Volpe Transportation Center Development | Kendall Sq | Cambridge

bigpicture7 said:
Also, while I agree with you that they're not pointing at truly "iconic" designs in this package, the fact that they're citing the examples you mention above for context means design is at least being taken seriously. Regarding the tall residential tower, some of those massings alone are near iconic IMO (given Cambridge).
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Yeah, but they could have cited 500' buildings as architectural models. At the very least, recognize that you should be emulating the Alcott or Sudbury and not the Avalon or Hub towers at that scale, and frankly MITIMCo should be shooting higher than all of those.
 
Sure, they could go quick - I don't expect 20 years to be the case, that was just the upper limit of the estimate that they gave in the docs. I was comparing it to Cambridge Crossing in the fact that they don't expect/the wording seems to suggested they won't be allowed to start the next phase until construction is pretty far along in the preceding phase, whereas in CX, it seemed like one building just broke ground and they were announcing the groundbreaking of a new building the following week.

bigpicture7 said:
Also, while I agree with you that they're not pointing at truly "iconic" designs in this package, the fact that they're citing the examples you mention above for context means design is at least being taken seriously. Regarding the tall residential tower, some of those massings alone are near iconic IMO (given Cambridge).
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And yes, that's what also gave me hope. But why list your precedents as non-icons and only as your context? The precedents are just filler projects - it's not the most promising to see the blandness they're starting off their design process with.
 
Equilibria said:
Yeah, but they could have cited 500' buildings as architectural models. At the very least, recognize that you should be emulating the Alcott or Sudbury and not the Avalon or Hub towers at that scale, and frankly MITIMCo should be shooting higher than all of those.
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I agree. In fairness, I am jumbling things together in my mind. Media Lab is a great thing to cite for a smallish academic/lab type building, but that's a totally different story than what they should be thinking about re: the tower.
 
stefal said:
Sure, they could go quick - I don't expect 20 years to be the case, that was just the upper limit of the estimate that they gave in the docs. I was comparing it to Cambridge Crossing in the fact that they don't expect/the wording seems to suggested they won't be allowed to start the next phase until construction is pretty far along in the preceding phase, whereas in CX, it seemed like one building just broke ground and they were announcing the groundbreaking of a new building the following week...
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Honestly, I've been semi-tuned-in to the community process for this over the past couple of years, and I'd bet a lot of that language has to do with committing that the Community Center and Third Street Park are going to open to the community early in this process. The community doesn't want a construction war zone for 8 years before any of the community benefit gets turned over. By contrast, they are by no means limiting themselves to a serial building-by-building approach here. Getting phase 1 substantively under construction is not a huge hurdle to kick the rest in motion, given that so much of it depends on the bathtub anyway.
 
The amount of changes that even already approved towers go through means that there is literally next to nothing that can be expected architecturally this early in the process. Think of how many iterations we go through from beginning to end. Remember this was one of the early designs for gov center.
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Also this
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We were finally supposed to get this
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What we got was better than all of them, thankfully. Thats definitely not always the case. You get the point though. I wouldnt get toooo worked up just yet.
 
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See, it looks just like the renders! You just need a dismal overcast day with very flat lighting conditions!
 
The building sides look impressive now that the facade is going up. I walk by every day and the vertical lines definitely make it look taller than it is (similar to the new Proto residential building a block away).

But man, the wide sides look reallllly chunky with a split facade. The front and back don't even really match. :confused:
 
Did they put the mechanicals at the bottom floors as a way to create separation from a vbied attack like they did at wtc1? So that way the first usable floor is elevated high above ground level in the case of a bombing and then theres also a bunch of mass down low around the structure to soak up the damage.

It appears that way and I know this building had to have things like that included into the design because its a federal building and thats why its also set back from everything a bit. I could be wrong but thats the first thing that comes to mind when looking at the design choices here of the first couple floors and why they look the way they do.
 
stick n move said:
Did they put the mechanicals at the bottom floors as a way to create separation from a vbied attack like they did at wtc1? So that way the first usable floor is elevated high above ground level in the case of a bombing and then theres also a bunch of mass down low around the structure to soak up the damage.

It appears that way and I know this building had to have things like that included into the design because its a federal building and thats why its also set back from everything a bit. I could be wrong but thats the first thing that comes to mind when looking at the design choices here of the first couple floors and why they look the way they do.
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There may also be some vibration isolation going on. The mechanicals may be mechanically isolated from the rest of the structure to keep their vibration out of the rest of the framing. This building will house some pretty serious labs, some of which need to have minimal vibration.
 
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