Beantown Dream

Over the past few years, John Hong and Jinhee Park have watched buildings proliferate around their three-story house. From the roof deck, the most action-packed view is east facing, where Goliath high-rise apartments gather around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Smack in the middle, Stephen Holl’s 2002 dormitory stands square and porous, like SpongeBob in a gray tweed suit. Farther off and almost obscured by new construction is an old Boston landmark: the pastel-striped cylindrical holding tank of the old Necco wafer factory, recently converted to a biotech facility.