story elevator. I wonder if that will be contained within the existing structure or a new core will be created like at Packard Hall?
 

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12345 said:

Tufts booms with a 667-bed dorm on Boston Ave​


The two buildings will soar to 10 floors and extend from the parking garage to University Avenue on Boston Avenue. It will have 2-3 quick service food or retail spaces. Construction starts April 2025 and ends summer 2027.

https://www.reddit.com/r/medfordma/comments/1fq98iq
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"Soar to 10 floors" - it's nice to see that the guy who used to write architecture reviews for the Globe found a new niche on Reddit...
 
Equilibria said:
"Soar to 10 floors" - it's nice to see that the guy who used to write architecture reviews for the Globe found a new niche on Reddit...
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It's particularly apt here: if the ground level is at Boston Ave, then the hillside itself is like 7 stories elevation change. So this guy could celebrate that it soars 3 stories above the campus.
 
bigpicture7 said:
It's particularly apt here: if the ground level is at Boston Ave, then the hillside itself is like 7 stories elevation change. So this guy could celebrate that it soars 3 stories above the campus.
Click to expand...

For those of us of a certain age: "Air Fernsten"!
 
12345 said:

Tufts booms with a 667-bed dorm on Boston Ave​


The two buildings will soar to 10 floors and extend from the parking garage to University Avenue on Boston Avenue. It will have 2-3 quick service food or retail spaces. Construction starts April 2025 and ends summer 2027.

https://www.reddit.com/r/medfordma/comments/1fq98iq
Click to expand...
Retail spaces! Good Tufts, doing the non institutional thing and having commercial tenants.
 
It appears this new proposal is replacing this earlier one.

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I was able to find an article that mentioned how many floors it was going to have, it says it was 7 floors tall so maybe theyre just taking the same proposal and adding 3 floors to it. With how long the building is it definitely does not come across as “soaring”, the length to width ratio actually helps in this case to make it not look very tall.

https://www.asumag.com/facilities/h...ersity-announces-plans-for-new-residence-hall
 
Oh, a Tufts thread. We're now Tufts neighbors, so I can provide some updates on my next stroll through campus. I've been waiting patiently for whatever they finally build at 401 Boston Ave to start. We live on the opposite side of campus from the GLX station, and on some of the really hot days recently I'd been using the elevator in the parking garage to skip walking up the hill.

The glass walls discussed earlier in the thread did muck of the view of Boston, though the photographer who took our family photos last year enjoyed playing with the reflections.

The Blakeley Hall renovation is ongoing. There are occasionally a couple of people doing a labor protest about it, and on Sunday they inflated Scabby on Professor's Row during Tufts Community Day. Don't know if that's the same people who handed me this last July:


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A new render popped up

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Tufts Planning New Residence Hall on Medford/Somerville Campus​

“Tufts University has selected Capstone Development Partners, LLC, a student housing and campus facilities real estate development company exclusively focused on collaborating with colleges and universities, to develop a significant new state-of-the-art residence hall for undergraduates.

Tufts expects the new building, the largest residence hall project in the university's history, to be ready for occupancy by the fall of 2027, achieving the goal of significantly reducing the population of students residing in residential neighborhoods and freeing up housing for working families in those cities. Importantly, Tufts has committed to making sure that all eligible students will be able to be part of this new residential community regardless of their financial means……..”

“Additionally, the building's ground floor will include mixed-use retail space, enlivening this portion of Boston Avenue with more activity and foot traffic.”

https://www.bldup.com/posts/tufts-planning-new-residence-hall-on-medford-somerville-campus



-Edit: was able to dig around a bit and found the community meeting slides where it came from. Theres much more in there, apparently it is 2 buildings:

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https://tufts.app.box.com/s/9s8v90hsg8dh4rwt103ebalpjbvnlw66
 
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Love that they are building housing. Like that they made an effort to contextualize the design, at least using brick colored panels, some inset windows, and looks like some some real brick. The massing feels awkward, but I suppose its a constrained site and they did the best they could.
 
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