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Mike
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 402
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 Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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| The Globe had a story on it. It's on page three of this thread. |
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statler
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 825
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| Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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| ^^ Yeah, it's the same story, except with more NIMBY quotes. |
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BlinkieOB
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 103
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| Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Lights?!?!? In a city?!?!? ::GASP:: |
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Ron Newman
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 1007
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| Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Folks, this will be built. If NABB's input results in an all-glass fa?ade, instead of what we saw in the photos of other cities' Apple Stores, that's a good thing. No? |
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statler
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 825
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| Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Ron Newman wrote: | | Folks, this will be built. If NABB's input results in an all-glass fa?ade, instead of what we saw in the photos of other cities' Apple Stores, that's a good thing. No? |
I think the all glass facade is the original plan and that's what NABB is complaining about. They probably want brick or stone incorporated into the design somehow.  |
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Ron Newman
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:02 pm Post subject: |
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| The Walgreen's is unfortunate, but I think it was allowed because it replaced a 1960s movie theatre (the Paris), which was not old enough to fall under the architectural protection guidelines. |
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jaysonl
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
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Ron Newman
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 12:01 am Post subject: |
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I wouldn't want something that out-of-focus built next to me, either 
Why was it scrapped? |
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jaysonl
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
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Ron Newman
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 1007
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| Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 10:02 pm Post subject: |
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| that would be cool. I'd much rather have the Apple Store than some unnecessary 'upscale' or 'high-end' store. |
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ckb
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 126
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| Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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I wouldn't classify Apple as significantly more "high-end" than Virgin, although the landlord's desire for "high end" surprises me given the context of Mass Ave. and Newbury St. -- the high end side of Newbury is at the other end -- nearest the Public Garden.
Plus, I get the feeling that Apple really does want to have a consistent "look and feel" to their store that the Virgin location cannot deliver. I think they'll end up on Boylston eventually, with an Apple-specific design. |
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BOSDevelopment
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 293
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| Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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| The writer of that article referred to the building being massive numerous times. I hope they understand that the top 10 floors or so are all condos. The last time i was in there was when it was tower records, and i think it was only the bottom four floors that were the actual retail unit. I'm not saying that's not a ton of square footage but the entire building wouldn't be made into a cube, like the New York store. |
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Ron Newman
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 1007
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| Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Nor would Apple have any use for more than about three floors of retail. |
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tocoto
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 181
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 12:03 pm Post subject: |
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| I believe the Virgin store has 3 floor as did tower records. It's a great place for college students, artists from local schools ( like the Ultrecht store down Masss Ave.) and people who ride the T. I think it fits Apple's customer base pretty well and the store could be opened in our lifetimes. The added benefit is that an important building on Boylston won't be razed and hopefully can stand in its banal glory for all eternity. |
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kz1000ps
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 112
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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On the contrary to this speculation, there are signs up on the Copy Cop store saying they're moving to a new address, and I'm pretty sure they weren't there a week or two ago. I'll swing by later today to see if there's anything more specific on the notices..
Edit: the Virgin store is just 3 stories, no basement level.
Last edited by kz1000ps on Tue May 02, 2006 6:32 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Ron Newman
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 1007
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Several recent articles in both dailies have made it clear that Virgin, rather than the landlord, wanted out of the lease. I'll try to find and post them soon. |
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ZenZen
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 79
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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So it looks like Apple is moving into the Copy Cop Space? Good, if they can demolish the building and start from scratch, it will look much better than trying to squeeze into the Newbury St. building.
On a side note, I noticed that Guyuhama has shut down (next door to Copy Cop). There are 'For Rent' signs on the windows. That place was great! I loved the Rock n Roll Sushi and the Scorpion Bowls. I suspect the landlord wanted to jack up the rent with the impending Mandarin Oriental across the street and the Apple Store next to it. |
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Matt
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 840
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| Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 10:13 am Post subject: |
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from the herald:
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Apple still eyes glass facade in Back Bay
By Donna Goodison
Friday, May 5, 2006
Apple Computer Inc. is scheduled to unveil new plans for its first Boston store next week.
Based on documents submitted to City Hall, the company still wants to demolish the existing two-story building at 815 Boylston St. - across from the Prudential Center and currently home to a street-level Copy Cop - to make way for the new store.
Its latest architectural rendering depicts a new three-story modern building with an all-glass facade, circular staircase and glass skylight. The three levels have high ceilings, making the building flush with the four-story building to its right. Open floor plans feature circular and rectangular Internet-surfing and listening stations.
The plans also call for a ?green roof? with plantings designed to provide insulation and absorb less heat, thereby reducing the amount of air conditioning needed.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company is expected to formally present its proposal to the Back Bay Architectural Committee on Wednesday. The meeting would mark the start of Apple?s official quest for a certificate of appropriateness from the commission, which reviews all exterior changes to buildings within its district.
Previous plans presented informally in March drew darts from the committee. They also included a modern, all-glass building front.
William Young, a city employee who?s the commission?s senior preservation planner, would not comment on changes from those early plans.
A spokeswoman for Apple also declined comment. Its Apple stores do extremely high-volume business, generating more than $1 billion in sales per quarter.
Apple has said that rehabbing the existing 1906 building is not feasible. It would cost an extra $2.9 million, delay an opening date by six months, and still result in a building that?s not suited to its retail operations.
A report by Boston Affiliates, a historic preservation consulting firm, says the building lacks the ?high-style architecture, overall quality of ornamentation and materials and designs by the city?s leading architectural firms? that characterize the historic district. |
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ablarc
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 825
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 12:54 am Post subject: |
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Apple's new New York store:
Opened today.
Pics taken today by MidtownGuy, Wired New York.
Can you see the building?
Back Bay commissioners are idiots. |
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Bowwest
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 616
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 5:16 am Post subject: |
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| I'm sure that will be just as cool 10 years from now. |
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Ron Newman
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 1007
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 10:02 am Post subject: |
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| What is this? Just a one-story, 50?-foot-high, all-glass building, leading to a store below ground level? |
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justin
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 418
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 10:16 am Post subject: |
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| Exactly. |
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Ron Newman
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 1007
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 10:17 am Post subject: |
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| That's very cool, though I don't think it's anything like their proposal for Boylston Street. |
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ablarc
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 825
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 12:52 pm Post subject: |
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Tells you about their dedication to design.
Store's open 24/7. Tells you about their magnetic draw and vitalizing power.
As urban development influence: none better on the planet.
Let 'em do what they want in Back Bay. No fear. The overseers have got to have worse judgment than the developers in this case.
No oversight is best when it comes to Apple. None whatever. Nada. Zilch. |
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ablarc
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 825
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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| bowesst wrote: | | I'm sure that will be just as cool 10 years from now. |
Lotsa Windex required.
* * *
New York Sun
May 19, 2006
FINALLY, AFTER 40 YEARS, A TRIUMPH OF URBAN DESIGN
By James Gardner
After nearly 40 years of dithering and disaster, they finally got it right.
The new plaza in front of the General Motors building on Fifth Avenue at 59th Street is a triumph of urban design. It consists of a flattened area paved in pale gray granite that is raised one meter above the street and adorned with two reflecting pools and six honey locust trees. These flank the dazzling Apple store that rises up as a 32-foot cube fashioned from sheer glass. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, New York has a new public space that will prove to be a source of civic pride and aesthetic delight.
Ever since the destruction of the Hotel Savoy, which lorded over this corner of Manhattan from 1905 to 1968, there has seemed to be something ill-fated about this most prominent of public spaces.The successive waves of tastelessness that washed over the site did not discourage the suspicion that it might just be cursed.
General Motors agreed to construct and maintain a public plaza in exchange for permission to build a skyscraper on the site in 1968. Though no one would ever claim that the resulting over-sized shaft was Edward Durrell Stone's masterpiece, it proved to be better than the graceless suburban mini-mall that occupied its sunken forecourt, a space whose only memorable feature was a half-acre of windswept Astroturf.
Some seven years ago, along came Donald Trump, who, notwithstanding his well-earned reputation for goofy grandiosity, at least made an honest effort to improve matters. What resulted was a plaza whose main redemption was that it was above grade,rather than in the basement of the GM Building. It worked as a public space for the simple reason that the citizenry seemed happy enough to be there.
Unfortunately, its design was inept from every angle. Nor was it helped by that immodest slathering of marble and fools-gold that the Donald seems to favor and that transforms everything he touches into the Jacuzzi room of the Playboy Mansion. And even with all the people sitting happily around its fountains and planters, it could never shake a certain forlornness that was caused by the perennial inability to rent any of the commercial space below grade.
By 2003, the building and the plaza were on the block again, and this time the buyer was Macklowe Properties. There was little reason to trust that they would create anything worthwhile in the plaza, especially after seeing what they did this past autumn to the GM building's three-story base - which extends all the way from Fifth Avenue to Madison Avenue. Whereas the building's shaft is composed of emphatically vertical pinstripes, the base was tactlessly reconfigured with horizontal lines in a different material and a far inferior style. What had once seemed like a substantial counterweight to that soaring shaft now has all the immaterial impermanence of a party tent.
That outrage has been largely offset by the new plaza. It is clearly modeled on the marvelous space that Mies van der Rohe designed in 1959 for the front of the Seagram Building. But the outcome is, if anything, even better: Whereas the Seagram Building is surrounded by the middling towers of Midtown, this new plaza looks over the incomparable vista of Central Park.
There is also the miraculous aptness of putting an Apple flagship at this site. Despite its prominence, the location is not a natural choice for a retail outlet. It needed as a tenant an enterprise so big and so famous that it can afford a site that will serve primarily as a three-dimensional advertisement for itself. Perhaps no other corporation on the planet would have fit the bill as well as Apple, which has succeeded in branding itself as a lifestyle, even a state of mind.
Designed by Peter Bohlin of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the sheer glass cube carries into the realms of architecture the clean, minimalist perfection that graces Apple's desktops, laptops, and iPods. Just as these physical implements of leisure and creativity conceal all manner of hidden complexities, so the commercial core of the new flag shipexists entirely below grade. Indeed, the cube is nothing more than a grand entrance: You descend into the predictably clean and minimalist retail space either through a glass walled elevator or a staircase that spirals downward along glass steps cantilevered along the elevator shaft.
The dark wooden boards that covered the construction site for the past six months have only just come down, and I have assessed the new space only in the splendid light of a fine May morning. It will be fascinating to observe how the store and the surrounding plaza are transformed in the shifting light of day, how they behave under clouds and in the change of seasons. Perhaps best of all will be the way this flagship - which will be open 24 hours a day - rears up, a luminous and unanticipated mirage, in the dead of night.
? 2006 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC.
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xec
Joined: 10 Mar 2005
Posts: 62
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| Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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We were supposed to get something similar in the Harbor Islands pavilion to be built on parcel 14.
Regrettably the latest Greenway video show it surrounded by trees. I imagine that after asking for a transparent structure with some sort of water feature suggestive of the harbor islands the abysmally pedestrian minds running this project got what they asked for and couldn't deal with it, so they're doing their best to turn it into a Thomas Kincade cottage-in-the-woods. |
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