News
Pie in the Sky
Each year, my family and I form a pie team for Community Servings’ annual Pie in the Sky fundraising event. The event, which has just completed its 21st year, raises money to provide meals and nutrition to the critically ill and homebound in Massachusetts. Community Servings provides meals to more than 800 individuals and families across 18 towns and cities, in support of its founding goals: to help its clients maintain their health and dignity, to preserve the integrity of their families, to provide nutritionally and culturally appropriate meals, and to send the message that someone cares…
NEWIRE Tour of Chestnut Hill Square
Here are some photos of the recent NEWiRE tour of the Chestnut Hill Square project we’re working on for New England Development. As a member of the project team for a couple of years now, I enjoyed hearing from NED’s Doug Karp about the project, and hearing feedback from attendees about the project’s design. And we even received a reward for attending – the retailers contributed to amazing gift bags, Wegmans provided beverages and light appetizers, and the evening was capped off at neighboring Capital Grille. Some of the stores are open now, with more opening this month and Wegman’s scheduled to open next spring (2014).
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…
New Photos of 17 Tudor and 130 Brookline in Cambridge
I wanted to share these photos of one of our recent projects, 130 Brookline Street and 17 Tudor Street. Arrowstreet renovated two MIT-owned buildings in the Cambridgeport neighborhood, an area which is evolving into a recognized regional center for life sciences and technology. These two buildings form a small campus with adjacent open space and parking. 17 Tudor Street, a 1920s brick masonry building with a heavy-timber frame and generous window openings, supports office uses and is now occupied by Wistia. 130 Brookline Street, a 1920s building with buff-colored masonry over a concrete frame, also offers large windows; its renovation, including the addition of a mechanical penthouse, accommodates laboratory uses and will be occupied by 24M Technologies.
And the Winner of the ABX 3D Model Competition Is…
Arrowstreet!
As we previously blogged, NRI hosted a 3D model contest at ABX. Our model was chosen as one of three finalists, and then the ultimate winner. Now we’re brainstorming how to use the $1,500 credit prize toward a 3D model of our choice.
http://www.nrinet.com/abx-contest-results
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…
3D Model Competition at ABX
While attending ABX this week, I had a chance to stop by NRI’s booth and take a look at the three contenders for their 3-D printed model contest. It was great to see what had previously only been an image on-screen turn into an actual physical object I could touch, turn, and pick up. While all three entries were visually interesting, we’re all hopeful that the crowd liked ours the best – we expect to hear back with a final count sometime in the next few days.
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…
Visiting India, Part 3 of 3
Srinagar, though only a 90-minute flight from sweltering Delhi, was a place apart. Surrounded by tall mountains and dominated by a beautiful lake, it was forty degrees cooler. We sat by a warm fire in our host’s home the evening I arrived. It seemed more like New England than India…