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Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is peppered with fashionable buildings made by twentieth century icons. MIT owns two of the best examples of campus structure ever constructed on the Charles Rivers promenade: Baker Home by Alvar Aalto, inbuilt 1949, and I. M. Pei’s Visible Arts Heart, from 1962. Three years after Pei’s tower was constructed, Josef Lluís Sert accomplished Peabody Terrace, a housing complicated for Harvard college students. Sert injected hulking concrete lots into the quiet brick city on the Charles River, although their building was met with combined critiques. Sert mentioned he needed to “convey the colour and lifetime of the Mediterranean” to Cambridge, however critics say this dream went unrealized. After its opening, one author with The Boston Globe lamented, “There was not a lot colour in his tall grey slabs.”
Aalto, Pei, Sert: These are robust acts to comply with. Nonetheless, the Boston agency Bruner/Cott didn’t draw back from the chance to make a daring architectural assertion in its newest refurbishment challenge at Rivermark Towers, a Brutalist residential complicated by Steffian Bradley Architects from the Seventies, positioned close to main architectural landmarks by the trendy masters.
Previously generally known as 808 Memorial Drive, Rivermark Towers supply 300 residences break up between two buildings: A 19-story tower housing 211 residences sits subsequent to a stepped, 10-story constructing with 89 items. In 1997, three years after hire management in Massachusetts was abolished, the 501(c)3 nonprofit Owners Rehab Inc. (HRI) bought Rivermark Towers to supply inexpensive housing for low-income renters. Twenty 5 years later, Bruner/Cott and NEI Basic Contracting have been introduced on by the Cambridge Housing Authority and HRI to refurbish them: Their rehab of the 490,000-square-foot “city village” was accomplished in 2022.
The Bruner/Cott reno at Rivermark arguably realizes Sert’s dream of including splashes of heat colour to the Cambridge skyline. Whereas it delivers much-needed enhancements to roofing, insulation, and ADA accessibility upgrades, probably the most seen new characteristic at Rivermark Towers is the colourful panels specified by the architects for his or her power saving qualities. “The unique facade materials was textured concrete, which grew to become actually fairly soiled over time,” Lawrence Cheng, a principal at Bruner/Cott, informed AN. “When the shopper rebranded the constructing from 808 Memorial Drive to Rivermark Towers, we selected to reclad the buildings in panels with colours that match Cambridge’s many brick buildings.”
Each Cheng and Jason Jewhurst, a fellow principal at Bruner/Cott, word that they discovered inspiration in Lacaton & Vassal’s work in France on midcentury social housing. The Pritzker Prize–successful studio is acknowledged for its pioneering work on retrofits, including new skins to constructing exteriors that reach the footprint of residences or add coveted out of doors area with out the hefty price ticket of ground-up building. Its work permits older buildings to seek out new life, a design strategy shared by Bruner/Cott in Cambridge.
“There are such a lot of buildings like Rivermark all through the U.S.,” Jewhurst informed AN. “They both fall into degradation or lead to teardowns. This was a extremely attention-grabbing challenge for us to consider how we will remodel a midcentury fashionable constructing right into a extremely sustainable housing complicated and the way we will encourage the neighborhood, which has been there for 4 generations, to remain there.”
At present, Rivermark Towers offers an addition to Bruner/Cott’s already spectacular portfolio. Since 1973, Bruner/Cott has constructed a powerful observe report of refurbishing midcentury classics: The agency was truly tapped to renovate Sert’s Peabody Terrace as effectively his Legislation College constructing at Boston College. It additionally efficiently refurbished the Smith Campus Heart (previously Holyoke Heart), one other distinguished Sert constructing on Harvard’s campus. “The distinction between Rivermark Towers and our work on Sert’s buildings is that Rivermark isn’t landmarked,” Cheng mentioned. “That is the primary time we truly put a brand new pores and skin on an present constructing.”
Wanting forward, Jewhurst sees actual potential in making use of the teachings realized from Rivermark Towers to related midcentury buildings in disrepair throughout the nation. “Rivermark was an attention-grabbing problem in the way in which we take into consideration deep power retrofits with overcladding,” he mentioned. “The colourful cladding completely adjustments the expertise of the courtyard. When the solar comes up and light-weight touches the outside, the sensation is exceptional. The chilly concrete simply didn’t have that very same impact,” he continued. “To see individuals utilizing and having fun with the out of doors area as the unique architects meant is de facto rewarding.”
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