Field Trip: South End Architectural Walking Tour with David Hacin

Join CoDesign Collaborative for an architectural walking tour of Boston’s South End led by David Hacin, FAIA.

Join CoDesign Collaborate on Thursday, May 1, from 3–5pm ET for a guided architectural walking tour of Boston’s South End. (Rain date: Thursday, May 8, from 3-5pm ET.)

Join Hacin President and Creative Director, David Hacin, FAIA, on a walking tour through his home neighborhood that will highlight classic South End moments such as the bow-front townhouses of Union Park and the vibrant thoroughfare of Tremont Street, as well as the up and coming SoWa Art and Design District (with nods to the firm’s various projects from the past three decades along the way). The tour will last approximately two hours with a networking session at Tatte on Harrison Avenue to start and ending at the Boston Center for the Arts. Comfortable walking shoes are recommended.

The South End has a long history of reinventing itself. Comprised of mostly marshland during the time of Boston’s founding, the neighborhood was filled in in the mid-1800s and was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Most recently, its transformation in the last thirty years has changed it from a neighborhood trapped in a frustrating cycle of neglect and disinvestment to one of the most vibrant and beloved parts of Boston, with a resonant architectural character and an effective process of incremental urbanism.

Architecture and design firm Hacin has long called the South End its home and the firm’s extensive body of work in the neighborhood includes townhouses and historic renovations, restaurants, a public park, a community garden, hundreds of housing units across the spectrum of affordable and luxury, and a non-profit headquarters. Over the studio’s thirty-year history, Hacin has demonstrated a commitment to the community and has been grateful to play a part in the area’s current success.

Field Trips are a benefit of membership in the Design Impact Society and Corporate + Academic Membership. Individual+ Members register for $10, Access Members register for $13 and not-yet-Members register for $15. Student Members register for FREE on a limited, first-come, first-served basis.

About David Hacin:

David J. Hacin, FAIA is the Founding Principal and Creative Director of Hacin, an interdisciplinary architecture and design firm founded in Boston in 1993.

The son of an architect and born in Geneva, Switzerland, David received his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Princeton University summa cum laude and his Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design with distinction. David has served on the Northeastern University School of Architecture Advisory Board and has engaged a guest critic and lecturer at design schools across the country, such as Northeastern University, Harvard University, MIT, the University of Virginia, Kansas State University, and the Boston Architectural College.

David has participated as a member of numerous design juries and panels, given a TedX talk, and guest-edited the journal ArchitectureBoston. He has led the firm in instructing graduate architectural design studios in 2018 and 2022 at Roger Williams University’s Cummings School of Architecture. David has served for more than twenty years as a Mayoral appointee to the Boston Civic Design Commission, the City of Boston’s design review panel for significant projects that impact the public realm. Additionally, David is an active volunteer on behalf of several community, professional and non-profit organizations, including the Boston Society of Architects, the Design Industry Groups of Massachusetts, Historic Boston Inc., and the Boston Center for the Arts, where he served as the Board Chair during a pivotal time of the organization’s celebrated rejuvenation. When not in the studio, David and his husband, Tim, can be found road-tripping around New England with their indomitable miniature schnauzer, Walter.