For the month of March, Archinect is focusing its Spotlight on Boston, the largest city in Massachusetts and the northernmost node of America's Northeast megalopolis. 

The focus on Boston follows our recent Spotlight on Miami theme from the month of February. 

Boston, of course, has a relatively long history dating back to 1630s when it was first settled by Puritan colonizers from England. In the 390 years since, Boston has grown from a powerful shipping town and a major site of the American Revolution into an intellectual and biomedical powerhouse, home to some of the country's most prestigious schools and universities, including Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which are located in the adjacent city of Cambridge. 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the city worked to rectify some of the destruction caused by 1950s-era Urban Renewal projects through the development of the "Big Dig," a massive building project that buried major highways running through the city, replacing them at grade-level with a series of parks. 

Landmarks in the city include the 749-foot-tall Prudential Tower designed by The Luckman Partnership in 1960 and the 790-foot John Hancock Tower, designed by I.M. Pei & Partners in 1968, as well as more recent architectural marvels on the various university campuses, including the Ray and Maria Stata Center by Gehry Partners and Simmons Hall by Steven Holl Architects, both at MIT. Not to be outdone, Harvard University sports the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the only building designed by Le Corbusier in North America. 

The area is an economic power house in terms of its building industry, as well. A city report indicates the Boston Planning and Development Agency Board approved 11.9 million square feet of new development in the city in 2018, for example, including 4,219 potential new housing units across the city. That total also includes approval for 1.2 million square feet of new office spaces and the construction of 3,733 new housing units. The city is home to over 20,000 construction industry jobs, as well as over 57,000 education-related positions. 

In recent months, a number of new building projects have to light there, as well, including a new Cross-Laminated Timber net-zero apartment complex designed by Generate, a new mixed-use tower by KPF, and a new research center development designed for Harvard University by a team that includes Studio Gang, Henning Larsen, and landscape architects SCAPE.

For the rest of the month, Archinect will bring you a collection of stories highlighting the thriving set of architectural practices in the city through our Studio Snapshots series. We will also detail the work these firms and others are producing through project profiles, while also focusing on the variety of educational approaches being taken within the area's storied educational institutions. Keep an eye out for the Spotlight on Boston tag to find these stories. 

Let us know in the comments below where we should head in April!