For Cambridge, the structures that universities develop have major significance for a city where institutions of higher education like Harvard, MIT and Lesley are prominent residents. A current focus of their development efforts is to more closely integrate their campuses and activities with the community as a whole, says BrunerCott principal, architect Lawrence Cheng. Lawrence will delve into this and other ideas as a panelist at Bisnow’s The Future of Cambridge Real Estate event next week.
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Lawrence, who focuses on institutional as well as mixed-use and multifamily work, is trying to balance the dire need of cities like Cambridge for more housing, with existing residents’ intuitive hesitations about high-rise buildings.
The problem at the core of this issue is that it’s frequently unclear what “density” really means, Lawrence says. Is density the FAR, the number of units/acre or the number of residents/acre? It’s critical to know this to accurately assess a building’s impact on a neighborhood.
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He's currently working on reinventing the lower floors of Harvard’s mid-century concrete Holyoke Center in Harvard Square (now the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Campus Center) from impenetrable to transparent and welcoming. The new design replaces some concrete with a profusion of glass. Construction, now underway, is slated for completion by summer 2018.
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Creating a community-oriented presence for Lesley in Porter Square, Lawrence worked on its Lunden Art Center. The glass base of the building, completed a year ago, features a public art gallery on the ground floor. The see-through base and the building as a whole infuse more street-level activity into this busy block while creating a bold, new presence for the university. It encourages the public to look inside, think and converse, Lawrence says.
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In Cambridge, BrunerCott also created MIT’s new Sloan School of Management building. Elsewhere around the region, Lawrence was the associate-in-charge of the Channel Center mixed-use project in Boston’s Fort Point and worked on the Viridian in Fenway (above), 45 Province St, the Chinatown Community Education Center, the Penmark Condominiums, Harrison Commons, and the Boston University School of Law renovation and addition. Farther out of town, another example of his work is the Waltham Watch Factory renovation.
Hear more from Lawrence and other experts at Bisnow’s The Future of Cambridge Real Estate event, July 26, 7:30am, at the Boston Marriott Cambridge.
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