Stephen Stimson Associates Landscape Architects
Submission 0113
View design boards :: Juror's comments
The focus of this project is the integration of media outlets into the city landscape by juxtaposing the South End’s heritage with the contemporary art scene. The result is an adaptive plaza space with a dynamic mixture of historical contexts and contemporary art installations. The plaza projects daily activities and events happening inside the BCA building and other Boston art organizations onto the perforated steel pavilion. This allows for a better integration of art and causes the physical barriers between institutional buildings and public spaces to disappear.
The plaza is conceptualized as a collection of shifting and interlocking planes. Alternating old and new materials to pave the planes represents an interaction between history and the contemporary social scene. The result is a dynamic plan that features three types of paving: historical brick paving, concrete pavers and modular perforated steel pavers. The last represents a contemporary, transparent city skin, shifting and creating rising planes.
Variations in paving highlight entrances to prominent buildings in the plaza. The groups of benches are conveniently positioned near entrances. The public pavilions grow out of a perforated steel plane in central area of the plaza. The role of the pavilion is to exhibit current Boston Art scenes by providing information on local shows. Its perforated steel skin is softly lit at night and becomes a neighborhood landmark.
Juror's comments
Ann McQueen
I think that this is interesting to me because it is one of the few that deals with the ground plane of the plaza as it circles all the way around in front of Atelier 505. The pass through to the courtyard is very interesting.
Gary Hilderbrand
This is one of the schemes, there are several in the honorable mention category as well, that were identified specifically for this reason, of potentially seeing a way to make an explicit connection between the plaza and the courtyard. This one does it in a fairly sophisticated way, by raising the level of the entry and then acting as if the sidewalk and plaza paving moves through the building to the courtyard. That may or may not be successful, but it is one of a series in several of these projects that we really think is worth pursuing, and we want to encourage it.
This scheme also tries to take account, as we said earlier, of seasonal change. I would say that it could use more emphasis on the vegetative environment. This scheme begins to take account of the richness that is possible in the urban horticultural palette.
Toshiko Mori
This can be an amazing arboretum. The identity of the BCA is very clearly about some sort of dense arbor-park. That would be fantastic. There is a way in which you can actually use the plaza according to how that it is divided up and according to the entry to each building. This strategy in general has the potential to be both global and local, I would say.