Design IV
Spring 2024
Massachusetts Turnpike, Boston
Professor Nader Tehrani
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At the junction of the Federal Highway Act’s obsession with mobility and the 1990s interventionism that prompted the Big Dig is a divided neighbourhood between Bay Village, Chinatown and South End now under the contemporary pressures of rising real estate value. The city demands a transitional scale and an urban centrality amid increasing density that can characterize the uncertain identity of its surroundings. Extra Large answers by inheriting a native pedestrian level that accepts its row house, high-rise, highway and park contexts, and transforming them into its own aggregated urbanism. Its unabashed geometry is as potent as what it leaves behind—the triangular form is resultant from an opening of unexpected visual and pedestrian corridors.

Why does it have to be Extra Large? An era of faith in solo visionaries allowed the use of eminent domain to perform out-of-scale interventions—could it take the same confidence to reconstitute the parts left behind? Through layered program and interpenetration, Extra Large collapses different user groups to a programmatic composite, arranged as a sectional gradient from public to private. Imposition from the top down transitions to a delicacy at the ground, where the building meets the city’s piecemeal fabric. Its extreme scale in plan attracts external forces into a continuous exchange with an internal culture, both as an urban band-aid and as a catalyst for the unpredictable.

Striated housing to the south extends through matching rows of a market typology, leading to an open public outdoor activity space on the east. Eight sets of public stairs and ramps bring pedestrians onto this open and elevated layer, which bridges the submerged I-90 highway and two side roads to unite two divided Boston communities. On the west, a green buffer zone to the street and a balcony provide seating and access to storefronts. On the east, a large entrance stair climbs stepwise to a roof landscape that is also available as a public venue. The market holds permanent and temporary stalls alongside seating and amenities sized for large-span, multipurpose use.

An institution layer sits above, supported by a vaulted structural system that accommodates a free plan studio configuration. Classrooms, labs, breakout booths, a library and an auditorium fill out an entirely interior urbanism. Large openings to below and regular skylights at each column bring natural light to the market and the ground. Above the institution, a semi-public panoramic landscape creates a sublime contrast to the Boston skyline and a “contained escape” from the city. And as a new flexible surface datum, Extra Large becomes a podium to support additional housing expansion.