Boston is experiencing one of the most rapid booms in construction in decades. There are roughly 70 projects under construction throughout the city, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority. It’s hard to miss the cranes dotting the skyline.
But how do these new designs look to a trained, critical eye?
Josh Slater, an architect and principal partner at Boston-based Studio 3.0, accompanied Bob Oakes and Shannon Dooling on a driving tour of several of the city’s developments.
The Bruce C. Bolling Building, named after the late city councilor, is located in Roxbury’s Dudley Square. It’s the new headquarters of Boston Public Schools.
Josh Slater: It’s a beautiful building on a lot of levels and you can see how it’s both respectful of the existing neighborhood and context, but also takes some of those cues and does a very modern take on it that’s really successful (…) It’s also important to note in the context of other things we’ve seen today in terms of the role of development as a whole, typically you wouldn’t expect a municipal building to be the catalyst for a new neighborhood the way that, for example, a multi-use building might be with the active ground floor that we’ve talked about. Here I think partially because of the success of the design, this is seen as that catalyst for this area.
Listen to the full interview at: 90.9 Wbur Boston's NPR News Station