Divco West Cambridge Crossing 441 Morgan Avenue

1933 Divco Hero 2

Divco West Cambridge Crossing 441 Morgan Avenue

441 Morgan Avenue expresses a LEED Gold research center as the key connecting interface between the Cambridge Crossing biotech hub and the open space of the Common at CX.

1933 Divco Elevation Detail
1933 Divco Morgan Side Detail Image

The building sits at a major entry to the Cambridge Crossing neighborhood. It welcomes visitors arriving from the east, via or under the Gilmore Bridge, forms a vital framing element to the Common at CX­—and integrates the Crossing into the Cambridge skyline.

We took sustainability and context sensitivity as the two main drivers of the massing articulation and façade design.

These principles produced a building with distinct faces to address two different conditions, linked by a design language of subtle precision and a palette of warm, natural materials.

1933 Divco Massing Diagrams 1 5
1933 Divco V8 Jacobs Follow Up Image Recropped 210603

A glass curtain wall opens the north sides to the street and park. This skin is sheared like a fabric to create terraces and smaller façade zones, whose dynamic, shifting relationship lightens the building and articulates the elevations.

Terra cotta fins block morning and afternoon summer sun, and orient alternately towards street and park to articulate the façade at the intimate pedestrian scale.

1933 Divco Fin Vertical
1933 Divco Hero 2

The south façades use smaller windows with cutting-edge dynamic glass to minimize solar gain. The more regular rhythm of these windows, and the large-scale volumetric shifts, engage the more distant, civic views from the highway and Boston.

The warm tones of the terra cotta fins wrap to these faces as vertical pilasters, variably angled to achieve subtle rippling shadows.

1933 Divco V2 Glassworks Follow Up Image Recropped 220623
1933 Divco Bridge

Pedestrian experience drives the circulation and massing. As part of the façade shear, the east corner pulls out to shield views of the Gilmore Bridge underside, while providing the first direct connection from CX Common to the bridge via accessible public elevator and cantilevered walkway.

Rather than make the loading dock a secondary element, we took its street frontage as an opportunity to index normally hidden aspects of the building.

Translucent door slats draw the eye to the striated ceiling inside the garage and loading dock, and patinated metal matches the building’s warm palette to this zone’s industrial character.

1933 Divco V9 Leighton Frontal Narrative Support Recropped 210623
1933 Divco Lobby Revised Optional Backup Image Copy

详情

年份
2023
项目地点
Cambridge, MA
项目规模
491,437 GSF
功能
Commercial labs, support spaces, bicycle transit hub
Pursuing LEED Gold | WELL Core Certification | dEUI: 140

团队

Ennead 团队
Kevin McClurkan, Judy Glina, Geoffrey Hughes, Annie Yan Bailey, Winslow Koisir, Ryan Carlisle, Ochuko Edema, Ayelet Gezow, Sam Johnson, Laura Leung, Fangzhou Liu, Kyung Min, Maanasa Nathan, Nikita Payusov, Suzanne Troiano
纪录建筑师
Jacobs