Sorry. This is not really architecture, not the sort that we aspire for our city. This is real estate development. Plain and simple. I have no doubt the interior programming here is of a higher standard than the exterior (corporate leasees, after all, make sterner demands than the city) - but that's still a pretty low bar, and a non-public realm at that. To my eye, this is a generic cube of glass that, yes, most cities would likely yearn for. For them, it demonstrates global arrival. We are not most cities. There were options. There were other choices. You want modern and provocative, fine, there were choices. This was the least of those choices. The city chose money.
We are eclectic smaller blocks made of brick, limestone and granite. We are people-scaled. We are walkable. We are the example city leaders all over the world refer to - we'd like a Back Bay, South End, Bay Village sort of thing. (Ask a taxi driver what tourists most often say: It's pretty, it's walkable, it's people-sized.)
Let me establish my bona fides, (since I don't come here often anymore), I love Hancock (former name) Tower. It is a work of art, strategically inserted in an historic block where it should not fit and yet it somehow it does. That's Boston! We're smarter.
The High Spine is a brilliant concept. A corridor of slender taller buildings - distinctive - standing like sign posts for our city. Not walling us in, signposting us. Towering walls of glass side-by-side do not amplify, honor or enhance our city, no matter how many LEED Awards they are granted. (Ask Chicagoans.) Glass has no depth, no texture, no time-worn patina - it is what it. The easier, cheaper choice.
This company did another bait-and-switch years ago with their tower on Washington. That's crying over spilt milk, I guess.
Now we're allowing them to redo the park. Seems to me, the only people who won here are the tax collectors.
www.dezeen.com
