Connecting Past and Present through Art

At a new 11-story office tower on the northernmost edge of Boston’s historic South End, a neighborhood story unfolds at street level.

The story is revealed not in words, but in the abstract artistry of Nedret Andre and a new interior connector at 321 Harrison Avenue that re-establishes a long-lost South End side street. 

Andre’s colorful painting is named Sustaining Life.

Commissioned by 321 Harrison Avenue’s development partners, the artwork is displayed inside the tower’s connector lobby and passageway that links Harrison Avenue and Washington Street. Since the site is located next to the SoWa Art & Design District, enriching the space with work by a local artist only felt natural. Andre’s creation connects the history of the site and the neighborhood, spanning an entire wall as a large-scale, 23-foot by 60-foot exhibit.

321 Harrison Ave

The lobby is connected to the 321 Harrison Avenue tower, an eight story addition of lab and office space atop an existing parking garage in Boston's South End.

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A New Community Connection Space

A 60-foot two-story interior passageway serves as an anchor space, lobby, and entrance point. It knits together the new 321 Harrison Avenue tower and its companion building, an existing mid-century office building at 1000 Washington Street. The connector’s interior offers a hospitality feeling, a linear living room with warm lighting, finish materials, and fabric furniture. 

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“In urban settings, the open spaces between city buildings often provide surprising opportunities to introduce new ideas and experiences.”  

At the east end of the two-story passageway on Harrison Ave, pedestrians from the Ink Block residences or the Whole Foods Market can walk through the space to reach the Silver Line transit stop on Washington Street. 

Linking History, Art, and Architecture

Andre, a South End artist whose Harrison Avenue studio is just a few blocks away from the building, describes the inspiration behind her 321 Harrison artwork:

“This painting bridges community, history, and a love for our natural habitat that has sustained us through time. Sustaining Life weaves together elements of both being in water and looking from above with composite perspectives of Boston. It is a metaphor for the interconnectedness of all life.” 

Quick Read: Connection to Boston’s History
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The water metaphor connects with the project site’s rich history, a textured and ever-evolving urban land story. In the Colonial days of the late 1700s, a narrow causeway provided the only access point to what was then an island called the Town of Boston.

Travelers entered Boston via the Shawmut Peninsula at the southern tip of the island and then ventured up Orange Street, which is today’s Washington Street (and the naming source of the MBTA Orange Line). 

The South End, and all of colonial-era Boston, was encircled by water and tidal marshlands. City maps from that period reveal an active waterfront with a collection of commercial wharves and fishing piers jutting out from the land to the bay. 

The contrasting edges between land use and water bodies, illustrated in the maps, provided inspiration and ideas for Andre’s early-stage conceptual studies. 

“Most of my paintings in recent years are about our environment, more specifically about seagrass habitats,” Andre said.

“Our seagrass here in Massachusetts is called Zostera Marina, or more commonly known as eelgrass. It is a crucial contributor to our ecosystem that feeds and sustains the region going back for centuries. My work is inspired by eelgrass restoration projects and my collaborations with local marine ecologists. I love being in the field with these wonderful scientists, helping to bring awareness to the vital importance of this ecosystem.” 

Providing a Sense of Place through Abstract Storytelling 

Andre’s painting is a collage-style, expressionistic experience for viewers. “It captures the magnitude of the special role seagrass plays in our lives today. Seagrass was found beneath our feet as they were digging the foundation for this building.”  

She cites how Boston’s expansion and infilling of waterways and estuaries in the 1800s pushed the edges of the seagrass habitats further out as the original shorelines shifted. 

Quick Read: Andre on Her Work
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“To represent these historical shifts”, she explained, “I embedded several different maps of Boston within a larger field of color. Throughout the painting, I embedded my interpretation of maps from different periods. The abstract transparent seagrass blades bridge the past, present and future and overlap different maps from different periods in history. For the dominant map in the painting, I borrowed linear elements from a historical 1775 Town of Boston illustration. It arches up diagonally across the painting and sits in the background. If you look closely, you can see our current location marked in red on the lower left side of the painting. I added red lines throughout the painting to show the building site. You can see how we were basically at the shoreline.” 

When asked about what she hopes the response and takeaway will be, she imagines that people will see it “as an invitation to be part of something important to our collective future. I hope it is seen as a reminder that we all have a role to play in sustaining our fragile ecosystem. Our individual thoughts and actions make a difference.” 

A Changing View, a Gradual Read 

SMMA’s design for the lobby and art installation adds a distinctive twist to enliven the way Andre’s Sustaining Life is seen. A screening system in the form of curved wood slats playfully alters a visitor’s view of the artwork as they move through the lobby space.  

Depending on where someone is standing or sitting, and whether they are inside or outside the building, the artwork reveals different visual experiences. When viewed head-on, the curved wood slats nearly disappear, allowing the piece to be seen in its entirety. As visitors move through the lobby, however, the undulating slats appear, creating dynamic patterns that introduce a layered sense of movement and form.

This unveiling of different views and discoveries provides “a slow read, like opening the pages of a book,” Andre observed. 

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