Winter Garden | 100 Federal St. | Financial District

datadyne007

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Downtown tower may get new enclosed plaza

By Dan Adams GLOBE CORRESPONDENT DECEMBER 01, 2015

The plaza outside the distinctive downtown office tower at 100 Federal St. could soon be covered with a large glass atrium containing retail shops and event space.

According to a presentation filed with the city this week by tower owner Boston Properties, a geometric glass-and-steel “cage” will be erected over what is now an outdoor plaza, significantly expanding the street-level footprint of the 37-story building.

The atrium will feature retail shops, dining tables, and a winter garden with plants that can be moved to accommodate different uses of the space. In renderings, the company shows how the atrium can be reorganized to host various events, including panel discussions, concerts, theater, and galas.
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Boston Redevelopment Authority spokesman Nick Martin said the project doesn’t require city approval beyond a standard building permit from the Inspectional Services Department. But Boston Properties has decided to seek a nonbinding advisory opinion from the Boston Civic Design Commission.

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Full article:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...losed-plaza/JHXdMCk0KCNzcsSwGdbqUI/story.html
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Well this is a pleasant surprise. Never really liked the awkward overhang this building has but if it suspended over something nice like this it changes everything. Kind of gives it a reason to have the shape that it does from a passerby perspective. Nice!
 
Really well done. Handsome and plays nicely off the angles of the tower bulge. What is now dead open space could be significantly activated with something as forward thinking as this. A winner!
 
Guess I'm in the minority. I hate it. I welcome a winter garden for this dead plaza that I walk by daily, but I despise this kind of architecture/blobitecture. It offers no relation to its surroundings & has little function for its form.
 
I agree on both counts: a winter garden is a great idea, but this just looks so awkward.
 
The garden addition totally ruins the elegant lines that make 100 Federal look like a dirty bong.
 
Bright white is not the color to be used for the structural framing. Total lack of context for the setting, and makes an otherwise laudable endeavor look temporary, a pavilion to be dropped down, used for a season, and carted off. Perhaps that's the intent. The use of clear glass will be heat-stroke hot in the summer.
 
Dated already. Just another fad filled solution that will likely boost rents for a short time.

I wish this was more thoughtful.

cca
 
cca said:
Dated already. Just another fad filled solution that will likely boost rents for a short time.

I wish this was more thoughtful.

cca
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It's replacing a corporate plaza of corporateness. I'd have preferred filling out the site with an actual building that made a legitimate streetwall, but this isn't that bad. It looks like a nice place to sit and have coffee, and that's what it's for.
 
Equilibria said:
It's replacing a corporate plaza of corporateness. I'd have preferred filling out the site with an actual building that made a legitimate streetwall, but this isn't that bad. It looks like a nice place to sit and have coffee, and that's what it's for.
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But the architecture is horrendous and that's what we're commenting on as design professionals.
 
Well then, design specialists, how would you go about designing a winter garden here?
 
Mixed feelings. I wonder how they will control access. The renders show either the same amount of, or more, sidewalk than present now, but the framework seems to continue beyond the current sidewalk bounds. I suppose it's likely b/c these aren't architectural drawings.
 
Kinda looks like a cobweb...

But I agree that the plaza on this side is pretty much dead all the time.
 
atlantaden said:
Well then, design specialists, how would you go about designing a winter garden here?
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As a design professional I would:Take time, listen a lot, do about a hundred iterations, share thoughts about the value of context and urban design, and come to a shared vision with the client.

What I would not do is look in the latest design blogs and pick out a model looks hip enough to go well with the high contrast dark wood and white marble look that everything in the financial district seems to be moving towards. That is just lazy and short sighted.

Something with this sort of prominence should make MANY more urban design connections than this.

I understand that everyone wants an Apple Store in their front yard but that is not good urban design. The Apple Stores prominence is on a much shorter timeline that something like this will have.

That is what I would do. But ... maybe that is why I don't do this sort of stuff. Noone will have me :).

cca

Ps. By the way. The design as rendered is impossible. The inward pitching roof will have to have so many gymnastics built into it to avoid snow/ice/water accumulation and glass breakage that it will likely kill the budget. The steel will get MUCH chunkier as well.
 
It will never happen in Boston given that 100 Federal is a top of the line Class A office building but a 4 season indoor/outdoor beer garden would absolutely kill it at this location. I can just picture all the suits lined up for a good beer 5 days a week starting at 5pm.
 
Equilibria said:
I'd have preferred filling out the site with an actual building that made a legitimate streetwall, but this isn't that bad. It looks like a nice place to sit and have coffee, and that's what it's for.
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To me it is a blank streetwall that happens to be made of glass.

1) too few doors fronting the sidewalk--not porous enough
2) too few (different) reasons to go in a door--not varied/interesting enough
3) no overhang (no place to safely look at the "shop window")--not protective enough
4) no punch-in / reach-out areas--not articulated enough

I would have the glass box mostly in the middle/core with arms reaching out to the corners, but the streetfront itself would work better as a row of regular retail or boutiques/spaces/vendors that front the sidewalk but that are easy to see through and walk through to the atrium beyond. Almost like a row of food kiosks and vendor carts. Quincy Market gets this right the way it alternates the insides reaching out and the outside entering in.

Or take the atrium way taller and let the "underhang" floors of the building be "inside" the glass.
 
Does anyone know the building details intimately?

In photographs (not the renderings, real photos) the second level windows (above the high ceiling lobby level) look starkly different than others in the building. Is there perhaps some reason why they are not interfacing the winter garden higher up the facade? Ventilation intakes, for example? The interface with the existing building stays totally at the lobby level. I do not know the building well enough to know.
 
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