On the Channel considers and reviews the Summer Street Steps and wonders how, with all the billions of public and private dollars poured onto the blank slate that used to be the Seaport, that's what we wound up with - complete with loudspeakers pumping out pop music like some mall in the 1990s.
Stairways are potent symbolic structures, and in the best cases can define and elevate a space to sublime heights. In the original 2017 project plan, WS described their work as being 'modeled conceptually on the Spanish Steps in Rome and other monumental stairs around the world.' If only the execution were as ambitious as the vision: the Summer Street Steps are fine, but a Baroque masterpiece they are not.
With a history of the transformation of the area from train yards to its brief ownership by Rupert Murdoch to what we have today.