Design IV / Spring 2024
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Massachusetts Turnpike, Boston
Professor Nader Tehrani
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At the junction of the Federal Highway Act’s obsession with mobility and the 1990’s interventionism that prompted the Big Dig is a divided neighbourhood between the Bay Village, Chinatown and South End now under the contemporary pressures of rising real estate value. The city demands a transitional scale, an urban connectivity and reimagined centrality amid increasing density that can characterize the uncertain identity of its surroundings. Extra Large answers by inheriting a native pedestrian level that accepts its row house, high-rise, highway and park context, and transforms them in an aggregated urbanism of its own. At the same time its conviction is as potent as what it leaves behind—the triangular form is resultant from an opening of unexpected visual and pedestrian corridors.

Why does it have to be Extra Large? An era of certainty allowed the use of eminent domain to perform out-of-scale interventions, could it take the same confidence to reconstitute the parts left behind? Through layered program and moments of interpenetration, Extra Large collapses different user groups to a programmatic composite, in a sectional gradient from public to private. Imposition from the top down transitions to a delicacy at the ground level as it meets the city’s piecemeal fabric. Extreme scale in plan attracts external forces into a continuous exchange with its own culture, both as an urban band-aid and as a catalyst for the unpredictable.
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Striated housing to the south extends through matching rows of a market typology, terminating into an open public outdoor activity space on the east. Eight sets of public stairs and ramps bring pedestrians to this entirely open and elevated layer, bridging the submerged I-90 highway and two side roads to unite two divided Boston communities. The west face includes a green buffer zone to the street and a balcony providing seating and accessibility to storefronts. On the east, a large entrance stair leading stepwise to a roof landscape is also available as a public venue. Within the market are permanent and temporary stalls, seating areas and other amenities that can serve multipurpose large-span functions.

An institution layer lies above, supported by a vaulted structure system that accommodates a free plan studio configuration. Classrooms, labs, breakout booths, a library and auditorium populate the institution as it expands to assume an entirely interior urbanism. Large openings to below and regular skylights at each column bring natural light to the market and ground levels. A semi-public panoramic landscape above the institution creates a sublime contrast to the Boston skyline and invents a “contained escape” from the city. And as a new flexible surface datum, Extra Large becomes a podium to support additional housing expansion above.