As one of the city’s largest private residential project since the 1960’s, the Master Plan for Echelon Seaport fills an urban void linking separate clusters of diverse activity and architectural character between the city’s historical waterfront to its contemporary landmarks.
By stitching these different components into a coherent city fabric, the plan establishes a major boulevard that enlivens the adjacent Seaport Hill neighborhood.
This new residential sector follows a larger urban initiative to create a sustainable, responsible community for the city of Boston, furthering the city’s vision for an “innovation district” where new business ideas can flourish.
Forty percent of the plan will remain public, open space, with six-million square feet of building area designed to maintain dialogue with the public realm. KPF’s design for two of the mixed-use towers included in our master plan activates an urban village through their attention to human scale.
The temporarily-named M1 and M2 Towers exhibit multi-block massing with adjustments in height and modular forms stepping down in scale to the pedestrian level. These shifts also create more corner units for the towers, allowing 48 terraces across their 800 residential units.
As part of the plan’s commitment to public activity, these towers are situated with their main entrances facing an interior piazza, with a network of pedestrian and vehicular streets between them.
This encourages greater foot traffic and flexible, year-round programming, such as like farmers’ markets in the spring, volleyball in the summer, and ice skating in the winter.
This design echoes the larger network of courtyards, playgrounds, roof gardens, and parks that populate the firm’s master plan, following the rich urban tradition of Boston place-making and contributing to the city as a whole. Source and images, Courtesy of KPF.