Jacob Steinberg-Otter

Jacob Steinberg-Otter

After visiting both the Prudential Center and Newbury Street, a strong irony in their respective designs stood out to me, and it manifested in particular in degrees of naturalness and of symmetry/uniformity in the designs. The irony was that the Prudential Center, the indoor environment that was centrally designed, seemed more natural and less symmetrical/uniform, while Newbury Street, the outdoor thoroughfare that did not develop under centralized planning, was less natural and more symmetrical/uniform.

In the Pru, I was struck by the natural elements the designers built into the building, especially in the Huntington Arcade, which is the area I illustrated. Up above, the rafters were large skylight window pains that allowed mid-morning to afternoon and early evening sun to shine through. Along the center of the arcade, there were large dirt-filled areas in which trees and bushes rested – I counted around a dozen or so, and all held numerous plants. While Newbury street was lined with trees on both sides, they did not compare to the dense, green foliage that occupied the Huntington Arcade. Plus, the effect that being outside had on the degree of naturalness of the environment of Newbury Street was, in my opinion, easily dissipated and overcome by the appearance and smell of exhaust fumes and pollution.

Additionally, in the Pru, the Huntington Arcade had a windy, inconsistent pattern. The skylights on one half of the ceiling did not have uniform patterns, instead curving to make way for an adjacent building structure. The pathway with plants was interspersed with kiosks in no consistent form. Meanwhile, the buildings on Newbury Street exhibited a remarkable degree of likeness: each had a set of stairs leading up to a door, large bay windows, triangular brick structures with windows towards the top, half-hexagon brick protrusions with windows, etc.

I can imagine a reason why the designers of the Pru created a natural environment – it seems like they intended that arcade to be a place where people came to sit and relax, as exhibited by the numerous benches where I noticed people sitting and even the occasional passerby walking his/her dog. However, I don’t quite understand why the Pru designers made a varying pattern to the progression of the arcade, and I’m struck by how uniform the design of the buildings were along Newbury Street. The reasons that the centrally designed structure was not uniform and that the non-centrally designed street was do not seem readily obvious to me.