Winthrop Center | 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

chrisbrat said:
One Congress, in contrast, came out of the gates with a really daring design -- and they delivered on it. They didn't flatten any of the curves, they didn't make it shorter than originally proposed, and by not really specifying what the night-time lighting scheme would be, when we started to see what they were doing and how bold it's going to be, it was a really welcome surprise.
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I love One Congress, and put it just behind One Dalton for favorite tower of the boom. However, they DID shorten it from the initial proposals, some of which exceeded 700'. Imagine One Congress at 700' instead of a chunky 611'?

Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Re: Congress St Garage is being sold. ^Me. I'm hoping they're shitty pix of good proposals and not shitty pix of shitty proposals. how'd it go in there?
archboston.com
 
DZH22 said:
I love One Congress, and put it just behind One Dalton for favorite tower of the boom. However, they DID shorten it from the initial proposals, some of which exceeded 700'. Imagine One Congress at 700' instead of a chunky 611'?

Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Re: Congress St Garage is being sold. ^Me. I'm hoping they're shitty pix of good proposals and not shitty pix of shitty proposals. how'd it go in there?
archboston.com
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forgot that! Yes, it’d be even cooler with a little more height.
 
DZH22 said:
In 10 years I think the general consensus will be to rate this building ahead of Millennium Tower. At the present moment, MT has 2 distinct advantages over WT:

1. It was here first, the tallest building in 40 years, and got the chance to stand alone for a few years.
2. It was revised UPWARDS beyond our wildest dreams, whereas WT was originally proposed as an impossible supertall, and still well over 700' in the competition phase, so disappoints compared to the original expectations.

However, at the end of the day I'm picking WT over MT for 2 simple reasons. First, while a slanty roof is typically more interesting than a flat roof, MT's open-roofed eye-sore from the South and West is absolutely egregious. Renders showed a covered roof, similar to their shorter Millennium Place towers by the common. WT doesn't have any awkward angles or stand-out blunders like that open roof. Second, the subtle lighting at the top of WT is an absolute breath of fresh air, considering MT often totally disappears into the night.

If MT had covered the roof but not lit it up, I'd probably have MT winning in a photo finish. If MT had both completed the roof and added some lighting, it would be the runaway winner. However, judging the buildings based on their current statuses and not on what "should have" happened leaves me barely choosing WT as the visually superior addition to our city.
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Definitely possible on a 1 v 1 basis, but I think MT will always be king of downtown for 1 simple reason. It looks taller than WT from most angles. Unfortunately, even though WT is supposedly 10 ft taller, it looks shorter, so it will always be the little brother.
 
From a NY Times daily newsletter (emailed) on climate, specifically discussing Winthrop Center.

Building better buildings​
Here’s something we know we have to fix, and we mostly know how to fix it.​
I’m talking about the buildings in which we live and work. They play a big role in heating the planet. In some cities, they’re the biggest single source of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.​
New laws in a handful of cities, including mine, New York, now compel building owners to reduce those emissions or face fines. The European Union recently enacted a law that requires all buildings to be zero-emissions by the middle of the century.​
I wanted to learn more about all this. So I reached out to John E. Fernandez, an architect and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.​
Airtight equals efficiency​
Not long ago, I went to see an office building under construction in downtown Boston. On what was once a city-owned parking lot, Millennium Partners Boston, a developer, had erected a 21-story, 800,000-square-foot tower called the Winthrop Center. Fernandez was a consultant on the project.​
Its 10-foot, floor-to-ceiling windows were triple-pane, oriented to let in sunlight. The walls had a 4-inch layer of insulation. On each floor, a door opened to a balcony, though, as in a lot of offices, none of the windows opened. Any chance of fresh air? Yes, said Brad Mahoney, the company’s director of sustainable development. From the ventilation system.​
Winthrop Center was built on Passive House principles, a concept that sprang up in Germany in the 1980s, based on the idea that the cheapest energy is the energy you don’t use. So the emphasis is on creating an airtight envelope for the building. Don’t let unwanted air leak in or out. Insulate. Take advantage of the heat produced inside by circulating it. Our bodies and our computers generate a lot of heat, it turns out.​

Upfront construction costs are higher than for a conventional building. In the case of this building, Mahoney estimated, the cost was about 2 percent to 3 percent higher.​
(Luxury condominiums sit on top of the office tower, but they’re not, strictly speaking, built to Passive House standards.)​
The heating source is key​
The Winthrop Center is still heated by a gas boiler. Because of the energy efficiency hacks, Mahoney was quick to point out, it will use less gas than a conventional building of the same size. He said that when construction began, in 2017, electric heat pumps weren’t “commercially viable.”​
There was no incentive, either. Now, there is. Boston in 2021 passed an ordinance requiring large buildings to neutralize their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Between now and then, building owners are required to report their emissions numbers. In March, Mayor Michelle Wu proposed that new constructions be fully electric; the City Council has yet to vote on the proposal.​
Nearly 70 percent of Boston’s emissions come from buildings.​
Building materials matter, too​
Passive House principles don’t take into account the stuff buildings are made of, like concrete and steel, which are huge polluters. How can that be reduced?​
Fernandez said steel would become less carbon-intensive if its production could be fueled by green hydrogen, which is derived from water.​
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The newsletter linked to this site which covers Boston's building codes, and climate-related provisions.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/03/2...te=1&user_id=da580a4cd1e82ea0128214184976a2ac
 
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Still really odd to me that Millenium, the folks paying a fortune to live in MT, and the city of Boston are all fine with that absurd, unfinished roof.
 
chrisbrat said:
I'm very curious why they removed the detailed column. Presumably it'll return.
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So rumor has it the marble cladding that was around the central steel column COLLAPSED after it was initially installed. Not sure if they're re-engineering the cladding or what, but it's a bit of an embarrassment for something that's otherwise cleanly executed.
 
This is the first that I am hearing about a collapse of any sort. Based on the info that I have, there was a decision made to replace it with cladding of a darker hue.
 
Justbuildit said:
So rumor has it the marble cladding that was around the central steel column COLLAPSED after it was initially installed. Not sure if they're re-engineering the cladding or what, but it's a bit of an embarrassment for something that's otherwise cleanly executed.
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taketern said:
This is the first that I am hearing about a collapse of any sort. Based on the info that I have, there was a decision made to replace it with cladding of a darker hue.
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Without knowing, I'd lean against there having been a collapse. That much marble on a high-visibility project (one blocks from the Globe office, no less) would have at least shown up on my Twitter feed.
 
Equilibria said:
Without knowing, I'd lean against there having been a collapse. That much marble on a high-visibility project (one blocks from the Globe office, no less) would have at least shown up on my Twitter feed.
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I’ll double check my source but it’s from someone I trust who has spent a lot of time within and around the building the last few months
 
Maybe an internal collapse?

Seems wild to install the full thing (with it clearly matching the same stone color/type as the rest of the entry) then decide to swap it out. That sort of design decision should've/would've been done earlier through physical or digital mockups.
 
My buddy is an iron worker who was working on this project, but whose work has been done for a while now. He may still have the inside scoop on these types of things; I’ll ask tonight
 
Bananarama said:
Maybe an internal collapse?

Seems wild to install the full thing (with it clearly matching the same stone color/type as the rest of the entry) then decide to swap it out. That sort of design decision should've/would've been done earlier through physical or digital mockups.
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Confirmed that it had massive structural failure and had to be scrapped and re-done (little wishy washy on the “totally collapsed” language). It’s all second hand anyways, so take it as rumors from a guy on the internet.

Guess we’ll see if they rebuild it with sections that look the same but yeah I agree it would be bone headed to order, receive, install, and then swap out for a different color. If it failed spec I don’t think it gets put on the column.
 
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