Boston Children’s Museum Plaza
The entry plaza at the Boston Children’s Museum is inspired by the museum’s mission to provide interactive and tactile learning. The iconic 40-foot-tall Hood Milk Bottle, donated to the museum in 1977 and refurbished for this project, sets a lighthearted tone for this space that connects the museum to the Fort Point Channel Harborwalk. Its location on the southwestern edge of the plaza announces the museum’s presence and increases its visibility from downtown Boston and the harbor.
The towering white sculpture also introduces a key theme of the new plaza, namely, the manipulation of scale. Massive chunks of marble stand on end, creating an uncanny and visually enticing environment.
Playfully articulated paving patterns and mazes, as well as sloping concrete walls, carry this theme through the design and provide places for visitors to sit beneath the dangling branches of weeping willows. Materials and scale shifts convert a previously underutilized and largely inaccessible outdoor space into an engaging, animated entrance at the Museum’s new façade.
Together with the adjacent Martin’s Park, also designed by MVVA, the Boston Children’s Museum entry plaza realizes the bridge-to-bridge vision—stretching from the Congress Street Bridge to the Seaport Boulevard Bridge—for the Smith Family Waterfront along Fort Point Channel.
