Located at the intersection of Brookline and Boylston in the Fenway section of Boston, Pierce Boston is a 368-foot-tall residential tower consisting of 30 floors including two floors of retail (totaling 35,000 square feet), 109 condominiums, and 240 rental units. The triangle-shaped property benefits from a special gateway zoning overlay by the City of Boston allowing significantly higher height and density than neighboring parcels.
The project’s mission was to create a building that: lived up to the complex nature of the site, added a unique and iconic piece of architecture to and for the City of Boston, and created a sense of place which not only provided the luxuries of modern urban living, but that hemmed this until now severed site, back into the fabric of the neighborhood.
The building’s design gives prominence towards the site as a gateway into the Fenway area with a glassy tower coming to grade, but then reduces both volumetrically and in opacity as it extends back into the residential fabric of the neighborhood. The tower is symmetrically located in the triangular site to create pedestrian-friendly podium streetscapes and prototypical tower setbacks to help both reduce the impact of the scale in the pedestrian realm and to mitigate very significant wind impacts created by its addition to the site.
The materials palette for the building is simply glass and metal panel – a system that not only modernizes this building against its context, both in simplicity and contemporary materials, but one that allows legibility of the formal movement of the design and the site. The metal paneling is patterned down to the scale and texture of a more traditional masonry brownstone. So, as the building comes to grade and its opacity increases, it more closely reflects the history of the neighborhoods within which it rises.
The building’s bold, sophisticated, and contemporary design is striking from all angles, and reflects the vibrant, urban living experience sought by Boston residents. Residents of the apartment portion have access to amenities such as a rooftop pool, sky cabanas, and fitness center with yoga studio, and 24-hour concierge.