Help wanted: a designer for Greenway pavilion
''The pavilion shall create an architectural link between the past and the future."
That's one of the design guidelines for what is expected to be the first building on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. It will be a small pavilion for orienting visitors to the Boston Harbor Islands national park area.
Linking the past and the future isn't an easy job. But if you think you're up to it, you, reader, can help design the pavilion. The design will be chosen from proposals submitted in an open competition. A jury of experts, who will pick the winning entry, will judge anonymously, meaning they won't know whether they're looking at the work of an established firm or a young Turk. The only requirement is that at least one member of each team that submits a design must be a registered architect in Massachusetts.
Design competitions don't happen much in this country. In Europe, where they're far more common, they give young architects a shot at designing significant buildings. It would be great to see some unknown break through here, too.
The site is the so-called Parcel 14 of the Greenway. Parcel 14 will be mostly park. It occupies a key location, opposite the Waterfront Marriott hotel, at the point where the Walk to the Sea from downtown crosses the Greenway. From the new building, which will be called the Harbor Park Pavilion, you'll be able to see Christopher Columbus Park on your left and the New England Aquarium on your right, with the harbor and its islands visible in the distance.
The Harbor Islands are one of Boston's greatest assets, but one of the least used. There are 34 of them, ranging in size from a single acre to 274 acres, which is nearly four times the area of Boston Common and the Public Garden combined. The islands became part of the national park system in 1996.
''This site is the intersection of the city and the harbor," says Brian Healy, an architect who helped craft the competition and who will serve on the jury. ''It's the heart of the Greenway. It's also the heart of the mayor's 'Crossroads Initiative.' " State Street, which bounds the site on the south, is one of 12 streets that the mayor hopes to landscape and improve in ways that will help knit the Greenway into the city. ''The pavilion will reach out, make connections, in the true spirit of this century," Healy says.
The hope is to open the pavilion by 2007, which would make it the first building to be completed on the Greenway. Healy and others hope it can establish a standard for several other pavilions being planned along the Greenway. The building will contain a reception desk, a computer kiosk for travel information, and a bookstore/cafe that will open to the outdoors in good weather.
The rules of the competition call for a one-story building no taller than 18 feet, and for ''green" building practices. It also states, ''Submissions should address how the surrounding landscape might orient visitors to Harbor Islands" -- another fairly challenging requirement.
The winner will receive a $10,000 prize. Second and third place will be worth $3,000 and $2,000, respectively. Prize money is being donated by the LEF Foundation. It's anticipated that the winning team, besides its prize, will sign a contract to develop its design into a finished building.
This should be one of the most exciting design events in Boston's history. The Harbor Islands are the hidden secret of Boston, the richest unused resource we possess. One imagines the pavilion as a kind of anchor on the shore, to remind you of the islands out there.
The competition is being sponsored by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which controls the land, and the Boston Harbor Island Alliance, a coalition of 13 interest groups, including the National Park Service. The Boston Society of Architects is serving as adviser, and Boston's city planners are very much involved. The competition jury is a 10-person group of designers, government officials, and representatives of private advocacy groups. I would guess that the jury, given its makeup, will tend to favor a progressive kind of architecture. The estimated budget is $3 million, not bad for a 2,500-square-foot structure.
Interested in finding out more? Go to www.bostonislands.com/pavilion. You must register by April 25 ($100 fee) and submit your design by May 2.
Robert Campbell is the Globe's architecture critic. He can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.
