REDEVELOPMENT OF A REDEVELOPMENT OF A REDEVELOPMENT
Medium: Real Estate Poem
Academic work done at MIT
Year: 2024
Workshop with Marija Maric and Ana Miljacki
This poem collages language taken directly from real estate developer websites and news publications about one building in Boston, the Government City Garage, being demolished to make room for a new condo tower, the Sudbury. The poem visualizes the way the purposefully vague language from real estate developers can be used over and over again to justify a demolition (of the “ugly,” “bad”, “failed”) in place of the new (“forward-thinking”, “contemporary”, “best”).
The soaring glass-clad Sudbury stands in stark conrast to the Brutalist-style Government Center Garage
The Brutalist-style Government Center Garage1
a hulking concrete structure2
a place that was so badly developed in the 1960s1
laid down after a massive bulldozing of the area3
is now itself being demolished and replaced3
by multiple buildings in a mixed-use complex3
The Government Center Garage is a scar on the city4
a reminder of a failed way of thinking4
that prioritized cars over people4
The big ugly garage is gone1
The Brutalist-style Government Center Garage1
a hulking concrete structure2
a place that was so badly developed in the 1960s1
laid down after a massive bulldozing of the area3
is now itself being demolished and replaced3
by multiple buildings in a mixed-use complex3
The Government Center Garage is a scar on the city4
a reminder of a failed way of thinking4
that prioritized cars over people4
The big ugly garage is gone1
The soaring glass-clad Sudbury1
an architecturally-distinctive, 528 foot-tall residential tower5
with luxury condominiums4
was what fit best at the site3
Designed for how you live today6
the Sudbury embodies clean, contemporary design6
through a unique combination7
of forward-thinking development stategies7
The Sudbury soars skyward6
and emerges as a dramatic and unprecedented transformation7
