Chestnut Hill Residence by a+sl studios architects

Chestnut Hill Residence

Construction photos of a rebuilding of a residence in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts by a+sl studios.

Massive home overlooking Good Harbor beach

One of the last great beach days bring us to Gloucester where a nice cluster of shingle homes keeps watch over the sand below.

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Lower Manhattan skyline taking shape

While a tussle goes on in midtown over Vornado's approved plans for a competing presence near the Empire State Building, a similar juxtaposition is finishing construction in FiDi.  We think the results are cool.

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Construction is starting soon on this interesting addition to Children's Hospital by Payette Associates

Louis Boston's new waterfront home

Interesting industrial aesthetic for the usually laid back luxury apparel store at Fan Pier.  The second floor deck will be a great place for a summer lunch.  We like it for this area of open space along the water outside the realm of the dense urban fabric that is hoped for in the Seaport District.  Design by...anyone?

Another Nice South End house

Also by Grassi design.  Although this looks less personal and more for speculative sale or rent, and therefore more conventional, we still very much like the reverential attitude toward the neighbors without being a slave to them.  I'd live there for sure.  Good job!

MIT Media Lab Addition, a few details

Some new images of the interior lobby and the beautiful exterior screens for your enjoyment:

South End house, continued admiration

Another view of this fine little house by Grassi Design:

South End house showing some trim

The wraps came off this end-of-the-row house at the corner of Clarendon and Lawrence recently and what a great surprise!  Nice and modern, exuberant, and not shy about it.  Good job on a tough site.  We can't wait for the punchlist to be complete so we confirm it as the best addition to the neighborhood in a long, long time.

MIT Media Lab Addition completed

Leers Weinzapfel Associates execution of Fumihiko Maki's design for the addition to the Media Lab at MIT appears in its final compact grey-on-grey form.  It is strangely colorless, but the layering of screens and glazed walls is quite nice.

Combat Zone remembered

Check out the exhibit at the Howard Yazerski Gallery until March 16, 2010.

New hotel by ADD Inc gets rendered

Normandy Properties released their proposal for a hotel and restaurant on Albany Street at East Berkeley Street in the South End. Great! We hope this gets built: nicely massed on the site resurrecting the antique street fabric of the area, while acknowledging the right-next-door presence of the elevated central artery, and responding to the varied orientations of the parts of the site. Excellent.

Back Bay tower proposed

Amid a dearth of construction and development activity, a 30-story tower is planned for the Salvation Army block by Liberty Mutual it was announced yesterday. It may include the balance of the block, including the Benjamin Franklin Smith Building next door. Let me know if any renderings surface...

Blue Mast at Atlantic Wharf

The newly lit mast at Atlantic Wharf, a.k.a. Russia Wharf, is blue! Or is that because of the impending storm?

Boston Medical Center by Tsoi/Kobus

This new building for the BMC is under construction and presents an interesting brise soliel over the more standard curtain wall, making a nice large scale gesture in an are beset by architectural disorganization. We look forward to the screen getting installed (the struts for connecting it to the exterior wall are visible below, with models and renderings showing the expected result).

Suffolk University Dorm at the Modern Theater

The renovation of the Theater District continues with Suffolk's reconstruction of the Modern Theater into a new dorm and replaced theater uses below. Here are some recent construction shot that reveal a nice massing and window rhythm.

Brian Healy in Brookline Update

This project, an addition to the Korean Church in Brookline Village, is looking very interesting as construction progresses. The black material is a great contrast to the surroundings without disrupting the scale of its context.

Rawn's W Hotel complete, nicely modern

Bill Rawn's sleek W Hotel tower is a great addition to the Theatre district, infilling the former parking lot next to the Schubert. Despite the mean sidewalk, its angular shape and subtle variation in curtain wall give it a boldly modern presence in the district made stale by the aging Transportation Building. We hope someone wants to buy a condo in that location (we don't).