Reimagining Boston’s Stalled Filene’s Project
Utile was featured in the Boston Globe on Sunday, September 20th.
The firm was one of several architects, artists, and designers to submit ideas for a temporary installation at the stalled One Franklin Square project in Downtown Boston. The development, halted during the economic downturn last fall, has left several bays of the historic Filene’s building and a nearby building standing but hastened the departure of Filene’s Basement, a Boston cultural landmark, from the Downtown Crossing neighborhood.
Utile’s proposal is meant to be up for three years, calculated by speculating about the time needed for re-design to meet a future real estate market and the new round of approvals that will be inevitably required. The proposal, estimated to cost between $800 thousand to $1.2 million, includes two wooden boardwalks that crisscross over the construction excavation, creating new pedestrian shortcuts in the busy Downtown Crossing neighborhood. The bottom of the pit, almost thirty feet below, is imagined as a pastoral meadow, kept trimmed by a herd of sheep lent from a nearby farm. Casey Ross, writer for the Boston Globe, suggested that the meadow was a nod to the original use of the Boston Common as grazing land available to residents of the growing town.
Utile principal Tim Love, who worked with Aude Jomini, Utile’s summer 2009 Yale intern, on the proposal, recommends a new regulation that will require developers to take out an insurance policy to pay for temporary improvements if construction is delayed more than nine months. The budget for improvements would be pegged to the construction cost of the project. Ross quoted Love: “If developers want to play in this city and take risks, one of the risks they have to mitigate is the chance that the economy might collapse between permitting and construction.’’ Love continued: “Any landowner has a civic responsibility to make their property look attractive. If a homeowner has a weed-filled front yard or leaves trash out, they would face penalties in most municipalities.”
Business Journal Names Utile a “Go-To” Firm on Matters of Urban Design
Utile is featured in today’s (Friday, September 9, 2009) print edition of the Boston Business Journal. From James McCown’s article “Drawing on Repeat Business Helps Architectural Firms”:
“…While a small firm, Utile Architecture & Planning is carving a niche for itself as sort of a “go-to” firm on matters of urban design in Boston, doing work for major city and state agencies. The 14-person office, headed by husband-and-wife team Tim and Mimi Love and principals Michael LeBlanc and Matthew Littell, is doing a major study of the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Utile also has on-call design contracts with MassDevelopment and Massport.
“For each developable parcel on the Greenway, we’re looking at moderate density and reasonable high-density alternatives,” said Tim Love. “Right now, there are fewer new projects overall in Boston, so the city can catch its breath and focus on a larger vision for the Greenway.
“That’s not to say that things aren’t getting built. Love said he expects to begin construction in October on the Harbor Park Pavilion, on the Greenway adjacent to Christopher Columbus Park. It is envisioned as the gateway to the Boston Harbor Islands. At the opposite end of the Greenway, Utile continues to consult on design issues for the Boston Public Market Association, which holds farmer’s markets at Dewey Square and at the Old Northern Avenue Bridge.”
William Rawn Associates and Chris Grimley at over,under were also featured in the article.
Moose Hill House in Boston Home
The Moose Hill House was featured in the Summer 2009 issue of Boston Home. Editor-in-chief Rachel Levitt wrote:
“ . . . out of the blue, an e-mail arrived from someone I didn’t know. The author matter-of-factly offered us a project, images attached. I clicked on the JPEG and – whoa – got a sudden jolt of energy. The design gods were clearly issuing a reminder that inspiration strikes unexpectedly. The talent in question is Michael LeBlanc, an architect at Boston-based Utile Architecture + Planning. Following his introductory note and a brief phone call, we clinched a story that captures this magazine’s appreciation for scale (small), budget (moderate), and aesthetics (inviting, modern). A few months later, his work is part of what I like to think of as the Boston Home collection – houses we admire, even envy, but which don’t necessarily involve limitless budgets.”
Ames Shovel Works is One of Eleven Most Endangered Sites
The Ames Shovel Works in North Easton, Massachusetts has been listed as one of eleven properties on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2009 list of America’s most endangered historic places. As the New York Times (4/28/09) reported, “Each year the trust selects what it considers important examples of the nation’s architectural, cultural, and natural heritage that are at risk of being destroyed or irreparably damaged.” Other sites on this year’s list include Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill. and the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.
The Ames Shovel Works are a mostly intact 19th century industrial complex that was built as part of a larger town-building initiative that includes both a town hall and library by H.H. Richardson. The buildings are threatened by a developer who acquired the rights to the parcels and is using 40B, a statewide as-of-right zoning regulation meant to promote affordable housing, to circumvent local review of the project.
Michael LeBlanc, Utile Principal, continues to work with the Ames family on an economically feasible development alternative that will save and restore the majority of the extant structures. Utile is working closely with Jay Wickersham of Noble & Wickersham (Legal Counsel), George Cole of GLC Development Resources (Development Finance Analysts), and Chris Milford of Milford and Ford Architects (Preservation Architects).
Ames Shovel Works in the Boston Globe
When a local developer purchased a site in North Easton, Massachusetts that used to house the Ames Shovel Works, the Ames family took notice. As lifetime owners and operators of the Shovel Works (they sold the complex in 1972), they had strong emotional ties to the site and were uniquely positioned to create awareness about its’ storied history.
The Village of North Easton is one of the most important industrial sites in Massachusetts, home to National Landmarks designed by H.H. Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted open spaces, other significant period architecture and of course, the Shovel Works. As one time producers of 60 percent of the world’s shovels, the Ames wealth fueled all the aforementioned building.
When it became clear that the granite buildings that once housed the Shovel Works were in jeopardy of being demolished or, at best, irreparably altered in the planned Chapter 40B redevelopment, the Ames sprung to action. Along with other concerned residents, agencies and commissions, they formed The Friends of the Historic Ames Shovel Works at North Easton. The group hired an expert team to take up their cause: Utile, Inc. as urban designers and master planners, Noble and Wickersham as regulatory lawyers, Milford and Ford Architects as preservationists, and GLC Development Consulting as financial analysts.
Utile was tasked with creating a set of guidelines both sensitive to the historic importance of the site and realistic to potential redevelopment under existing 40B regulations. Under the new guidelines, Utile designed an alternative development scheme that kept density low and allowed for the preservation of significant buildings, primarily by using historic tax credits to meet the developments financial objectives.
The process is ongoing, and Utile remains an active and open participant. An article written by architecture critic Robert Campbell on the situation (including the image you see above) appeared in the Boston Globe on November 30.
Hyde Blakemore featured in Boston Globe
Utile Principal Matthew Littell was featured in a recent cover story in the Boston Globe Home section about a new generation of affordable housing. Ted Siefer writes: “Among the humble brick and vinyl suburban-style houses along Hyde Park Avenue in Roslindale, the Hyde-Blakemore Condominiums stand out. There are the mahogany-louvered fences, the solar panels, and the flying-V roof line on the main building, which besides looking cool, channels rainwater into a landscaped rock garden.” Utile worked with Urban Edge, A Roxbury-based community development corporation, on the project.
Siefer continues: “Littell said Hyde-Blakemore represents a new stage in the evolution of affordable housing.”Starting in the 1980s, after the big brick public housing model became invalid, these wood frame Easter egg-colored villages began appearing,” he said. “Gradually they became more in synch with the adjacent neighborhood. What we’re seeing now is a much better second generation of that.”
Landworks Studio designed the project’s landscape strategy which enhances privacy between buildings and addresses environmental issues, such as managing storm water run-off through grading and the use of bioswales (in collaboration with civil engineer Samiotes).
Utile is also collaborating with Urban Edge on the residential portion of the Jackson Square complex in Jamaica Plain, and the firm is working with Chelsea Neighborhood Developers on a 48-unit affordable apartment complex, part of the city’s massive Box District redevelopment plan.”
Click here to view the Globe’s photo gallery of the project.
Tim Love’s Northeastern Housing studios featured in alumni magazine
Northeastern’s housing studios were featured in the Spring 2008 issue of the Northeastern University Alumni Magazine. The article highlighted the program’s focus on brownfield sites in cities such as Somerville and Chelsea and the expectation that students grapple with “real life” issues such as development economics and regulatory frameworks during the design process.
Author Karen Feldster writes, “Tim Love agrees that the Housing Studio gives students a big hurdle to jump. ‘One thing about the studio is the mind-numbing complexity of housing,’ he says. ‘It’s like teaching someone to play an instrument really well in just a semester. Students have to understand multifamily housing, which includes the individual unit itself – kitchen, bedroom, living room, other rooms – and how you aggregate those units around corridors, staircases, elevators. In the world of architectural design, it’s like a Rubik’s cube.’ Selecting particular sites in the Boston areas makes the work even more complicated for students, because they have to design with real-world constraints in mind.”
Tim Love’s review published in the Harvard Design Magazine
Tim Love’s review of the Harvard Design Magazine Symposium “Can Design Improve Life in Cities? The Cases of Los Angeles, London and Chicago” was published in the online version of the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of the Harvard Design Magazine. In the essay, Love critiques the emphasis on signature projects by American municipal leaders and looks to current developments in London as a model for a more nuanced integration of design with public policy. As Love comments, “most impressive was the presentation by Peter Bishop, Director of Design for London, a new governmental organization that “will coordinate the mayor’s architectural and urban design strategies.” The diagrams, plans, and renderings of the several ambitious but surgical urban design interventions in central London were unparalleled at the symposium and equal the best urban design work being done today.”
Click here to read the article.
Historic Treasure Trove Found in School Attic
During the construction of Schoolhouse Lofts, Utile’s conversion of a 19th-century brick school in Worcester into 28 condominiums, the construction team discovered a file cabinet in the attic containing continuous school attendance records dating back to 1897, the year of the first class in the school. The early books, bound in twine and written in ink script, reveal not only each child’s address, birth date and birth location, but also the parents’ nationality, the teachers’ level of experience and salary. The development team contacted the Worcester Historical Museum, which has taken the school records and are cataloging them, as well as all ancillary materials found in the cabinet, for their archives and for the use of future researchers.
As the archivists noted, the remarkably seamless records track the life of one Worcester neighborhood through an entire century. A letter from President Herbert Hoover, entreating the teachers and children to “refrain from heedless eating” during WWI shortages, and an early version of the Pledge of Allegiance were copied from the archive and framed, and now hang in the converted school. Various media outlets carried the story, including NECN and the Worcester Telegram.
Utile featured in Architectural Record
Utile was one of six firms featured as Boston’s “Next Wave” in the May 2008 issue of Architectural Record. Hubert Murray writes “The firm’s approach is to develop a specific expertise in multi-family housing and leverage that into the development world and the expanded scope of developer-pragmatic urban design. Utile has now established itself as the leading proponent of edgy European-style housing throughout the Boston area. Teaching at Northeastern University and, with over,under, publishing the Urban Housing Atlas, are all facets of the firm’s single focused strategy. Now that the residential market is softening, the practice is taking a similar approach to the commercial market.”
Utile in the Paper
On Sunday, the Boston Globe profiled three Utile projects located in South Boston.
The Projects featured were:
321 West Second Street
557/559 East Second Street
Trolley House
Click here to download a pdf of the entire article.