One Charlestown

Charlestown, Boston, MA

Multi-unit residential, 2700 units
Completion: Phase1- Design, Jan 2017

Project Overview

Situated in Bunker Hill, the site is currently home to Boston Housing Authority’s largest public housing development. This development will be replaced with a mixed-income residential building that will include new housing, new and redeveloped parks, outdoor space, new retail and community spaces.

Project Team

Hansy L. Better Barraza
Anthony J. Piermarini
Lisa Lostritto
Dane Clark
Tzu Yu Su

Developer

Corcoran Jennison
SunCal

Architect of Record

Stantec

Design Consultants

DiMella Shaffer
DREAM Collaborative
Marshall Moya Design
Studio Luz Architects

Historical Charlestown

Mixed-income residential building

                    The goals of the collaboration are to meet the development needs for the project, design buildings that respond to one another, respect the historic character of Charlestown, and develop and design in response to the needs of residents currently living in the housing development.
                

Community Process

Consensus Building

                    Some of the most important values that emerged from the community meetings include: public parks, proportions and materials of buildings, modern aesthetics that relate to the existing neighborhood, shops, commercial space for new businesses, access to various resources, as well as stoops and plazas for different scales of social interaction.
                

Inventive Use of Materials

Interlocking Cladding

                    At the beginning of the designing process, Studio Luz conducted a study of the seven of the blocks within the site to brainstorm different approaches to integrating outdoor space, incorporating the characteristics of the existing buildings in the neighborhood, and using materials and facade systems inventively.
                

About the Residences

At One Charlestown

Studio Luz is a one of four Consulting Architecture Firms working with a Project Lead firm, Stantec, to redevelop a 24-acre site in Boston’s historic neighborhood of Charlestown. This type of collaboration is certainly unusual – these types of projects are usually awarded to one large planning and design firm. By bringing together a group of architects with different design outlooks, Corcoran Jennison, SunCal and Stantec have seized the opportunity to create a design think tank of sorts for the master planning of this project.