Marginal Street Lofts / Merge Architects Inc

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Text description provided by the architects. This new nine-unit residential building occupies a small but unique site on the waterfront in East Boston. Located between the residential neighborhood of Jeffries Point and an active shipyard, public art gallery and cafe, the design utilizes industrial materials to effect a contemporary interpretation of context while dissolving the boundary between building and city. Planning limitations, including height restrictions imposed by neighbors, parking requirements from the city, and the developer’s desire to provide water views for every unit, presented an opportunity to strategically rework standard residential typologies. The result is tube-like stacked units opportunistically interlocked to effect sectional and proportional shifts within the space of the unit. Living, dining, and cooking areas on the front of the building are compressed and horizontal, leading the eye through a series of layered spaces toward framed views of the water and the Boston skyline beyond. Sleeping spaces in the rear of the building are compact in plan and tall in section, focusing the eye upward.