Planning
Living with Water: The Urban Implications
As co-chair of ULI Boston’s Building Resilience Task Force, I am joining other ULI members in a design charrette titled Living with Water: The Urban Implications, on May 8th…
Worcester’s Transformation in the Globe
The latest article in the Boston Globe profiles the transformative nature of our CitySquare project in Worcester. Many of the topics discussed in this article go back to our initial discussions for the urban design approach to this project nearly 10 years ago. While the reconnection of the street network and the redevelopment of the urban streetscape seem like obvious goals, the realization of those goals required a complex partnership between our design team, developers, and the community. Arrowstreet is proud of what has been accomplished in downtown Worcester, and looks forward to the next phases of the CitySquare project and its significant impacts on the revitalization of New England’s second largest city.
The Alewife Greenway Bike Path
There’s a recently opened section of bike path that connects Mystic Valley Parkway in Arlington to the Red Line at Alewife. The stretch I use on my way to work parallels Route 16 as it passes by Dilboy Stadium just along the western edge of Alewife Brook on its way to Broadway on the Somerville line. It exists in an interesting urban boundary zone…
Freeport Village
Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday!
Freeport Maine has long called itself the outlet shopping capital of New England. LL Bean’s Flagship store has anchored the town for over 100 years, and the shoe store Cole Haan was built into an international success from its humble beginnings by its CEO, George Denney, a Freeport native and lifelong resident…
3-D Printed Models at ABX
Among all of the other interesting things that will be going on at the Architecture Boston Expo (ABX) this week, National Reprographics (NRI) is holding a 3D-printed model contest as part of the event’s 3D Printing Pavilion. The model contest involved the design of a 5,000-seat performance space on an ambiguous “waterfront” site. It wasn’t a lot to go on as far as real-world design problems go, but that was actually a nice change because it left a lot of details up to the imagination. Once designed, contestants were to submit a digital model file to NRI so that it could be printed for the ABX show…
ULI UrbanPlan Volunteering
As an architect, I enjoy bringing my passion for good design to both the office and to the community. I feel that having connections with the larger community strengthens my ability to connect with the people who interact with our buildings every day. Many of the projects I work on are schools, so I particularly enjoy working with students and…
The EpiCenter To Expand
Artists for Humanity will be expanding their studio space in South Boston with the gift of land by Gillette. It’s hard to believe the EpiCenter we designed for AFH (Boston’s first LEED Platinum building) opened almost nine years ago now. They have grown to employ more than 250 teen artists. Arrowstreet has continued to work with AFH over the years, including generating ideas for how they could expand…
Rails and Trails
For the past seven years, I’ve lived with my family in a small house that abuts a long abandoned spur of railroad tracks in Somerville, MA. The tracks have had a colorful history, as they used to serve a factory that manufactured paper products, construction supplies, and root beer at various points in its history. We’ve also heard stories from former residents that circus trains used to park on the tracks overnight before their trips into Boston. So lions, tigers, and elephants may have been transient residents of our backyard…
Building Information Marveling
Perhaps it’s the inner BIM (Building Information Modeling) geek in me, but I’m constantly impressed while looking at the construction document level MEP models that our engineers generate. While there is a certain level of mundanity to the subject matter, there is also an elegance that stems from being able to visualize the entirety of the air and hydronic systems in a building in three dimensions. The models at this stage of development are notable because they represent the many hours of thought and effort from the engineering disciplines all consolidated into one digital representation…
Rock Spring Centre
Arrowstreet is continuing our design support for Rock Spring Centre. We’ve been helping our client, DRI, as they work with grocery/market and other tenants for this mixed-use development in Montgomery County, Maryland. The full project will provide retail, office, hotel, and housing strategically located at a confluence of major highways just north of Washington, D.C.