Site Design at Roxbury Crossing

This project challenges us to take a site that by all conditions was an inhospitable place and turn it into a space people wanted to be in. Located right across the road from Roxbury Crossing the busiest bus station in the United States we were tasked with handling noise pollution, harsh sun intensity, strong prevailing winter winds, and making a massing that would help make the space pedestrian friendly.

These diagrams are showing how the massing was organized and evolved over time. First by anchoring landmarks around the site then focusing on the inner courtyard sunlight conditions.

Once we had our basic massing we then began to organize it into units and figure out how circumlocution around the units would work. In this case I decided to use outdoor circulation facing the inner courtyard to give it a more lively neighbourhood feel. We carved holes in the massing to allow for prevailing summer breezes to come through.

The massing and unit placement was further refined through the use of AI site analysis Autodesk forma. Where we tested multiple variations for optimal sunlight hours in the courtyard and protection for harsh environmental elements such as wind noise and the sun.

Using climate studio we created unit models for potential sunlight and optimized the units based on several trials.

The final model was made out of insulation foam and laser cut museum board. Pro tip never use spray glue on foam it literally melts it. My locker smelled of chemicals for days...

Produced in Rhino with Enscape plugin