Negotiating between Monument and the Fabric

10/6/2009 Uncategorized

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Several churches along Newbury Street, and on other dense infill sites in Boston, do an excellent job of negotiating between the street wall condition and the desire for the mass of the church to stand out from the urban fabric.  The best example may be Emmanuel Church at 15 Newbury Street.  The wings that bookend the composition deftly reconcile the sculptural mass of the church with the mass and scale of the abutting buildings.  It would be useful and important to document and diagram this and similar conditions around the City since the problem of fitting big and fat contemporary building types into existing cities is one of the central urban design problems of 21st century urban revitalization.

-Tim