High Rise, High Density,
In Moderation
2014

Small Mixed-Use Tower Office
Boston, Massachusetts

Combining the spatial generosity typical of European housing with the vertical density of downtown American cities, the project brief asks for housing that produces greater density principally through the vertical dimension, rather than smaller units and/or more efficient circulation. Due to this interest in the multiplication of floors, the project begins with a typological investigation of the tall building, an American invention of the late nineteenth century, including a close reading of Louis Sullivan’s “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered”. The site is located in downtown Boston, near Chinatown, which presents everyday design issues regarding access to light and air brought on by a small site located between two buildings, even as it presents to the city a unique corner situation at a triangular intersection. The proposed building seeks to mediate between the scales of the surrounding buildings, from adjacent five, six, and twelve story buildings to the much taller Hyatt hotel and State Street office buildings to the immediate west and east. In addition to the overall height of the building, the project reconsiders Sullivan’s theory on tripartite composition as a way of further mediating scales and producing the effect of a building that sits within the background of the urban fabric, itself produced largely by buildings designed according the original tenets laid out by Sullivan. For Sullivan, there was ground floor retail, several floors of quasi-retail merchant space, followed by floors of office space repeated ad infinitum. This project advocates for moderation, with some retail on the ground floor, followed by several floors of flexible space, that might be office initially, but at any time may be used as larger ‘loft’ type live/work, as the area becomes more residential in character. Above this are ten floors of residential apartments with various layouts, promoting a variety of household types from single occupants to couples and families. Finally there is an interest in the production of entries, halls, vestibules, anterooms, and the general deployment of walls (as opposed to columns) as a means to produce mildly idiosyncratic apartments of rooms.