A Public ‘Living room’ in a Glass Pavilion Inserted into Downtown Boston
The Financial District in downtown Boston is crowded with office towers. An underperforming wind-swept park has been replaced with a glass structure, The Exchange at 100 Federal Street. It is a place for meeting, collaborating, celebrating, and sharing that attracts people from their offices and the surrounding neighborhood with its transparency and urban interface. The building attracts professionals, tourists, and locals alike with a reinvigorated public space in the heart of the city.
The Exchange gives the site new life by creating a place where you feel like you are outside, yet are comfortable in any season or weather. The sensation of being outdoors is enhanced by a material palette and furniture that draws the exterior setting into the space, resulting in a unified landscape and building design.
The prismatic form of the Exchange builds upon the angular geometry of the 37-story tower from which it unfolds. The tower’s faces of polished stone translate into polished faces of faceted glass, reflecting the surrounding city, park, and sky in unexpected and ever-changing ways. As the envelope of the pavilion folds to adapt to the triangular site, the grid of the steel structure becomes increasingly dynamic as it leans and dives in response to its folding, faceted facades. The resultant energetic form and structure has become a vibrant and iconic place in the center of Post Office Square.
The Exchange creates two new entrances to the office tower and hosts 3 restaurants and one freestanding coffee kiosk designed specifically for the space. The space is also programmed to transition from its daily uses—casual meeting, dining, and lounging—to host community events such as cocktail receptions, lectures, Boston Fashion Week, music performances, and temporary art installation. The space accommodates all of these activities with supporting infrastructure for sound, video, and suspending rigging or objects from the roof—all without impacting the function of the tower lobby. Finally, a 52 m2 video screen displays commissioned digital artwork and news on a regular basis, naturally enabling the space to become an informal neighborhood venue for communal events such as watching the Olympics, the World Cup, or a major local sports team’s game.
Prominently located in the heart of Boston’s Financial District—a neighborhood once characterized by restriction and an inward-facing culture—the Exchange stands proudly as a beacon of transparency, community, and vibrancy. The developers compare it with IM Pei’s glass pyramid at the Paris Louvre.
Project: The Exchange / Location: 100, Federal Street, Boston, MA, United States / Architects: Perkins and Will / Structural engineer: McNamara Salvia / MEP/FP engineer: BALA TMP / Lighting / consultant: LAM Partners / Code consultant: Jensen Hughes / Landscape architect: Mikyoung Kim Design / Coffee kiosk design: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson / Gross floor area: 20,000 ft² / Completion: 2018 / Photograph: Anton Grassl (courtesy of the architect), Chuck Choi (courtesy of the architect)
