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Can you have a debate where you hope both sides lose?
By adamg on Tue, 08/12/2008 - 9:53am
On the one hand, you have Back Bay nagtivists who haven't liked anything proposed for their neighborhood since 1871. On the other hand, you have a developer telling them they have to put up with a design totally at odds with the surrounding architecture, unless they want "a cartoon" of a building. At issue: What should replace the old WEIU building on Boylston Street.
Jay Fitzgerald ponders the role in all this of state Rep. Marty Walz, who is torn between the Scylla of outraged constituents and the Charybdis of monied developers.
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Comments
How about "just leave these buildings alone" ?
There is no good reason whatsoever to tear down the former Shreve Crump & Low building or the former WEIU. The buildings are in sound condition.
If Druker doesn't want to be a proper commercial landlord, he should sell to someone who will re-tenant the buildings (or, in the case of WEIU, just leave the current retail tenant in place). Emptying out the Shreve building and letting it sit vacant is a disgraceful act and an insult to the city.
We have a humongous thread on this subject over at ArchBoston.org . Generally people on that forum are pro-development, but almost nobody wants to see these buildings razed for no reason other than to feed Druker's ego and wallet.
I'm 100% with the preservationists on this one. This is quite different from the Apple Store, where an undistinguished old building was taken down to make way for an instant new landmark.
The Apple Store is out of
The Apple Store is out of place on that street, I disagree with "instant landmark" status and instead think that it should be a warning for anytime anyone else wants to take an old block and stick a glass building in the middle.
well of course its out of
well of course its out of place, its a modern glass building surrounded by an aging architectural style of years long past. The argument of new vs. old has come up many times in my design education and one of the most prominent misconceptions is that brick is old and glass is new. Why is brick old? glass has been around just as long, its just the manner in which its used in the construction. Bottom line, the Back Bay Architectural Commission and the wealth and prestige it represents, gets far too much of voice when compared to other areas of Boston and has squashed numerous design over the decades in a way that makes suburban NIMBYs seem open to change. How else can Northeastern pull a fast one on the residents of Roxbury and build their huge residential towers despite public outcry. The BBAC simply has had an imbalanced amount of influence and control and the Apple Store is, beyond a modern and might I say, good design, an enourmous defeat for the BBAC and hopefully opens the doors to good, renowned architecture like the ICA, 111 Huntington and future projects like the Gardner Musuem and MFA expansions.
Still, I question the motives of developers because it always feels that dollar is a greater concern then the well being of the city.
... hopefully opens the
You lost me there.
These days "Lots of glass" automatically = Good Building.
The ICA has the sterility and imposing massing of some of the most loathed structures in the city. It's like a little chunk of City Hall wrapped in glass. The interior has the charm of a hospital.
111 Huntington is the kind of building that would have been remarkable in Atlanta circa 1983.
yeah, i did get a little lost there
I guess I was using more as examples of something new that most people would know of. What I'm really trying to get is that our city has lacked significant leaps into new architecture because of the supposed failures of brutalism and urban renewal, so we now cling to the old brick of the city and therefore define new architecture as an attack on the histroical fabric of our city. I will say that while brutalisms looks can be called into question, the movement (and government that allowed it to try) had merit because it was willing to experiment with something new, something different, something that was Bostonian or puritan or new england, whatever you want to call it. They at least tried something new and I think these new projects in Boston, regardless of material choices, are hitting on that same note and in terms of litigation and power, showing that foundations of groups like BBAC are being to be broken. But let me close with this. The last thing I want to see is the Back Bay become another Government Center, but the area has had such little architectural life thrown into it thats it become a closed commune of sorts. I'm all for preservation (in this case I think that the Shreve building should remain and they should look into alternatives to new development such as a complete interior gut job) but with regards to the Apple store, it was a copy cop. It was nothing more the BBAC trying to flex their muscles and they finally lost.
Say what you will about the ICA, I think its a very well done project from a firm that was known for producing nothing but unrealized projects for so long. That area will soon be developed with many more glass clad clones and be it good or bad in terms of looks, its still better then errecting a bunch of brick, punched window clones and. 111, yeah not a great tower by any means but it certainly out does the Pru.
look before you leap
Certainly, when one's prior significant leaps end up in dung puddles like City Hall, one is hesitant to leap again.
Architecture has become little more than fashion fetishism. Leaping into the latest coolest newest thing is great when you're designing an iPod or some other throwaway consumer device, but the rest of us are stuck with buildings after the architect moves on, passes away, or grows up.
The design faddist point of view that architecture goes out of style like clothing, and we've got to build fashionable buildings, not boring old unfashionable buildings, is revealed in the light of the long view of history to be vapid. We can put our bell bottoms in the closet, but we're stuck wearing drafty City Hall or moldy Gehry monstrosities for decades. Meanwhile, quality never goes out of style (and doesn't leak).
As for the proposed design, it isn't that ugly at all - the building it's replacing isn't perfect either - and seems to fit in all right with the things around it. It does look a little drab, but it's not entirely monolithic. I don't see what the fuss is.
Tough Call
The realities of working in an older building can make the charm wear thin. Very thin.
On the other hand, I get rather annoyed by the local tendency for outscale buildings with "historic attributes" that don't match - things like enormous wooden "colonial style" structures that make no sense at that scale and contain elements that are not scaled to the building.
Why does all this come up so piecemeal, anyway? Where is the master plan? Vancouver, BC has less space for as many or more people than Boston does and it is growing much faster. While there have been the odd "zoning? what's that" hiccups with new residents and redevelopment, they seem to be sensibly developing their city for the population expansion they have been seeing over the last two decades. It seems to be done according to some reasonable plan that balances housing and commercial space, designs in walkable neighborhoods and mixtures, and includes things like light rail lines and enhanced transit and historic preservation.
I agree , I hate those
I agree , I hate those buildings.
In Medford there is the Medford Armory, which I always called the castle, because it looks like castle. I love the building. In the 90's a developer bought the land next door and built a building right next to it. Now Im not from Medford, I dont know Medfords zoning rules, and I wasnt old enough to know why it happened but something crazy happened with that building. They built this "new" building out of cement (I believe) and incorporated aspects of the Armory into the building. So it turned out looking like a cartoon version of the Armory and is just plain aweful looking.
poured concrete
Having conversed with a number of recent arch. school grads over recent years... they practically foam at the mouth when espousing their love for poured concrete as a medium for building.
I was there just yesterday
The family dentist is in the pseudoarmory, which reminds me rather much of a miniature granary and the grain silos I saw in my youth.
Zoning? Medford? Well, now maybe ... but only when convenient for select people to invoke. There was a 1810-1820 structure torn down with full permits last year - seems that because pre-1911 buildings merit historic review, few records "officially" list a pre-1911 date of construction.
Convenient.
Not Dr.Frank?
Not Dr.Frank?
Dr. Nick!
Have been to Dr. Frank for endodontal stuff, but referred by Dr. Nick (Hi Dr. Nick!) across the hall.
When I was a kid Dr.Frank
When I was a kid Dr.Frank used to be in the building to the left of the quasi-armory, but I had heard he moved into the new building after I moved on in my teenage years. Nice guy, its too bad hes in such an ugly building.
"Cartoon" of a building?
How is his precast "limestone" shoebox more aesthetically pleasing than incorporating the existing buildings into a new project?
I think there would be far less opposition to his plan to demolish the block if he actually had a worthwhile vision of what would replace what's already on the site.
Streetfront versus whole building
One thing that Boston doesn't seem to get sometimes is the very separate needs of street-level access and appearance versus the whole building.
In downtown Boston, there is a lot of closed off space at the street level and it is very claustrophobic, forboding, etc. No life - just fortress walls. This just compounds the narrow streets and rat warrens and tangled and strangled feeling on a darker day. Sometimes I have to work through my unease by pretending that I am in a walled fort city.
Places like Portland, OR, Chicago, etc. seem to incorporate street level space as a separate design goal in downtown and city buildings. I think Portland requires storefronts at street level to break up the space and provide space for commercial concerns. I don't know if Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco require it, but the lived reality of the street level is very different because there are stores and shops and not forboding blank walls at the human scale of the building.
I see that they want to save
I see that they want to save the Art Deco section of the building, which was added on in the 1930s. That would be the Art Deco section that would never have been built in the first place if they were around in the 1930s. After all, it was a 20th century intrusion on the 19th century Back Bay architecture.
Building was truncated to extend Arlington Street
The Arlington Street facade was added when Arlington Street itself was extended south of Boylston Street, requiring demolition of part of the building. Before then, a large rail yard separated this area from the South End.
arlington st church
no word on their thoughts of a bigger building going up accross the street?
Read the Herald article for that
Shadow over Shreve’s:
Why does the city care all of a sudden?
Paul McMorrow asks, noting City Hall had several chances to preserve the current building, but passed in part because the south side of Boylston was exactly where development was supposed to happen, to preserve the more historic north side.
My guess is the size of the
My guess is the size of the pocketbooks it is affecting.
A city makes decisions based off of long term projections. In my experience those long term projections tend to follow the interests of the uber connected and very rich, and big business (sometimes a well heeled community group gets automatic say as well.) As a project moves down the line it encounters smaller and smaller opposition which may or may not be able to hault progress. The problem with many parts of Boston right now is that in the past 20 years several "rich" people have moved into town and bought some very expensive homes and thought they were buying into a historical community. They dont find out about the new construction and the plans until the city holds hearings on it and it becomes official, which pretty much is also the stage of the game where things are pretty much assured to happen unless someone can get to the city. With all of these well off people with their overpriced homes and buildings I wouldnt be suprised to find out that they started complaining and used their new political capitol to change the gameplan in mid play.
Notice how , like others mentioned, that doesnt happen nearly as often in places like Roxbury. Its not a racial thing, its a money and political influence thing. Roxbury is lacking well off residents and can only make up the difference if they could get sufficient numbers of residents to rise up against the project and thats kind hard to do when you work a non 9-5 work schedule and meetings always seem to happen at 7pm.
Entering Crazy Town
The entire city needs to take a look at how it's building itself. We opposed like crazy a plan to build over an open highway pit, but we were half asleep while a a great building like this was about to be replaced with a suburban office park. We complain about stagnant growth, expensive housing, and people leaving the city, but we won't allow anything to build anything to alleviate these problems!
Great building? Not exactly
Great building? Not exactly Trinity Church.
Better than City Hall, though.