by Brianna Crandall — January 26, 2011—The John Hancock Tower in Boston, designed by I.M. Pei & Partners, has been selected to receive the 2011 AIA Twenty-Five Year Award from the American Institute of Architects.
Thirty-five years after its dedication, the lean, rhomboid reflective glass tower designed by Henry Cobb, FAIA, continues to dramatize the classic architectural question of aesthetic balance. Built on a small site adjacent to some of Boston’s greatest architectural assets, the tower had to be massive enough to accommodate the owner’s requirements, yet mindful of its delicate and historic surroundings, notes AIA.
Located in Boston’s historic Copley Square, the Hancock Tower continues to serve as an office building. The 60-story, 790-foot reflective glass tower remains the tallest building in New England. Boston Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell, FAIA, said the tower is “one of the greatest office towers of the second half of the 20th century.”
The John Hancock Tower received an AIA National Honor Award in 1977. In 1994, a Boston Globe poll of architects and historians rated it as the third-best work of architecture in Boston history, behind only Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library, its two closest neighbors. The Tower recently achieved LEED Gold Existing Building certification for sustainable strategies, some of which were part of the original design.
The firm, now called Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners, Architects, also previously received the 2004 Twenty-five Year Award for the East Building, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Founding principal I.M. Pei, FAIA, received the AIA Gold Medal in 1979, and his firm was honored with the 1968 AIA Architecture Firm Award.
