Winthrop Center Building

Winthrop Center Building
  1. About the Winthrop Center Building in Boston
  2. Architect and team
  3. Architectureal style
  4. Spaces and uses
  5. Structure and materials

The Winthrop Center Building is a Contemporary skyscraper designed in 2016 by Handel Architects and built between 2018 and 2023 in Boston, MA.

Winthrop Center Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The Winthrop Center Building is also known, or has been known as, Winthrop Square Tower, or WSQ Building.

Its precise street address is 240 Devonshire Street , Boston, MA. You can also find it on the map here.

The original height of the building was supposed to be 775 feet (236 m), however just before getting construction approval in 2016 it was lowered to 702 feet (214 m), only to be lowered again in 2018, this time to 691 feet (211 m), and finally one more time until 690.7 feet (210.5 m) .

Building's timeline

Design completed
2016
8
Construction begins
2018
6
Construction completed
2023
1
years ago
2024

Architect and team

Handel Architects was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

Handel Architects was in charge of the architectural design, however, architecture is a complex discipline, which usually involves many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Winthrop Center Building a reality:

  • DeSimone Consulting Engineers in charge of Structural Engineering
  • Millennium Partners as the Main Developer
  • WSP in charge of MEP Engineering

Architectural Style

The Winthrop Center Building can be categorized as a Contemporary building.

Contemporary style architecture builds on top of the principles of Modernism and Postmodernism, but incorporates other variables which might not have been that important in the past, but certainly are today, such as technology, sustainability, inclusivity, and others.

From a historical point of view, it is hard to categorize things from a not-so-distant time, and therefore we choose to categorize most buildings built after the year 2000 as "Contemporary". It is possible that as time goes by and we, as a society, gain perspective on the things happening today, we'll be able to look back and recategorize all these buildings into more concrete subsections, some of which might not even exist today.

Spaces & Uses

The Winthrop Center Building reaches an architectural height of 689ft (210m). It has a total of 52 floors, 48 above ground and 4 basements, which combined offer a total of 1,860,519 sqf (172,848m2) of usable space.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 2023, the Winthrop Center Building has been a mixed use building. It incorporates 2 main uses, which are commercial, and residential spaces.

689ft (210m)
4 basements

Materials & Structure

The Winthrop Center Building uses a frame structure made of reinforced concrete columns and beams.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is non-load bearing either, as it is common in frame structure type buildings.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a lightly faceted continuous blue-tinted curtain wall. The curtain wall is state of the art, with triple-glazed windows, consisting of three glass panels with insulating air layers between them and 10 centimeters of insulation.

Sources

  • en.wikipedia.org
  • www.bostoncondobuyersguide.com
  • www.prnewswire.com
  • www.de-simone.com
  • handelarchitects.com
  • www.autodesk.com
  • www.linkedin.com