I made the decision to cut the building in two at the ground floor level to allow the "Flow of Boston" to circulate through as if the building were not there. I did a quick sketch to try to get a feeling for occupying that space between the two parts of the building.
Cutting the building at a 45 degree angle did a few things. It freed the pedestrian flow as expected. It created two separate and unequal structures at the ground level and beyond. The smaller part has greater visibility and therefore importance where the larger part is more hidden, an interesting paradox. It also began to set up a geometrical language of 45 and 90 degree angles.
My first resolution for the form of both parts the building worked off of this now established relationship. This creates some strong forms which work with pedestrian flow and create an ordered expression. It steps into the sidewalk - the realm of the pedestrian - without being too oppressive. It serves to create some inviting exterior spaces and concave entrances to the pass-through.
I decided to look back to a couple of other options which were considered but rejected to see what everybody else thinks about them.
The first introduces a second geometry - a semicircle. This works to further differentiate the two different building parts formally, and it further softens the buildings "intrusion" into the pedestrian space. Do these two geometries conflict with each other too much or do they somehow work together to differentiate the parts and strengthen the whole?
I also considered a more of a "truncated square" approach, slicing parts out of the square form and shifting the smaller part of the building somewhat to interact with the pedestrian flow. This has strong formal continuity, and visually expresses the effect of the "slice". The weakness is that it presents a real "repellent corner" with its acute angles on the north and east approach. Do you think this factor is strong enough to reject this plan or does it deserve further study to soften that corner? 
I would appreciate some thoughts on this - either to push me down my current path or to send me down a new one.
1 comment:
Rick,
I will suspend disbelief that the split building approach is in the realm of the flow of boston concept. When I think of flow a river is the first thing that comes to mind. While pedestrians are not as smooth as water, they do take the pasth of leaset resistance and move around surfaces which are inhabited by objects. I appreciate your effort to test a few plan ideas before committing to one. Of the outcropped building fragments, the semi-circle is the most beleivable. The octagon treats all sides as equals and does not differentiate the inside of the tunnel fromthe street side. My sense is they would be VERY different spaces. I think you should draw a lozenge in plan. This eye shaped outcropping might be closer to addtessing flow than an octagon. The sides of the octagon bock pedestrians, not allow them to flow. An almond shaped element truly allows flow, as it simply puts a fork in the road. In this way, I think the third layer in from the street, that is to say, the facade shared with the tunnel and the big part of the store, should reveal that it is the third layer. It is an outside, but also a sort of inside. Shouldn't this be differentiated from the other outsides and inside surfaces?
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