From Brighton to the Seaport, Kendall Square to Downtown Crossing, glassiness was the inescapable architectural trend of 2015 in Greater Boston.

It was inescapable not so much because of the volume of glassy projects announced, started or finished this year, but because of the sheer size of some of them. The below gallery of photos and renderings proves our point.



There was the 690-foot Millennium Tower luxury-condo spire in Downtown Crossing, which topped out in September.



And then the 699-foot One Dalton in Back Bay, which started construction in January.



There was also Twenty Two Liberty, the first residential project in the Seaport District to go on sale (it sold out pretty quickly) ...



... and Twenty Two Liberty's sibling complex, Fifty Liberty, which broke ground in October.



On the opposite end of Boston, in Brighton, the ginormous Boston Landing development commenced opening with the unveiling this fall of the headquarters of the New Balance athletic-wear empire. Not as much glass as some other examples here, but glass predominates the exterior nonetheless.



Finally, there were myriad smaller-scale projects such as the Pierce Boston in Fenway, which officially broke ground in October.

So, glassy exteriors that show on the inside, too—the inescapable architectural trend in Greater Boston in 2015. We don't bestow an award upon it to criticize it, necessarily (been there, done that), but it would be nice if developers and architects changed things up now and then on larger-scale projects. After all, there are so many canonical architectural styles in Boston for inspiration, no?

· Millennium Tower Sets a Date for Its Official Topping-Off [Curbed Boston]

· Boston's Tallest Building in Nearly 40 Years to Break Ground [Curbed Boston]

· Twenty Two Liberty Sales: Gobsmacking As Everyone Thought [Curbed Boston]

· Fan Pier's Fifty Liberty Hurrying Along Toward Likely Sellout [Curbed Boston]

· Fenway's Pierce Boston Picks Date for Official Groundbreaking [Curbed Boston]

· Inside the Spaceship: New Balance's Boston Landing HQ [Curbed Boston]

· The Five Worst Trends in Greater Boston Real Estate, Ranked [Curbed Boston]

· Boston Architecture the Last 250 Years: Italianate to Shingle [Curbed Boston]

· Our Curbed Awards '15 archive [Curbed Boston]