SOUTH

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The "SOWA" (South of Washington Street) district in the South End of Boston is well known for its artists' studios and galleries, affordable housing, the Cathedral of Boston, and its weekly SoWa Open Market. The project site in particular was on a triangular block bounded by Wareham, Malden, and Albany Streets. The site bridges between the dense rowhouse scale and grain of east South End and the large institutions/industrial buildings in the SOWA district to the west.

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The proposed residential building is defined by the existing site lines of the street grids, but opens itself up to the possibility of a landscape element in the center. The ground floor features a social media wall, where users will approach and interact. The wall displays the Instagram pictures of businesses within a fifteen-minute walk of the building, updating whenever a user tags or hashtags one of the accounts. The residential floors alternate between affordable millennial housing and luxury housing. Millennial units are offered as single or double layouts, and have a lofted bedroom space. Each pair of units shares a balcony space that overlooks either the Boston skyline or the landscaped courtyard. The luxury units are three-bedrooms, featuring a vaulted living space with a double height balcony and a large, private balcony.