Paul's Essay

Paul Evans

Boston and its Traffic Problems Solved

The question I set out to answer during JUA was, “Architecture in an urban environment can help to solve many problems. One such problem in an urban space is traffic. How might Boston design and build future structures to help traffic problems?”

We departed New Hampton School at 5:00 AM, embarking on a field trip like no other. After a lengthy drive, we arrived at a youth hostel and dragged our luggage (and our feet) to a storage room. We ate breakfast quickly, and set off to a construction site several blocks away. There, we met with our senior leader’s father, Don Levine of CWB. CWB is a contractor firm that was chosen to build the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a new addition to the Prudential Center.
Mr. Levine took us to see a mock-up of the base room that will be in the hotel, supposedly running at $600 a night. The room reflected the price tag – it was stunning. The bathroom was made from several types of granite from exotic countries, a 42” LCD TV is standard issue, and the bed was more than satisfying. Levine also took us outside to point out the unique circumstances of which the structure was being built. I noted that the construction occupied a lane of Boylston Street. Mr. Levine mentioned that the lane was being rented from the city and pointed out a service entrance which was required to be open indefinitely throughout the project to supply the Prudential Center. He told us assuredly that traffic was not going to be an issue with the throughput of the hotel, because they had designed the building in a way that would not adversely affect traffic. This information was reinforced by a lecture in our next visit, CBT Architecture. CBT is responsible for several current and future buildings in Boston. They sat us down in a stately conference room, showed us a PowerPoint presentation on how they design buildings. They showed us how the building we visited earlier had gone through that process, showing us early sketches and designs, as well as some of the proposed materials for the building. We also got a thorough tour of their building. They had each floor divided between 2 or 3 projects, usually with massive sample rooms in the middle, holding everything from miles of curtain fabric to scores of glass and brick tiles. That night we ate dinner in the Prudential Center’s food court, and later went out to see Borat in the movie theater.
The next morning, we ate brekky in the hostel and went to our third and final stop, City Hall. We were taken to a room with a massive model of Boston, and got a thorough overview of how the model was used to simulate the effect of new proposed buildings. David Carlton and Prataap Patrose answered our questions diligently. Patrose expressed that the Big Dig, Boston’s ongoing traffic solution gone awry, was the mistake of sparse supervision by the city, and was not to be repeated. We ate lunch at nearby Faneuil Hall, and asked the public questions to help support our essential question. Most people blew us off, but the answers I did receive mostly pointed toward traffic being a major problem in Boston, and another project like the Big Dig would be appreciated if the headaches could be minimized. By the time we left that evening, we all were exhausted from walking everywhere, and looked forward to relaxing back in our own beds.