Here's some info I got from going to the Boston Redevelopment Authority's office, but pictures were prohibited
I now have a much more favorable opinion on this project than before. Although the boxiness still leaves plenty to be desired, the details more than make up for it. There's about an acre's worth of public space on the ground floor, and, like shiz already said, Devonshire Street is demapped in front of the building (it will now lead underground to the parking garage and loading docks), creating one big continuous open space with Winthrop Square. Given the security concerns, just how open the indoor space will be remains to be seen, but on paper it looks great. There will be some smaller retail areas off to the side of the open space, along with what looked to be one entire floor's worth in the level just below ground. Overall retail space is supposed to be around 40k square feet.
The tower's lobby is located in the northwestern portion of the site, filling in the space that 101 Federal wraps around. Escalators will bring you up approximately 50 feet from ground level to where the elevator banks begin, and the actual office floors start 20 feet above that. The exterior spire/shaft also holds four elevators which will make stops at the 31st/32nd and 47th/48th floors transfer/mechanical zones, along with all the way up to the restaurant level. The shaft will also hold what looked to be solar or reflective panels up near the top, getting thicker with them the higher you went (the diagonal lines seen in the restaurant section above). So although this shaft looks rather dinky in the first rendering, in reality it will be pretty substantial (4 elevator shafts plus lobby space).
Along with the environmental panels on the exterior elevator shaft, there will also be other reflective panels on the outside of the tower itself, placed about 650 ft up (the white things visible in the original rendering) that, combined with reflective panels mounted on top of surrounding buildings such as 101 Federal, will direct sunlight down to the vegetation at ground level. The glass will also be "low emission" and up to triple glazed, depending on which cardinal direction it will face. And although I didn't see it anywhere else, it looked like there was some kind of second skin on the northern facade, a la the ceramic rods used on Renzo's New York Times tower. That building was shown more than a few times throughout the book more or less as an example as to how to design in a green manner, and it's quite obvious that this tower is through and through a product of Renzo Piano.
A diagram I did based on the images:
Other stats:
Height:
1,087 ft to the floor of the roof garden (glass extends up another 20-25 ft),
1,270 ft to the top of spire
Width/Length: 140 x 140 ft (not including exterior shaft), 32 x 32 ft structural bays
1.336m sf office space, 40k sf retail, 54k sf indoor public area (not including roof zen garden),1200 parking spaces, and 40.3k mechanical space
Total = 1.470 million square feet[/quote]
So there it is... taller than the Empire State Building!
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