Winthrop Center | 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

Will the 'BONES' of the building be made from concrete or steel?
 
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Will the 'BONES' of the building be concrete or steel?
Jahvon -- I'm presuming its Big Steel

The Cave / Tunnel / Interconnect whatever they call it now -- has a huge open area with no columns -- so that pretty much means steel -- much like the Big Ballroom at the Omni
 
The Fort Channel tunnel sections were made from reinforced concrete.
 
The Fort Channel tunnel sections were made from reinforced concrete.
Jahvon -- they had lots of support from drilled shafts below them -- they were like Lego blocks with sockets in them to accept the pins from below

If you want to span a large distance without a lot of depth perpendicular to the span in the vertical plane -- you are much better off with a steel truss than a reinforced concrete beam
Concrete just doesn't like to bend and as we've seen recently the risk of using pre or post tension-ed concrete with steel rods or cables is corrosion in places where its hard to inspect
With steel framing the corrosion has to work its way through a homogeneous beam or girder -- not just some cables
 
Yeah, they've suffered with leaks, & so did the I-93 tunnel.
 
It would be kind of surprising for a mostly luxury condo building to be steel framed.
 
Yeah, most condo towers are built using a concrete framework. :)
 
It would be kind of surprising for a mostly luxury condo building to be steel framed.
It may end up mixed construction (see the Omni Hotel in the Seaport).

That Great Hall -- Big Passageway or whatever it is called now is screaming for steel framing to create the cavernous space efficiently.
 
So... I'm not sure how it's legal to do this, but they've VE'd it again. After BPDA approval.


It's not nearly as bad as the first time, but it's still a downgrade. What bait-and-switch artists these people are. I'll never trust MP again (that's not saying much, though, since I don't terribly like Millennium Tower).
 
yeah doesn't really look all that different. previous renders showed a flat-roofed boring box and current versions show a flat-roofed boring box.
 
Looks like they are taking one floor for office, one less residential. This is not going to help with the housing shortage. (wink)
 
So... I'm not sure how it's legal to do this, but they've VE'd it again. After BPDA approval.


It's not nearly as bad as the first time, but it's still a downgrade. What bait-and-switch artists these people are. I'll never trust MP again (that's not saying much, though, since I don't terribly like Millennium Tower).

Definitely some noticeable changes with the floors (double height) extending into the crown now.. which is definitely going to affect how it looks, the ribboning (glazing) of the curtain wall, no gold in the crown, balconies, mech floors ..etc It now appears it will have regular spandrel glass vs ribbon... which is a big change and changes the entire look. Which looks better as the end result well never know, but it should now just look like every other 21st century glass facade vs the striped pattern we expected. Interesting.. I think it just meets reality more now, but the striped glass was possible with alternating glazing, but it just seems they were never going to actually do that. Oh well, hopefully it doesnt suck.







“Notice of project change”



Changes due to “Refinement in the building facade” (loss of ribboning, changed balconies, mech floors), “height required for mech equipment” (floors added into crown)

 
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Looks to me as if there's still "ribboning" going on. It's still apparent in the floor plans. I think it's just more realistically rendered in noon-ish daylight. They also made the ceilings more visible, which, depending on the glass, may or may not be more realistic too. Have to wait for the sampler to make absolute sense of these renders, or wait for some flashy high-res marketing renders to come out soon.

Also, I still can't get over at how they're getting away with calling that lobby a great hall. If I didn't know about this project containing a public "great hall" and walked by it, I wouldn't think twice about entering.
 
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Massive downgrade on an already barely acceptable design. Between this and MT's open mech crown we really have some questionable design choices at the top of our skyline courtesy of Millennium. I certainly won't be writing any more letters of support for these guys in the future.
 
What's the massive downgrade? These just looks like more detailed renders and they offset one floor of residential to office. What am I missing here?
 
What's the massive downgrade? These just looks like more detailed renders and they offset one floor of residential to office. What am I missing here?

The bottom half including the balconies looks worse. The glass looks more transparent (worse in my opinion, think Toronto/Vancouver cheapo). The crown looks a bit clunkier and loses the little gold flair at the top. There's a noticeable thick line of spandrel running down the left part of the thin side that wasn't showing up in the previous render. There's a grey Hancock-like line halfway up that looks out of place here.

Basically, the cladding looks worse, and the cladding was what I was counting on to salvage a pretty ridiculous design. The prior renders had a smoothness about them that is totally gone now. There's no one thing but it's another small series of downgrades on a building I haven't been particularly enthused about since the initial chop-down under 700'. The entire project feels like a major bait and switch at this point.
 
this should be illegal... what a bait and switch
 
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I don’t think I like this project very much :( It’s really too bad what MP has gotten away with in terms of design. I’m really not a height guy per se but the 691’ is hard to swallow still
 

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