| WS Development has unveiled a distinctive design for an office building it’s planning to build at 88 Seaport Boulevard in Boston as it prepares to develop 12.5 acres it acquired in 2015 for $359 million.
Designed by Dutch architectural firm OMA, the 18-story office building would contain 425,000 square feet of office space, 60,000 square feet of retail and a 5,000-square-foot civic or cultural space.
OMA Partner Shohei Shigematsu, a design critic at Harvard Graduate School of Design, will design the structure which features cascading exterior terraces facing the Fan Pier Green and various-sized floor plates creating a diagonal slice in the facade.
“Together with the brilliant team at OMA, we will create a unique urban environment that advances Boston’s innovation economy and celebrates great urban design,” said Yanni Tsipis, senior vice president of seaport at WS Development, in a statement.
WS said construction will begin next year and be completed in 2020. The building would occupy the site of the Our Lady Of Good Voyage chapel, which recently relocated to a new building on Seaport Boulevard.
WS is the second developer to respond to critiques by Mayor Marty Walsh and others about the lack of distinctive architecture in the new Seaport developments. Developer Skanska USA opted for an elliptical design for its 18-story office tower at 121 Seaport, designed by CBT Architects.
General Electric executives voiced similar concerns when hiring Gensler to design the new corporate headquarters overlooking the Fort Point Channel, telling the architects the company was not interested in occupying a “cold, glass box.”
W/S has proposed to increase the office component in the previously-approved master plan from 1.2 million to 2.9 million square feet amid continuing strong demand from tenants seeking Seaport District space and corporate headquarters relocations by General Electric to Fort Point and Reebok to the Innovation and Design Building.
The vacancy rate in the 11.4-million-square-foot Seaport District office market has fallen to 6.3 percent after absorbing 79,000 square feet in the first quarter, according to research from Perry Brokerage Assoc. The average asking rent was just under $60 per square foot for class A office space.
