Program goals: bringing the arts outside; bringing the community in

We invite your ideas

The following program goals of the competition are meant to provoke thoughtful, compelling, and transformative ideas that will redefine the public spaces at the BCA, and connect inside to outside. We're looking for ideas that will...

Create an architecturally distinctive public space / landscape that will provide an exciting new identity for this arts block—one that will be memorable, expressive, and position the BCA as an arts destination.
Build the brand of the BCA by expressing what the BCA means: innovative, collaborative, welcoming and inclusive.
Build connections across the South End neighborhood to Boston's socially, ethnically, and economically diverse urban communities. The redesigned out door spaces of the BCA will be a magnet for people from all walks of life.
Provide reorganized public spaces that will accommodate and improve the experience of a wide variety of public activities: everyday uses [sitting and meeting]; seasonal activities [outdoor restaurant dining and holiday tree lighting]; one-of-a kind planned and/or spontaneous special events [parades, celebrations, installations and performances].
Integrate and balance the block! The east end of the block is shiny and new; the west end is more than a century old. We're looking for ideas that combine the energy of the new with the history of the old into a comprehensible, valued whole.
Make it easy for people to know where they are, and where they're going. We're looking for ideas that express the BCA brand, connect people to the organizations that are part of our lively urban campus, help people find where they're going, and provide opportunities for promotions of our many activities and events.

Creative, appropriate solutions will involve an understanding and appreciation of the diverse voices within the BCA and the surrounding community, as well as the physical and regulatory constraints of the site.

Community insights

The BCA has hosted a series of meetings and a public "visioning" meeting to solicit information, provide input for the design program, and gather inspirations for the future of the public spaces that are the topic of this competition. The competition program reflects many helpful insights that have been gained through the process.

The following are representative of the extensive important community perceptions that emerged and that should be incorporated into the design concepts:

The BCA—as an urban cultural village—should have an identity that is legible in the open spaces that frame its activities and institutions, and that the identity should be clearly linked to the arts.
The spaces should be welcoming, inclusive and comfortable to all, and not appear or function to discourage any prospective user of the BCA, the neighborhood or the community at large.
The open space is simultaneously seen and needs to continue to serve as part of the overall neighborhood fabric by providing a civic space for informal meetings, small celebrations, and amenities not found elsewhere; these qualities should be retained and enhanced.
There should be fresh, new, inventive and non-traditional elements or uses for the spaces that are associated with the arts.
The site should be considered to extend vertically into the volumes above the open spaces. There are opportunities to visually connect the architecture, arts, and open spaces without significantly reducing the ground level areas that are needed for pedestrian and other uses.

For a full description of ideas that emerged from the Community Visioning event, please see the Voices of the Public page on this website.