INTRO
Over the past two decades Kendall Square has developed from an area of parking lots and industrial brown fields into a new center within the Boston/Cambridge metropolis. The Kendall/MIT Gateway project provided an opportunity to create a new threshold and identity for MIT's East Campus in Kendall Square with a monumental canopy, while simultaneously providing needed infrastructure improvements to the subway station below. Through a careful orchestration of program, materiality, technology, and green design, the new canopy fulfills its aspirations of becoming an elegant and functional gateway that thoughtfully engages the public, shaping the experience of its visitors through dynamic experiences.
TRANSIT INFRASTUCTURE AS PUBLIC SPACE
The Kendall/MIT Gateway has been a linchpin in MIT’s strategy to transform a neglected urban site into an active nexus of bus lines, subway line, and bike share stations at the eastern entrance to its campus. By way of the Cambridge City Planning & Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority project design review process, the project identified mutual goals for all stakeholders. The gateway creates a sense of arrival for visitors to Kendall Square and MIT; orienting pedestrians as they come up from the subway and making a welcoming space for the public to enjoy. The project connects visitors to the new Open Space beyond, to MIT Admissions, and to the MIT Museum. This is a fully public project with deliberate moves to improve visibility, wayfinding, safety, and accessibility. Improving this subway station encourages neighborhood residents, students, workers, and visitors to use the subway system by providing welcoming and accessible new headhouses. The three disaggregated headhouses offer stairs, escalators, and elevators. The canopy pavilion provides shade in the summer and protection from the elements throughout the seasons which furthers the pavilion’s welcome.
FABRICATION OPTIMIZATION
Conceived as a canopy of intricate parts, the tolerances for making such bespoke connections posed serious challenges. Our outreach to the maritime and aviation industry turned out to be the most critical and practical path towards the coordination of a complex set of systems into a buildable shell. The canopy was fabricated off-site to reduce material and labor waste and involved the construction of a wooden formwork; the overlay of material systems composed of a honeycomb shell with fiberglass and carbon fiber composites created with a vacuum bagging process; the insertion of the lateral bracing which conforms to the erratic column locations; and resin, powder coating, and waterproofing layers.
ECOLOGY, WATER, ENERGY, MATERIALS
The urban project redevelops a former industrial lot with a comprehensive landscape design tied to the new Open Space to the south. The site includes new native trees that attract and support native insects and birds. As time passes, the trees will grow and give back increasingly to the native ecology. In addition, the canopy serves to reduce the heat island effect of the new landscape through its shading strategy and responsible material selection. 100% of the site’s rainwater is integrated into the campus' stormwater management system. The headhouses are shielded from the elements by the canopy above, reducing cooling costs in the summer months and facilitating natural ventilation and cooling of the concourse. The existing sub-grade structure was reused to minimize impacts to service and reduce material usage.
DESIGN: CANOPY, HEADHOUSES, ACUPUNCTURE
A classical threshold into the site would have created a gate parallel to Main Street, effectively a triumphal arch into the site. However, the depth of this entry point into campus is over two hundred feet deep. For this reason, the gateway is formed less around the width of this threshold, but rather its depth, in the form of a canopy. The canopy is attenuated at the north and south ends, bringing the canopy to two points, directing views in and out of campus. Unlike typical optimized subway headhouses formed of a singular volume that incorporates the elevators, staircases, and escalators, the Kendall/MIT headhouse is disaggregated into three vertical elements to create a more porous ambulatory for pedestrian flow into campus. These “icebergs” are an embodiment of the underground programs surging above the ground plane. The columns are not merely holding up the canopy; in fact, they are holding it down from lift forces. Thus, the columns are working in both tension and compression. A traditional organization of these columns would have them equally spaced at the perimeter of the canopy at about a 10-foot spacing. However, given the complexities of the infrastructure below, the structural foundations, and urban potentials above ground, the recalibration of column locations initiated a more random distribution of columns around both the edge and the center of the canopy.
