JD's Essay

JUA Report JD Weissman

My Junior Urban Adventure group was the urban infrastructure. We met with Don Levine who is a contractor, the CBT architects, and the city hall worker, Mr. Prataap. We asked them many questions. We were in Boston for two days and stayed at a hostel. We woke up at 4:30 and went on the busses to Boston. My essential question is there are many factors of making and placement of new buildings in the city. What are there factors? There are many factors. On our first day we met with Don Levine. Don Levine is Mike Levine’s father. He is a contractor in the Suffolk Construction. They are building a building on Bolyston Street called Mandarin Oriental. The Mandarin Oriental is the most complex and more expensive project in Boston’s history. It is a hotel and it also has apartments, condos, and retail space. They have a sample of a hotel room and it is an expensive. He told us how he oversees and makes sure everything in the project site is going ok. His office is right next to the construction site so he can monitor
and watch the process and fix problems when needed. The architects make blueprints and concept art for buildings. The importance of these are that they help plan the building interior and outside. Computers are used to show the building results and they show the clients what it looks like. The hardest part of being an architect is coordinating all the parts of the building. The architect will compress the size of the buildings to fit and use space effectively. In city hall they have a balsa wood model of Boston. In the model they place models where they would be and see how it looks. They do many tests with it. When my Junior Urban Adventure group went there, they were testing a concept building and also a concept park program. It is called the Greenway which is parks in a line going throughout the city. It is seventy percent done. The city hall members say that they want more pedestrians. They want less cars and pollution. After we saw the city hall, we walked on Newbury Street and observed the buildings a
nd their structure. We learned a lot in the Junior Urban Adventure. I learned a lot about the city of Boston and know how it functions. We learned how the city planner test concept buildings, like the new solar powered building. We also learned how the big dig made people leave Boston instead of people coming into Boston. This trip was very intriguing. All the factors of building a building and placing it is very important. Without any of them, the process will be much more difficult. They are all essential in the process. My Junior Urban Adventure experience was a good one. I learned many things and still had a fun time, like when we went to Fanueil Hall. The only problem was that we had to wake up too early.