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House Dreaming – is Boston becoming Ayn Rand’s NYC?

February 24, 2016 By Francesca Gordini

Home Dreaming
“Home Dreaming” by photographer Claudio Bianchi

“What architect isn’t interested in housing? I hate the whole blasted idea of it.  I think it’s a worthy undertaking – to provide a decent apartment for a man who earns fifteen dollars a week.  But not at the expense of other men.  Not if it raises the taxes, raises all the other rents and makes the man who earns forty live in a rat hole.  That’s what’s happening in New York.  Nobody can afford a modern apartment – except the very rich and the paupers.

Have you seen the converted brownstones in which the average self-supporting couple has to live?  Have you seen their closet kitchens and their plumbing? They’re forced to live that – because they’re not incompetent enough.  They make forty dollars a week and wouldn’t be allowed into a housing project. But they’re the ones who provide the money for the damn project.  They pay the taxes.  And the taxes raise their own rent. And they have to move from a converted brownstone into an unconverted one and from that into a railroad flat.

I’d have no desire to penalize a man because he’s worth only fifteen dollars a week.  But I’ll be damned if I can see why a man worth forty must be penalized – and penalized in favor of the one who’s less competent”.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, 1943


 

[Read more…] about House Dreaming – is Boston becoming Ayn Rand’s NYC?

Filed Under: Boston, Feature Posts, Planning, Revitalization Tagged With: Apartment, Architecture, Ayn Rand, Basement Overlay District, Boston, Cambridge, City Council, Diversity, Fountainhead, House, housing, Roark

It’s all about geometry

June 10, 2012 By Francesca Gordini

roma+churchillBoston – “… There seems to be a public image of any given city, which is the overlap of many individual images. Or perhaps there is a series of public images, each held by some significant number of citizens…
… What does the city’s form actually mean to people who live there?!”

(Kevin Lynch – The Image of City)

Everything we see everyday in our lives is concerned with geometry itself. [Read more…] about It’s all about geometry

Filed Under: Boston, Design, News Tagged With: Architecture, Cambridge, central square, city, City Planning, firenze, forli', geometry, harvard square, image or the city, kevin lynch, lynch, milano, piazza, square, venezia

An Innovation Center for the Innovation District

April 5, 2012 By Aaron Trahan

Institute of Contemporary Art, South Boston Seaport Waterfront by Cherrylet, FlickrConstruction is expected to begin May 1st on the Boston Innovation Center (BIC), which aims to attract startups to the Innovation District in the South Boston waterfront. Designed by local architects Hacin + Associates, the 12,000 square foot facility is part of the 12 acre Seaport Square development by John Hynes’ Boston Global Investors. [Read more…] about An Innovation Center for the Innovation District

Filed Under: Boston, News, Projects Tagged With: Cambridge, Hacin, Innovation

MIT Hoping to Establish Kendall Square as More Than Just a Technology Hub

December 3, 2011 By Corey Roberts

Kendall Square Cambridge MAKendall Square is a location in Boston that everyone is well aware of, but rarely is it anyone’s destination. Most people simply know it as a stop on the Red Line on the way to Harvard Square or as the location of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [Read more…] about MIT Hoping to Establish Kendall Square as More Than Just a Technology Hub

Filed Under: Boston, News, Projects Tagged With: Cambridge, Kendall Square, Redevelopment

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