2024 Year in Review

2024 has been another very engaging year for Form + Place as the firm has continued to evolve to focus primarily on planning and urban design projects. After years of working on large scale mixed-use projects from the private development side of the equation, it has been rewarding to be able to share this knowledge base with communities to help them “re-vision” their downtowns, including identifying and implementing goals for economic development, diverse housing options and placemaking. Building on the successful adoption of a Comprehensive Plan for the Town of Groveland at the end of 2023 – a project completed in conjunction with Innes & Associates – 2024 has seen an exciting array of master-planning, zoning and design guidelines initiatives.

We look forward to continued collaboration with what has been a very knowledgeable group of professionals in the planning world, including town planners and economic development staff, as well as the many colleagues with whom we have teamed and shared expertise.

URBAN DESIGN. 2024

North Main Street Corridor, Winchester

North Main Street corridor study & MSMD zoning bylaw

This 2 ½-year planning effort to reframe North Main Street, a corridor identified in the Winchester 2030 Master Plan as an evolving opportunity area, culminated with the adoption of the Main Street Mixed-Use District [MSMD] zoning amendment at Winchester Fall Town Meeting this November. Final coordination of corridor design guidelines – which graphically depict site design and building design criteria – will be completed in the near future. This project involved close collaboration with Winchester’s Town Planner and Planning Board, as well as many stakeholders, whose feedback at numerous in-person and virtual community outreach events helped shape the final direction of the bylaw. This planning effort started well before the adoption of Winchester’s MBTA Communities zoning [overlay] district, which ultimately overlapped part of the corridor. The new MSMD underlying zoning rethinks key development criteria, such as building height, setbacks and parking ratios, in an effort to incentivize mixed-use development with an increased density of diverse housing typologies, and to ensure a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly public realm.

Stearns Square, Springfield

Proposed public realm improvements in Stearns Square, Springfield

This quick study for the Springfield Office of Planning and Economic Development explored the expansion of urban connectivity from Union Station through Duryea Way and Stearns Square to Center Square and the Main Street corridor. The project considered the potential repositioning of the blocks west of Stearns Square to accommodate a flexible concert pavilion on the site of the annual Springfield Jazz & Roots Festival. The enhancement of pedestrian environments through the widening of sidewalks, incorporation of table tops and the use of operable bollards to reroute vehicular traffic during events were among the efforts contemplated to help bolster the placemaking qualities of the district and afford greater opportunities for activities such as outdoor dining. This vision builds on constructs put forward by Form + Place in the 2021 Northeast Downtown District Masterplan which explored enhancements to the Chestnut Street corridor and a series of related public realm improvements, including the redesign of nearby Apremont Triangle.

Eastern Gateway District, Reading

Eastern Gateway District study area in Reading + Open House

The Eastern Gateway District project in Reading, MA, anticipated to be a 1 – 1 ½ year project, is just gaining momentum with a first community Open House meeting just completed this December. Building on previous studies and working to forward goals identified in Reading’s Economic Development Action Plan 2016-2022, this latest effort will explore redevelopment opportunities in a newly defined district – approximately 50 acres in size – that is bisected by the commuter rail line. With walkable proximity to both downtown Main Street shops and the commuter rail station, the goal of this project is to create a new vision for the district that will promote contextual redevelopment which is compatible with surrounding neighborhoods and offers an enhanced public realm, as well as infrastructure improvements that create thoughtful ped / bike / vehicular access and connectivity. Today, the southern portion of the site is home to the Reading Municipal Lighting Dept., the Town’s DPW yard and a handful of commercial and industrial uses, while the northern section is predominantly occupied by large format retail. Form + Place is partnering with TEC and JM Goldson to assist the Town in developing consensus for a district masterplan that will inform a purposeful rezoning and design guidelines effort. The project aims to incentivize public-private partnerships and unlock future development that is appropriately scaled and patterned.

ARCHITECTURE. 2024

Rear patio trellis for Milton home


2024 has also seen a fascinating array of architectural efforts that have included everything from the design of a patio trellis for a beautiful home in Milton to studies for the repositioning of an historic estate in the Berkshires to an extensive permitting effort for four new townhouses in Jamaica Plain.

Four Townhouses [2-duplex concept] in Jamaica Plain

Form + Place has also continued to provide architectural services for Specialized Housing Inc. [SHI], an organization that offers management and caregiving services to adults with disabilities. Many of the congregate living homes that SHI oversees have residents who have aged in place, in some instances now, for over 40 years and these homes require creative updates to address expanded staffing accommodation needs as well as to improve accessibility for residents. One of the homes that we are currently assisting SHI with is looking to upgrade access to the basement level by building a new, generously sized stair, complete with a lift, which will allow for the relocation of certain residential units and common area spaces.

Stair Schematic Design Model for SHI Brookline House

Many of these projects, including the Jamaica Plain townhouses, cross over into the world of planning and zoning and involve complex approvals processes with community meetings and ZBA hearings. One of these “crossover” projects is The Brunswick Hotel in Maine, a project that Form + Place has been working on – in its many iterations – for well over a decade. The Brunswick Hotel sits at the head of Maine Street adjacent to an historic Richard Upjohn church at the gateway to Bowdoin College. The hotel was designed as an anchor for the Maine Street Station masterplan that was completed back in 2008 when Amtrak expanded its service north of Portland, ME to the communities of Freeport and Brunswick. While the station area has been a successful infill project for downtown Brunswick, its presence on Maine Street was limited by an outdated and rundown retail block which did little to connect the town and gown worlds. Form + Place worked with the hotel’s new owners to get approval for the demolition of this one-story retail block, which will serve as usable open space in the near term while the hotel contemplates the future repositioning of the parcel.

Top: Approved demolition concept and completed Phase 1
Bottom: Early schematic site design, The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick, ME

On a personal note, I would also like to mention how much I continue to value my involvement with the Urban Land Institute and especially my participation on ULI’s Real Estate Advisory Committee [REAC]. I have enjoyed working closely with a fascinating group of colleagues on the REAC to help communities brainstorm solutions to important economic development challenges through Technical Assistance Panels [TAPs]. This year, I worked with TAP chairs Emily Innes and Jim Heffernan to contemplate a challenging public-private puzzle on the site of the Holy Name Parish in Chicopee, MA adjacent to the Elms College campus.

In summary, I would like to say thank you to all of the clients and collaborators who have made 2024 an exceptional year at Form + Place. And a special thank you to John Rufo, Florin Luca and most notably to Gillan Wang for their contributions.

Happy holidays!

 

Michael A. Wang, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Form + Place, Inc.

Spring Lawn Estate House residential study for JHR Development, Lenox

Form + Place: Update on Urban Planning Work

2022 has emerged as a year filled with a diverse and exciting collection of urban planning projects at Form + Place. While we continue to work on a wide range of residential projects and some commercial mixed-use place-making efforts, it is our urban design and planning sector work that is rapidly growing, allowing Form + Place to forge new collaborations and explore new community contexts.

 
 

In Springfield, we recently completed a Master Plan for the Northeast Downtown District that called for re-visioning the Chestnut Street corridor into a two-way mixed-use spine, in addition to other key public realm improvements, as a means to stimulate private investment. We continue to explore a range of planning studies in this fascinating area around Union Station – the perfect location for more dense transit-oriented development - including work in the Apremont Triangle and Stearns Square areas.

 
 

We also continue to work with the City of Newton’s Planning & Development Department as one of their Urban Design On-Call Consultants. Our current efforts have been focused on helping the city review Mark Development’s Schematic Design drawings for the Riverside Station project. The Riverside Station approvals calls for a “consistency review” process whereby evolving building design and site design parameters are checked against Special Permit requirements and a set of comprehensive Design Guidelines that were drafted by Form + Place and adopted in the fall of 2021.

 In addition to these ongoing efforts, we currently have three exciting new urban planning projects on the boards:

Groveland Comprehensive Plan              

Form + Place has been collaborating with Emily Innes of Innes Associates to produce a Comprehensive Plan for the Town of Groveland, MA. The project is ramping up in the month of May with three community outreach workshops scheduled for the week of the 9th. Our team is taking a “place-based” approach – utilizing 3 key sites - to explore the usual Comp Plan elements - Land Use, Open Space & Rec, Housing, etc. We have structured the workshops to help explore the community’s goals through specific thematic lenses, such as gateways, connectivity, place-making, and balancing development and preservation.

 
 

Hull Urban Renewal Plan            

Form + Place is currently working with the Hull Redevelopment Authority to help refine the vision for the HRA-owned parcels in the Nantasket Beach Redevelopment Area. On a critical site that has the potential to link two distinct neighborhoods within the Hull community, and also has major resiliency issues to contend with, Form + Place is building on previous studies that have attempted to frame the “ideal” public-private redevelopment opportunity. Working in conjunction with TEC, who has been integral in exploring infrastructure improvements along Nantasket Avenue and Hull Shore Drive, we are striving to help the HRA define the appropriate character and scale for development in the area while ensuring the preservation of key public open spaces.

 

 
 

Winchester’s North Main Street Corridor            

Form + Place has recently been retained to work with Winchester’s Planning Department and Planning Board to help with the implementation of a refined vision for the North Main Street corridor, which links the downtown core to the Woburn city line. Winchester’s recent Master Plan 2030 and its associated Action Plan, together with a corridor study completed in 2021 by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, have provided a strong starting point, identifying the corridor as an Evolving Opportunity Area. North Main Street has an eclectic mix of uses today and suffers a lack of cohesiveness, including an over-abundance of auto-centric uses – a problem common to many similarly-scaled communities in the inner ring areas around their Center Business Districts. Form + Place looks forward to working with the town to explore a wide range of variables, from strategizing regarding infrastructure improvements to rethinking zoning and design guidelines, in an effort to enhance this critical gateway to the downtown.

 
 

Collaboration : Expanding Its Use and Definition

By John Rufo

When someone describes the design process as collaborative, an image comes to mind of designers gathered around a table of drawings, a computer screen, or standing at a wall reviewing pinned-up documents and sketches as they problem solve and flesh out solutions. But seeing collaboration through this narrow lens stifles the potential of an understanding of the larger process as more inclusive and participatory by all the individuals that a given project will impact.

 

Michael Wang leads City of Newton design professionals forum on Zoning Redesign

 

The firm profile at Form + Place is one of few employees and lots of collaborators. In recent years we intentionally shaped the firm this way to allow the principals to stay closer to the work while drawing from a larger and more diverse range of experience and expertise beyond the walls of our studio. What advantage does this serve? One of our frequent collaborators, Jessica Bessette of Bessette Architecture and Design puts it like this:

“Ideally outcomes of the process end up in a different place than if any one person’s ideas were on their own.  Involving the people we are trying to solve problems for as well as people outside of yourself leads to higher satisfaction both in the end product and in the relationships formed in the process.”

Jessica points out that “collaboration” and “co-creation” are often blended in a process that is driven by teaming with other people and disciplines.

Hello Washington Street – community feedback session

Co-creation, as described by Lauren Fischer of Call the Collective is a “boundary spanning process” that “produces something that did not exist before”. While we as designers regularly collaborate with other disciplines in the design field to produce results that are familiar and somewhat expected to us, it may be helpful to expand the notion of collaboration to include co-creation, especially when the process involves a community dialogue. One of our frequent collaborators, structural engineer Steve Siegel said to me recently,

“Our expertise is deep but narrow, so our problem solutions must incorporate inputs from other experts, who in turn don’t know what we know… effective collaboration is all about empathy.”

In the same way that we listen to the ideas and needs of our clients and collaborators with empathy, we can reframe the interface with community as a critical part of the creative process to heighten a spirit of collaborative community building.

 

Urban Land Institute - Jackson Square Walking Tour information session

 

So how does this play out? As part of the work that Form + Place regularly performs, my partner Michael Wang and I often present at and attend a variety of community forums that make up the entitlement process on projects as small as single-family homes and as large as 1 million + square foot mixed-use projects. Two examples of larger efforts are the Riverside and Newton Northland projects for which Form + Place served on the city of Newton’s peer review team. In both cases the project proponents embraced a collaborative review process as a key piece of the ongoing design dialogue and the city was able to reap the benefit of several experts to help form a cogent critique of proposed design and expand public input in the process.

 

Michael Wang updates the Charles River Regional Chamber on Newton Northland peer review process

 

We’ve come to see that along with words and phrases like “create a vision”, “complete a master plan”, or create a sense of place”, the process of collaboration and co-creation needs to also include phrases like “community stakeholder”, “public forum”, “chamber of commerce”, “building consensus”, etc… When these touch points are thought of as inside the boundary of the creative process, our relationship to them changes and we are able to bring new voices into the dialogue rather than think of them as hurdles to be jumped over further down the track. The process is not actually easier. It requires patience, attention to details and a thick skin. Joel Kadis of Linear Retail once said to me that a good design partner

will excel at listening to our needs, have the conviction to stand up for what they believe, integrate our thoughts, and do it all with a sense of humor”.

 

John Rufo scoops ice cream at an Upper Falls Rail Trail art opening and community awareness event

 

At the end of the day, every work of design locates itself within a community. Design leaders and community leaders have their particular expertise and a priority of issues that they are charged with addressing and getting right. The process can be long, but you need to trust that process to believe that the results will be there. Another one of our frequent collaborators, Brian Hilliard of tomhill Studio describes our collaborative model like this.

I like to think of collaboration in the design process as the creative version of Just In Time (JIT) manufacturing. When everyone brings a particular skillset to the table it's a way to be more nimble, proactive (instead of reactive) and innovative.”

A Sustainable Housing Model for Adults with Developmental Disabilities

By Michael A. Wang

When communities proactively engage in promoting diversity, housing opportunities are often at the center of the debate. While affordable housing is typically the focus, providing housing for adults with developmental disabilities is another important piece of this equation, and it deserves more attention. Where does one look for examples of sustainable models? A noteworthy precedent originated in 1983 when Specialized Housing Inc. [SHI] developed a model for supporting adults with disabilities to live independently, while also having a stake in home ownership.

Congregate living environments take many forms but SHI’s model is based on building a sense of community that relies on foundational relationships between residents, staff and family groups. Integration with the surrounding community – whether through jobs, volunteer work or community-based programs – is a key component of daily life for residents, allowing them to develop independence and critical skills, such as self-advocacy.

SHI homes in Brookline and Newton, established over the past four decades

While each house has its own culture, the underlying tenet of home ownership fosters long term commitments and offers residents the opportunity for personal growth, building self-esteem, and participating in both responsible citizenship and community involvement.

Form + Place has been working with SHI over the past year to evaluate the built environments in some of their more established homes, in an effort to help plan for the evolving needs of residents as they age in place. One fundamental aspect of the SHI model is the integration of separate apartments for “live-in” staff – often two - who reside on site and are available to address any overnight emergencies that may arise. While newer SHI homes have been designed upfront to accommodate staff apartments, many of the older homes need to find creative ways to reconfigure their available space to meet residents’ evolving needs.

For adults with disabilities, having the opportunity to live in a single-family home – independent from their nuclear family – is truly liberating. From an architectural design perspective, accommodating up to ten individual residences [rooms], shared bathroom facilities [often 1 per every 2 residents], common areas, plus two one-bedroom staff apartments, can be a challenge. The fact that this congregate living model is considered by zoning to be classified as a single-family residence, helps facilitate some creative design solutions and simplifies approvals processes for certain components, that might normally require a Special Permit, such as accessory apartments.

A recent project in Newton Highlands converted a beautiful second empire home on a .4 acre parcel into an SHI home by building an addition onto the side of the existing house. The lower level of the addition was developed into one staff apartment and the unfinished basement of the existing house was adapted to accommodate a second apartment. With some clever grading and the introduction of areaways, these apartments are quite attractive and have ample light. Access to the apartments is provided directly from the exterior, as well as through internal stairs, giving staff a degree of privacy.

Well landscaped areaways allowing access and light into lower level apartments

Retrofitting staff apartments into some of the more established SHI houses – first occupied in the 1980’s and 1990’s and, therefore, now housing individuals in their 60’s – has been quite a design puzzle. Form + Place is currently working on two homes in Brookline with the goals of solving staffing needs, enhancing the resident’s common areas and contemplating potential future accessibility needs [elevators/lifts]. In one home, a completely subterranean unfinished basement is being converted into a new staff apartment by excavating a lower-level entry patio at the rear of the house and designing additional areaways that will integrate into the house’s landscaped side yard.

 

New sunken entry patio providing access

 

The second Brookline home involves a much more significant intervention that will have a notable positive impact on the aging residents’ use of the house. In this home – the original SHI house, dating back to 1983 – two new staff apartments, complete with separate kitchens and bathrooms, will be finished out at the lower garden patio level. This will allow for a new communal kitchen and dining area to be relocated on the main living level of the home, eliminating the need for residents to negotiate a small, winding stair to the lower level. In addition, access to the outdoor patio in the rear will be enhanced by redesigning a covered exterior stair.

 

Revisioning kitchen/dining/living areas

 
 

Basement level staff apartments

First floor common rooms

 

These homes for adults with disabilities truly exemplify what it means to build a diverse community, on multiple levels. The sense of empowerment that residents feel by living a supported, yet independent, lifestyle with their peers is matched by the meaningful contributions that they make to their larger communities – communities such as Newton, Brookline and Arlington. Form + Place is honored to be able to participate in helping to make this unique model become a sustainable reality. Surely there are lessons to be learned from this private group home ownership model for communities that want to focus on providing diverse long term housing opportunities that are accessible to all adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Whether helping to secure funding through mechanisms such as a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), offering support with approvals processes or facilitating land acquisition in village centers and transit nodes, communities do have an important role to play in this potential public-private partnership.

 

Accessible outdoor amenity space

 

Form + Place New Direction

After ten years in business, Form + Place is pleased to announce that we are embarking on a new path. Founding partners Michael Wang and John Rufo will continue their collaborative work in architecture, urban design and planning, with the goal of delivering thoughtful solutions across a continuum of community-based projects that range from urban master plans to mixed-use and multi-family planning to single-family private residential design.

We would like to take a moment to acknowledge the contributions that Mike Manship has made to the firm over the past eight years and wish him well in his future endeavors. Form + Place will continue to provide unparalleled personal service to our clients through our ongoing strategic alliances with a group of incredibly talented individuals, including Jessica Bessette, Brian Hilliard and others.

Through our regular blog posts and articles, as well as through working with you, we strive to explore new ideas and creative solutions to transform the way we interact with and shape the communities in which we live. We look forward to collaborating with you!