The West End Library building elevation will feature brick frames and vertical piers that create depth thanks to corbelling and bonding patterns. Image courtesy of the City of Boston
MASS Design Group and TAT to Design Combined Housing and Library Project
An affordable housing-plus-library proposal by MASS Design Group and The Architectural Team (TAT) was selected for construction in Boston’s West End neighborhood. Originally published in The Architect’s Newspaper.
By Daniel Jonas Roche, The Architect’s Newspaper
Propositions for combining residential and cultural uses atop publicly owned land are gaining traction, as the national housing crisis worsens. Last November, Fogarty Finger and Andrew Berman Architect delivered The Eliza—174 affordable apartments which sit above a New York Public Library branch in Inwood, Manhattan. And now, a similar scheme is underway in Boston.
An affordable housing-plus-library proposal by MASS Design Group and The Architectural Team (TAT) was recently selected for construction in Boston’s West End neighborhood, city officials shared.
The plan will replace an existing, midcentury, single-story library at 151 Cambridge Street with a new 12-story residential building. A new 2-story public library will be located at the building’s grade level, a replacement of the existing library.
“The design celebrates the community programming throughout the building,” MASS Design Group said in its submittal to the city of Boston. “Community spaces and outdoor zones are treated as subtle exceptions for the organizing architectural language of the rest of the building.”
Read the full article from The Architect’s Newspaper.
The building is set in a historic Boston neighborhood, not far from Downtown Boston and Beacon Hill. Image courtesy of the City of Boston