Ignacio Bayardo

Ignacio Bayardo

One of the most interesting aspects that I observed when I visited Copley place, prudential center and Newbury Street is the spectrum of the buildings interaction with the outside world. Newbury Street was the center with the most interaction with the urban environment. The street seems to have been repurposed from living spaces to commercial ones giving the street a very “Boston” feeling. I felt like I was walking through a residential. Newbury also had the most social space between the above listed locations. Since there were more places to sit, the traffic and the movement of people was much slower compared to prudential and Copley. Prudential on the other hand, had some interaction with the outside world but not with Boston but with nature. This commercial center had glass ceilings and walls allowing more sun to come through. But the scenery from the glass walls was not the hustle and bustle of Boston but a serene garden enclosed by the prudential center. People in this center seem to have more of a purpose when walking through the building so the traffic was more intense and faster paced compared to Newbury street but there were less sitting spaces compared to Newbury but more compared to Copley so people tending to rest and maybe people watch or hand out within their groups but they did not stay as long as the people in Newbury. Copley was like a concrete cave cut off from the rest of the world. There wasn’t much natural light coming in and almost no usable sitting spaces between the stores. So the traffic was more directed and people tended not to linger in Copley for long after completing their tasks. These three locations have distinct way of portraying commercial grounds from a mains street commercial center you see in older towns that are more social space than a commercial space, to the concrete malls designed to fulfill one purpose and nothing else and the in-between which tries to balance social space and commercial space like prudential