Paul's House Diary

It’s very en vogue to dump all over the architecture of the Seaport. Height restrictions, massive footprints and reluctant investors place serious constraints on both developers and architects looking to stake a claim in the “new downtown.” In almost all cases, the floorplates on these behemoths have to be maximized due to FAA restrictions that prohibit any substantial height along the nearby flight path. The resulting structures are squat boxes that are as wide as they are tall. There are no real peaks in the neighborhood. What we have instead is a plateau of largely nondescript cubes hiding behind one another.

While the architecture of the Seaport/Innovation District has yet to really hit its stride, even the blandest slab of ill-fitting white precast looked good last Friday.

I actually believe the quality of developments in the neighborhood is getting consistently better with each new project. The Vertex complex adjacent to the courthouse is a marked improvement over the spec office building that kickstarted the Fan Pier development a few years earlier. The same goes for almost every other subsequent project. The PWC building was an improvement over the Vertex labs, and the Goodwin Proctor headquarters wrapping up construction behind the ICA, though boring from some angles, I think will actually turn out to be a standout for years to come once the dust has settled.

I’ll leave my comments at that for now, as there are bound to be many opportunities to photograph and critique this neighborhood as it rapidly evolves in the weeks, months and years to come. Here are some shots primarily of the newest residential towers, Waterside Place and One Pier Four.