Sullivan Square Station: Integrating Housing and Transit Infrastructure Through Monumental Civic Space | Masters Design Project

Site Context

Sullivan Square Station is a heavily used transit node in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston at which a subway line, commuter rail line, and numerous city bus lines intersect. Infrastructural constraints, such as the lack of space for a commuter rail platform below a structurally congested highway overpass, currently limit both present and future transit access. The site is also used primarily as a parking lot for suburban subway riders, who leave their cars at the city’s periphery before taking mass transit into Boston’s urban core. These factors combine to produce an urban landscape that is hostile to both human life and the area’s ecology.

An expanse of concrete prevents drainage in an area already struggling with increasingly frequent flooding, and the site’s industrial proximity creates a large amount of noise pollution as well as unhealthy air conditions. Recent plans by the city, however, indicate a much more urban future for the area. Increased FAR limits, alterations to zoning codes, and potential transit accessibility suggest intense densification as this industrial periphery becomes part of Boston’s growing urban center.

Design Process

A key objective of this project was to engage with the site in its full complexity, resisting simplified readings or abstract interpretations. Instead, the design approach sought to situate the site’s existing material conditions within the broader historical and infrastructural context of petro-mobility. The project developed through a dual process: a systems-based analysis of the economic, environmental, and infrastructural forces shaping the site, alongside a material investigation into its physical character.

This material inquiry took the form of a series of abstract studies focused on the tectonic and material qualities of asphalt. Through these explorations, the project examined the physical consequences of contemporary energy systems and used them as a conceptual foundation for architectural intervention. Rather than treating the site’s conditions as problems to erase, the design leveraged them as generative elements for imagining new architectural and urban possibilities.

Final Outcome

From the early material investigations onward, physical models became a central representational tool within the project. The final large-scale model presented the proposal as an integrated vision that combined architecture, landscape, and infrastructure into a single urban framework. Modeling served not only as a means of visualization, but also as a way to evaluate the project’s material and aesthetic qualities alongside structural ideas such as the suspended civic roof, which shelters the proposed train station below.

At the urban scale, the design introduces a strategic yet restrained reorganization of the site’s existing transit infrastructure. Through minimal intervention to the adjacent highway structure, the proposal improves and expands transportation access by incorporating new commuter and regional rail connections. This significant public investment is paired with a residential tower developed through a public-private partnership model.

The tower itself follows a relatively direct organizational logic, linking the city’s civic goals with neighborhood needs and the site’s broader development potential. More broadly, the project imagines how underutilized sites across Boston could be transformed to address the city’s urgent housing demand while also strengthening the public realm. Rather than treating residential development as an isolated objective, the proposal positions housing as part of a larger civic and infrastructural vision for urban growth.

Conclusion: Ultimately, the project reimagines infrastructure as a catalyst for civic and residential life, proposing a model of urban development that integrates housing, transit, and public space to foster a more connected, resilient, and socially engaged city.

[This Academic Project has been published with text and images submitted by the student]