Typological Morphing—Park Square
Boston, MA
1978
Agrest
The project (which | like to call ‘A Fiction’) for the renewal of the Park Square area in Boston, is not a ‘real’ project, and it is not a Utopian vision of the city. It implies the struggle—in Andre Gide’s terms, ‘between the real, reality itself, and the representation of reality.’
This project redefines the area within the historical context of the city and within its own more immediate surroundings. It contends with the layers of history of Boston’s development and the various types of buildings involved in the development.
The basic operation of this exploration, of this fiction, involves the inspection of the tabula rasa as an urban operation. Here, the tabula rasa plays a productive role, rather than the destructive one it has been assigned in the development of cities, and allows for the articulation of the different forces that bear on this historic place—the intersection of the old and the new, of the historical past and the modern past, of the city fabric and the buildings that constitute it, of nature and architecture.
This project deals with the tradition of the city without mimicry or easy picturesqueness. The operation of tabula rasa is used here in order to produce a new reading of the city. The project itself is the result of reading the real city and rewriting it through the eyes of the architect as filmmaker.
At each of its edges, Park Square identifies itself with a different section of the city. At Park Square, the four quadrants generated by the forces that configure the city intersect. This intersection is both literal and symbolic. It is the intersection of two axes, that of history and that of the negation of history: modernity. The relationship and articulation of these various forces is rendered by a repertory of public spaces and places that are essential to the form and culture of the city: streets, squares, and plazas, and transitional elements such as arcades, gates, doors, and stairs.
The north and south quadrants define the traditional north-south axis, and join Bay Village, the Public Gardens, and Beacon Hill. As developed in this project, the axis works with the city fabric. The intersection of nature and the city—the public park—generates the north quadrant. Two elements have been added to define this quadrant: a partition in the center of an existing lake and a row of trees by the sidewalk facing Park Square. The urban fabric governs the south quadrant. In the design, the small-scale area of Bay Village, whose boundaries are already eroded, is framed on three sides by a wall of housing. The wall preserves the identity and quality of this area of small-scale town houses and small streets. The wall is interrupted where it intersects with existing streets.
The west and east quadrants define the east-west axis of modernity that runs from the Prudential Center to the Government Center district, incorporating Back Bay as a modern urban development. This axis offers an example of the completion rather than the destruction of the city. This axis contains buildings or groups of buildings, typical of the post-World War II urban ideology, that have been built in the recent past without concern for the urban fabric. Exemplary of this are the new Prudential Center to the west of Park Square, and the new Government Center to its east, an example of object-oriented urban architecture. In contrast to the anti-urbanity of the commercial developments stands Back Bay, one of the most powerful urban developments in the United States. Conceived and realized as a landfilling operation in the nineteenth century, the development combines a grid of streets and alleys of different widths and a building typology of brownstones and brick town houses.
Though the west quadrants are on the axis of modernity, they incorporate its nineteenth-century neighbor, Back Bay. The arcade building type, a remnant of which remains on the site, governs the development of the west quadrant. This type, repeated and combined with the nineteenth-century grid of Back Bay, produces a marketplace of arcades and streets.
The east quadrant is organized by urban architecture, incorporating the modern high-rise building type as an economic necessity for city growth. The towers of the east quadrant sit on a plinth connected to the street by grand stairs. The scale of the plinth establishes a relationship with the street, and this relationship allows the base of the tower to be turned into a public place. The buildings are not designed as finished pieces of architecture but rather as indications in relation to the public spaces they frame.
In the northeast quadrant of the square, a traffic circle displaces the center of the square. A diagonal runs from the statue in the center of the traffic circle to the corners of the square, creating a line that defines the edge of Boston Neck—the old water edge of the city.
This project redefines the area within the historical context of the city and within its own more immediate surroundings. It contends with the layers of history of Boston’s development and the various types of buildings involved in the development.
The basic operation of this exploration, of this fiction, involves the inspection of the tabula rasa as an urban operation. Here, the tabula rasa plays a productive role, rather than the destructive one it has been assigned in the development of cities, and allows for the articulation of the different forces that bear on this historic place—the intersection of the old and the new, of the historical past and the modern past, of the city fabric and the buildings that constitute it, of nature and architecture.
This project deals with the tradition of the city without mimicry or easy picturesqueness. The operation of tabula rasa is used here in order to produce a new reading of the city. The project itself is the result of reading the real city and rewriting it through the eyes of the architect as filmmaker.
At each of its edges, Park Square identifies itself with a different section of the city. At Park Square, the four quadrants generated by the forces that configure the city intersect. This intersection is both literal and symbolic. It is the intersection of two axes, that of history and that of the negation of history: modernity. The relationship and articulation of these various forces is rendered by a repertory of public spaces and places that are essential to the form and culture of the city: streets, squares, and plazas, and transitional elements such as arcades, gates, doors, and stairs.
The north and south quadrants define the traditional north-south axis, and join Bay Village, the Public Gardens, and Beacon Hill. As developed in this project, the axis works with the city fabric. The intersection of nature and the city—the public park—generates the north quadrant. Two elements have been added to define this quadrant: a partition in the center of an existing lake and a row of trees by the sidewalk facing Park Square. The urban fabric governs the south quadrant. In the design, the small-scale area of Bay Village, whose boundaries are already eroded, is framed on three sides by a wall of housing. The wall preserves the identity and quality of this area of small-scale town houses and small streets. The wall is interrupted where it intersects with existing streets.
The west and east quadrants define the east-west axis of modernity that runs from the Prudential Center to the Government Center district, incorporating Back Bay as a modern urban development. This axis offers an example of the completion rather than the destruction of the city. This axis contains buildings or groups of buildings, typical of the post-World War II urban ideology, that have been built in the recent past without concern for the urban fabric. Exemplary of this are the new Prudential Center to the west of Park Square, and the new Government Center to its east, an example of object-oriented urban architecture. In contrast to the anti-urbanity of the commercial developments stands Back Bay, one of the most powerful urban developments in the United States. Conceived and realized as a landfilling operation in the nineteenth century, the development combines a grid of streets and alleys of different widths and a building typology of brownstones and brick town houses.
Though the west quadrants are on the axis of modernity, they incorporate its nineteenth-century neighbor, Back Bay. The arcade building type, a remnant of which remains on the site, governs the development of the west quadrant. This type, repeated and combined with the nineteenth-century grid of Back Bay, produces a marketplace of arcades and streets.
The east quadrant is organized by urban architecture, incorporating the modern high-rise building type as an economic necessity for city growth. The towers of the east quadrant sit on a plinth connected to the street by grand stairs. The scale of the plinth establishes a relationship with the street, and this relationship allows the base of the tower to be turned into a public place. The buildings are not designed as finished pieces of architecture but rather as indications in relation to the public spaces they frame.
In the northeast quadrant of the square, a traffic circle displaces the center of the square. A diagonal runs from the statue in the center of the traffic circle to the corners of the square, creating a line that defines the edge of Boston Neck—the old water edge of the city.