CSX Rail Yards are Focus of Yale Studio
Tim Love, Utile Principal, recently completed coordinating and teaching the second year studio at the Yale School of Architecture. Love, a Visiting Associate Professor at Yale for the Spring 2009 semester, directed the design work of 58 students with seven other instructors. In addition to Love, Alan Plattus, Peggy Deamer, Andrea Kahn, Ben Pell, Makram El Kadi, and Ljiljana Blagojevic also taught studio sections.
Teams of two and three students designed mixed-use development proposals for a 77-acre brownfield site owned by Harvard University in the Allston neighborhood of Boston. The site, currently housing a CSX freight rail yard and other industrial uses, was envisioned as a commercial development that would create productive synergies with Harvard’s proposed new science campus. The studio program required non-affiliated student housing to meet the needs of both Harvard and Boston University. The brief also included live/work loft space for creative economy businesses and high technology and life science start-ups.
Students were asked to integrate sustainable design strategies into their urban proposals with a specific emphasis on site-wide storm water approaches. Alex Felson, a landscape architect with a joint appointment with the School of Forestry and the Architecture School, served as a roving critic for this aspect of the studio program.
Robert AM Stern, Ken Greenberg, Barbara Littenberg, Patrick Pinnell, Kevin Daly, Robert Culver, Claude Cormier, and Nathalie Beauvais, among many others, were guest critics during the semester.
Michael LeBlanc Speaks at Puma City Panel
Michael LeBlanc, Utile Principal, was one of five panelists invited to discuss the temporary Puma City pavilion with Ada Tolla and Guiseppe Lignano of LOT-EK, the designers of the structure. The pavilion, constructed of shipping containers painted bright red and emblazoned with the Puma logo, included a Puma retail store and a busy bar with a deck on the top floor. More than the appeal of stacked red shipping containers (shoe boxes?), the pavilion provided a thrills-a-second spatial sequence with views down into the Puma store on one stair and up into the Grey Goose-sponsored bar from another.
There was some teeth-gnashing about the relative sustainability of the pavilion, which is following the Volvo racing sail boats from port to port. As Ted Smalley Bowen commented in a recent issue of Metropolis:
“But while the designers typically revel in repurposing the stuff of industrial society—from shipping containers and oil tanks to detergent bottles—the Puma pavilion was actually purpose-built in China (where they’ve been keeping busy with several projects recently). So, wait, doesn’t the container’s newness contradict LOT-EK’s reuse tenet? Not according to the designers, who noted that they’re making use of the modules and logistics of the containerized shipping system and demonstrating the potential of container architecture.
We agree; and for us, the expressive strategy of the building (perfect for its overtly commercial function) and the rich spatial experience that was carved out of the dumb boxes was more than worth the experiment.
Smart Framing and Red Cedar Cladding
The Harris Residence, located on a beautiful wooded site south of the Blue Hills outside of Boston, is nearing completion and the crew from MCR Construction continues to do thoughtful high quality work.
The single-story house, designed to hug the natural topography of the site, takes advantage of prevailing breezes and solar orientation. In addition, the design utilizes Smart Framing, a technique that was adopted and advanced by Michael LeBlanc, Utile Principal, to both reduce lumber costs and thermal bridging in the exterior walls. This dimension-efficient system reduced the costs of the hidden components of the structure, allowing for the reallocation of money to the Douglas fir windows (by Dynamic), Western Cedar cladding, and high-quality interior finishes.
The wood cladding is a rain screen held off the sheathing by furring strips. This system sheds water more effectively than conventional cladding because the large air space is less likely to create the negative pressure that can cause water to be drawn through the small cracks that are unavoidable in typical wood frame construction. Furring strips were installed on a diagonal to ensure that water would drain and convective air movement would occur behind the rain screen cladding.
Profitability Workshop
On Thursday, April 2, Billy Craig and Michael LeBlanc presented a workshop at the Residential Design and Construction Convention in Boston on profitabilty in architectural practice. They focused the workshop around Utile’s experiences managing its business and projects. The setting was informal, discussion was lively, and many thoughts and ideas were shared. Attendees ranged from hopeful start-ups to 30 year industry vets. While Billy and Michael didn’t come with a silver bullet for the audience to achieve their profitability goals with, they aimed to arm the room with a comfort in talking about money and marketing matters. For additional information, please contact Billy Craig.
Harvard Law School Panel Discussion
Tim Love is one of four panelists invited to comment on the new book “City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation” by Gerald E. Fung and David J. Barron. The authors, both professors at the Harvard Law School, make the case that the legal structure that binds city power to state authority limits the ability of cities to do comprehensive planning. Love will discuss the issues raised by the book in the context of potential approaches to the redevelopment of Government Center in Boston. Utile recently explored a range of strategies for the district on behalf of the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency (MassDevelopment).
The other panelists are Susan Fainstein, Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; Robert J. Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University; and Sam Bass Warner, Visiting Professor of Urban History at MIT.
A conversation to celebrate the release of City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation
Monday, March 16 6:00 PM
Stubbins Room
Harvard Graduate School of Design
48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Utile selected for the Downtown Boston Greenway District Study
Utile was selected by the Boston Redevelopment Authority to lead an ambitious new planning initiative in Downtown Boston. As the BRA Request for Proposal states: The study seeks to develop guiding urban design and planning principles for the new Greenway District focused around the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The study will examine potential development opportunities; identify and define height, density, and use guidelines; and develop scenarios for future development in the area. The study will include an assessment of impacts of density and height on the Rose Kennedy Greenway as well as the adjoining districts/neighborhoods.
The study will include recommendations for sustainable design guidelines for the District in keeping with Mayor Thomas Menino’s recently announced Government Center Green Growth District.
Utile’s work will also explore an innovative parking policy that reduces commuter and special event car use Downtown, achievable because the area is well-served by mass transit. Parking policy is being prioritized because three potential development sites within the study area are currently publicly accessible parking garages with a total capacity of 4378 cars. A development proposal to replace one of them, the 2300-car Government Center Garage, is active right now and is being vetted by the developer/owner Raymond Properties in a series of informal community meetings.
Utile will be collaborating with Ken Greenberg, a Toronto-based urban designer; HR&A, a Manhattan-based real estate and economic development advisory firm; and the Boston office of Nelson Nygaard, a nationally recognized transportation planning firm.
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.
ZUMIX Firehouse to proceed
Utile has been working closely with ZUMIX, a youth-centered music non-profit, to design their new cultural and performance space in the old Engine 40 Firehouse in East Boston. The 1923 brick building will house a large performance area, a radio station, a recording studio, music classrooms and support spaces, and will greatly enhance both the capacity and profile of the organization. The project aspires to a LEED Silver certification, an effort lead by collaborator New Ecology, and will be a green-building demonstration project for other non-profits and the neighborhood of East Boston.
Find out more about ZUMIX here.
Review of Congress for New Urbanism in Yale Constructs
Tim Love’s review of the 16th Congress for the New Urbanism is published in the Fall 2008 issue of Constructs, a publication of the Yale School of Architecture. Titled Ideology vs. Pragmatism in New Urbanism, Love describes his experience at the conference and argues that CNU’s pragmatic approach is more relevant than its ideological underpinnings:
“The culture (of CNU) is deeply pragmatic in its approach and almost evangelical in its convictions. What’s remarkable is that a potent intellectual agenda has emerged precisely at the moment that CNU morphed from a polemical think tank into an industry tradeshow… CNU has been able to develop a planning methodology and a market simultaneously.”
Click here to download a PDF of the article.
Love will be coordinating and teaching the urbanism studio at Yale in Spring 2009.
Utile selected to design Harbor Park Pavilion
Boston Harbor Island Alliance and the National Park Service recently announced that Utile, a Boston-based architecture and urban design firm, has been awarded the contract to design a visitor pavilion on Parcel 14 of the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Utile was selected after an open call for proposals from design firms; twenty-nine firms submitted proposals. The pavilion is an information center for the Boston Harbor Islands and has been conceived as the first step in the journey to the islands via nearby ferries.
The client team was previously pursuing a fully conditioned building for the site but made the decision to meet the program requirements with an open-air pavilion and a series of kiosks and exhibits. “With a change in emphasis in the project scope, the pavilion can be perceived as an important element in a larger landscape strategy that will make Parcel 14 an open space destination, as well as a key gateway to the harbor islands,” said Tom Powers, President of the Island Alliance, the non-profit partner of the National Park Service.
To meet the full promise of the project ambitions, Utile will be collaborating with Reed Hilderbrand, an award-winning landscape architecture firm. In addition, IDEO, a nationally-recognized design consultancy, will provide input on how human factors should impact the design of the landscape and pavilion. Utile and IDEO will also work together to conceive the exhibits and information graphics that complement the direct interaction of the pavilion staff.
Utile sees an enormous opportunity to complement and build on the early successes of the Greenway parks. As Tim Love, Utile principal, remarked, “Our team has the advantage of starting the design process the same month that the Greenway had its official opening. Rather than imagine the context of the site through renderings and models, we can observe for ourselves where the parks have engaged the public and where the intentions of the parks have not yet reached their full potential to generate public life.”
Morrissey Site Study
Utile is working with Synergy, a Boston development firm, to create a new-mixed use, transit-oriented neighborhood along Morrissey Boulevard near the JFK/UMASS MBTA station. The proposal is being coordinated with the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s ongoing Columbia Point Master Plan. Current plans for the site include an active community ‘main-street’ running parallel to Morrissey Boulevard that will serve the greater Columbia Point and Dorchester neighborhoods. This street will connect directly to the adjacent T station and a planned mixed-use development on the MBTA parcel. The development includes a mix of retail, residential and office space, combined with a network of open spaces and an active public realm. The project provides a full range of economic development, housing, and recreational opportunities for the neighborhood.
Downtown Crossing Signage Guidelines
Utile Inc. is collaborating with the BRA on a new set of guidelines for commercial signs in Boston’s Downtown Crossing District. Utile helped frame the content of the regulations, an update of Boston’s Sign Code first enacted in the 1970s. In addition, Utile is creating a richly illustrated manual that better communicates both the regulations and the rationale of the guidelines within a broader urban design agenda.
A first public meeting of the regulations was held on Thursday, October 23 to inform the final manifestation of the guidelines and regulations.