Artist Residence 300 Summer Street

• Location, Client, & Date

  Boston, MA

  Artist Building Board of Directors

  November 2017

• Program & Primary Materials

  • Envelope, infrastructure, and accessibility repairs and improvements

  • HVAC system replacement

  • Metal rainscreen panels over existing masonry facade

• Design

  The Artist Building at 300 Summer Street is a self-governing artist-owned live-work cooperative for visual artists in downtown Boston, in the heart of the vibrant Fort Point Arts Community (FPAC). The historic building, a former wool warehouse that also houses the FPAC Gallery, is structured as a limited-equity co-op to keep 47 live-work primary residences below market rate over time.

  With eight stories and 300,000 sf and the largest structure in the historic South Boston Industrial Wharf District, the north façade had perennial masonry leaks from Nor’easters blowing across nearby Boston Harbor. The design provides envelope renovation as well as infrastructure and accessibility improvements with virtually zero staging area at Summer & A Streets.

  East-facing windows along A Street are replaced with new windows, and the north-facing brick is over-clad with a back-ventilated rainscreen in multi-color metal panels, a design with large-scale visual energy representing the artists-in-residence that gained easy approval from the Boston Landmarks Commission.

  Taylor & Burns Architects served as design architect to Simpson Gumpertz & Heger.

• Accessibility

  Accessibility design includes elevator modernization as well as redesign of stair railings for code-compliance.

• Sustainability

  • Renovation of MEP infrastructure with high-efficiency system including local controla for sustainability

  • Relocation of utilities and HVAC plant to upper floors and rooftop for resiliency