A sad commentary on our ‘world class’ city
Tim Logan (“Beauty is in the eye of many beholders,’’ Page A1, April 1 ) points out the obstacles to achieving bold architecture in our beloved “don’t rock the boat with anything unsettling and let’s please everyone’’ cityscape. Hence we shall never have the Boston equivalent of Paris’s Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, London’s “gherkin,’’ or even New York City’s bland but at least eye-catching One Trade Center. Pretty sad, for a city so desperately wanting to be thought of as “world class.’’ Do we forever have to settle for the Zakim Bridge as the best we can do? Probably.
Paul Wesel
Jamaica Plain
A skewed competition with unsatisfying results
The competition for the Winthrop Square garage site had six competitors; then, with public input, a finalist was chosen. Then the finalist, Millennium, submitted two more iterations, and the final version is very different from the one originally presented to the public. The public would be better served if the original six competitors would have also been allowed multiple revisions allowing for public input on projects that would actually resemble the building that will be erected.
Richard Kiley
Boston
The writer was on the board of the Prudential Project Advisory Committee and the Fenway Planning Task Force.
Where is concern for environmental impact?
As I read Sunday’s piece on the difficulty of finalizing skyscraper design for Winthrop Square, I hoped to see that the design would include measures to reduce the building’s carbon footprint among the variables under consideration. I was disheartened to find no mention of it. In a year in which we have experienced three devastating hurricanes, record snowfall, and dumpsters floating in our downtown streets — inevitable effects, most scientists agree, of progressing climate change — focusing on aesthetics and ignoring the need to minimize our greenhouse gas emissions seems insane. Cambridge has recognized that its buildings are the source of 80 percent of its emissions and has implemented a 25-year plan to reach a net zero level in its built environment. Net zero construction incorporates Passive House principles like superinsulation and passive solar, among others, to create buildings that have greatly reduced carbon emissions.
Boston needs to modernize its building codes and stop allowing towers of energy inefficient and bird-killing glass like the one at One Dalton Street and haul itself into the 21st century. The architects on the Winthrop Square project are well versed in the Passive House principles; they (the Handel Architects) designed the first Passive House residential high rise to be built in the United States, in New York City. It was completed in 2017 and is projected to save 882 tons of carbon per year. We have the knowledge and the tools. Shame on us (and the Globe) for leaving them out of the discourse on new construction. Indeed, we must place sustainability at the forefront of the conversation.
Margo Custer
Roslindale
