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The John Hancock Tower (Hancock Place) is located at 200 Clarendon St. in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. It was designed in the 1970s by architects I.M. Pei and Henry N Cobb. The tower is positioned right next to the Copley Square, a museum of great architecture that includes H. H. Richardson's famous Trinity Church . It is composed of 60 storeys and is parallelogram in shape. It is sheathed with reflective, blue coloured glass around 10,344 in number and is 241m in height. It was completed in 1976. Minimalism was the design principle behind the tower. Adjacent to the modern John Hancock Tower is the Old John Hancock Tower built in 1947.
The John Hancock Tower is composed of 1.6 million s/f offices (3 floors @ 47,000 s/f, 51 floors @ 30,200 s/f). It has a parking area for 1850 cars. Cafeteria can accommodate 1000 people at a time. Lounge has an area of 36000s/f and observation gallery on 60th floor is 29000s/f in area. It also has lobby and banking facilities. The area of tower is 2000, 000s/f.
The building experienced some engineering flaws. Most dangerous flaw was the falling off of entire 4'x11', 500 lb window panes from the building. The problem was due to large pressure differentials between the inside and outside air created by vortices shed off the sharp corners of the building on windy days.The glass panes were later replaced by a different heat-treated variety. During windy days the building's upper-floor occupants suffered from motion sickness. To stabilize the movement, a device called a tuned mass damper costing $3 million was installed on the 58th floor.Tuned mass damper includes two 300-ton weights.Each weight is a steel box filled with lead and rests on a steel plate which is covered with lubricant to allow free motion of the weight. Weight is attached to the steel frame of the building by means of springs and shock absorbers. After September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks the observation deck was closed. Hancock Place was acquired by Broadway Partners in 2006 for $1.3 billion .As Broadway Partners were unable to pay the loan ,Hancock Place was sold on 31st March2009 for $660.6 million at a foreclosure auction in New York City by a partnership between Normandy Real Estate Partners and Five Mile CapitalPartners.
Awards:
•American Institute of Architects: National Honor Award, 1977
•Boston Society of Architects: Harleston Parker Medal, 1983
•It was added to the prestigious AIA 150 - America's Favorite Architecture list.
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