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Episode 5 : 10,000 Square Feet (Part 1)

Here are links to the episode in a few different places​

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Thanks for coming along with us as we toured three great public spaces in Boston with Ivan! Hopefully the pictures and articles below help you understand what we are talking about. 

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Ivan's Work

  • Besides being an excellent observer of public space, Ivan is a talented graphic designer. You can see some of his work here!

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Pavement Boylston

  • We used that Pavement as a sort of archetypal example of coffeehouses everywhere. Here is a good little article from The Atlantic talking about the social dynamics within coffee shops.

  • We didn’t talk about it, but coffee shops also perfectly fit the template of a ‘third place’. Coined by the sociologist Ray Odenburg, this idea refers to the common paces a community shares outside of work and home. Here is a really good quote from him about them: "Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends...They are the heart of a community's social vitality."

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Boston Public Library - Central Branch

  • Besides all the super interesting social dynamics we talked about in the episode, the architecture of this building is pretty amazing. Here are some pictures of the original McKim building, and here are some pictures of the renovation of the Johnson addition by William Rawn Associates.

  • The architects who designed the original building, a firm called McKim, Mead, and White, were prolific in the 1800’s in the Northeast. Here’s some other work by them, including maybe their most famous design, the original Penn Station in New York.

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Stata Center

  • As you might have noticed during the episode, it can be very hard to describe what this building looks like. Here’s some pictures to help.

  • The architect behind this building, Frank Gehry, is famous and very interesting. He pioneered a style called “deconstructivism”. See some of his other buildings here, and some of his personal history, in this short essay.

BPL Plan.jpg

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

Stata Center.jpg

Image courtesy of Dezeen

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