Aidan Lindh / Thesis

February 28th, 2011

Aidan Lindh/ Thesis 2010 / Primary Advisor: Carol Burns

The increase of technology has augmented convenience, privatizing the spectacle of the news and information gathering rendering it everyday and placeless. In light of this deteriorating relationship between receiver and media communicator, this thesis project will inject the existing Boston Herald building with a new Herald TV/Radio encompassing a newsprint museum, new leasable office space, a performance theater, and retail space designed to attract privatized news gatherers bringing them face to face with the production and distribution of news. In doing so, the Boston Herald’s dwindling newsprint production capabilities will be preserved and put on display as an educational and nostalgic attraction for visitors at the pedestrian scale as well as motorists on I-93.

A Newsprint Museum has been added on top of the old print/production facility where the visitor has access to a catwalk leading through the preserved Herald press/mail rooms ending at the new live broadcast studio for Herald TV. The public newsroom signifies the evolution of the Boston Herald from being a print source of news to a multi-faceted media entity.

Located at an important knuckle of infrastructure and neighborhood boundaries, the new Boston Herald Media complex has the ability to fulfill its role as an information distributor as well as a significant piece of architecture. The existing site conditions and program of the Boston Herald make it a perfect place for the repair of the relationship between the citizen and news provider as well as the glorification of a diminishing trade.