The Vertex Pharmaceuticals headquarters and Twenty Two Liberty condo tower on Boston’s Fan Pier are cornerstones of the city’s most closely-watched neighborhood.
After sunset, purple LED fixtures light up the sides of the research and development complex and flank Vertex’s corporate logo. A band of lights alternately glowed red and white this week atop the 14-story condo tower, where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft bought a pair of penthouses in January.
The eye-catching arrays have met with mixed reviews in a city that often views changes in the skyline with suspicion.
“Personally, I loathe the lighting on those buildings,” said Michael Davis, co-chair of the Boston Civic Design Commission. “We like interesting, progressive architecture, but subtlety is important and the new lighting we’re getting on the Fan Pier, no one would call subtle or sophisticated.”
Now, Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) officials are asking the developer to tone down the light show.
During a meeting of a committee that advises the BRA on waterfront planning this week, BRA official Richard McGuinness said the agency hadn’t anticipated the extent of the Fan Pier illumination.
“We did not know those lights were going to be installed. We’ve heard complaints from various stakeholders and we’ve asked the developer to turn it down,” said McGuinness, the agency’s deputy director of waterfront planning.
BRA spokesman Nicholas Martin later clarified that the agency was “absolutely aware of the installation of LED lighting on buildings at Fan Pier,” and does not intend to ask the owners to remove them. After receiving neighborhood complaints about the extent and intensity of the lights, the BRA’s urban design team plans to work with developer Joseph Fallon to reduce the impact on adjacent properties, Martin said.
Fallon did not respond to requests for comment this week.
New building designs go through multiple levels of scrutiny during permitting. After a project is approved by the BRA board of directors, the Boston Civic Design Commission looks at aesthetics such as walkways, public spaces, building designs and protection of the “overall character” of Boston.
Those criteria include plans for exterior lighting. Davis, president of Boston-based architects Bergmeyer Assoc., said Fallon Co. presented a “whole generation of different ideas and approaches to lighting. It looked like they were figuring it out after they were installed. My personal opinion is it didn’t match our expectations.”
Fallon sold the 1.1-million-square-foot Vertex buildings to Newton-based Senior Housing Properties Trust in 2014 for $1.1 billion. A spokeswoman for SHPT said that Vertex currently controls the lighting, and Vertex spokeswoman Heather Nichols declined to comment.
LED fixtures have become part of the urban fabric as the cost of the energy-efficient arrays declines and commercial landlords seek to differentiate their buildings.
Fallon’s One Marina Park Drive office building on Northern Avenue has lit up in red, white and blue patterns to recognize Veterans’ Day in recent years. And Boston Properties activated multicolored lighting arrays on the upper floors and decorative shaft of its Atlantic Wharf office building last fall.
They’re also becoming a staple of public art projects, with 44 LED fixtures lighting up sculptor Janet Echelman’s aerial installation on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway last year.
