Profile

John Hancock Tower

Boston, Massachusetts
Completed 1976

Corporate headquarters and investment office building
 

Click on image to enlarge

The challenge of this project centered on the introduction of a very large office building within historic Copley Square — a veritable museum of significant architecture of which H. H. Richardson's Trinity Church (1872) is the undisputed centerpiece. To achieve symbiosis between tower and square, a strategy of minimalism was adopted; everything not contributing directly to this end was omitted. Only thus could the arrogance of a two-million-square-foot tower be tempered and made to animate rather than oppress the urban scene.

Extreme disparity of size was the major predicament. Rather than separate tower and church by a gratuitous distance, they were brought into close proximity and the tower positioned and shaped to become the contingent satellite of a composition centered on the church. The tower's rhomboidal plan reinforces this goal, emphasizing the planar and minimizing volumetric presence while disembodying the tower's mass as seen from the Square. Notches in the tower's end walls accentuate its weightless verticality.

The angled siting created a triangular plaza that permits views of the celebrated church apse to view in a dense and previously closed urban setting. The highly reflective tower amplifies the scene with mirror images. Stripped of any element that would suggest a third dimension, the tower thus mutes the obtrusiveness of its own bulk and defers to the rich plastic qualities of its much smaller neighbors.

Major Components

1.6 million s/f offices (3 floors @ 47,000 s/f, 51 floors @ 30,200 s/f), lobby, banking facilities, 1,000-seat employee cafeteria / lounge (36,000 s/f), 29,000 s/f observation gallery on 60th floor, commissioned art (Don Moulton, Apples), outdoor plaza; parking for 1850 cars in independent 750,000 s/f garage with ground floor retail

Awards

I. M. Pei & Partners services

Complete Architectural Services; Interior Design of public spaces and executive offices

Structural

Office of James Ruderman, New York, NY   

Mechanical / Electrical

Cosentini Associates LLP, New York, NY

Foundations

Mueser, Rutledge, Wentworth & Johnson, New York, NY

Profile   Projects   Contacts   Contents