Harvard Enterprise Research Campus | 100 Western Avenue | Allston

Charlie_mta said:
I see this project as unconnected visually and functionally from the existing adjoining Allston community. This new development doesn't have a meaningful street grid, doesn't have much housing, affordable or otherwise, not much retail, and it doesn't have any kind of architectural unity or cohesiveness. It's just a bunch of misfit buildings thrown randomly like dice onto a giant empty lot next to, and unconnected to, the existing neighborhood. Harvard could have built a finely grained, exciting mixed-use urban environment connected to, and giving life to, the community of Allston. Instead we get an isolated suburban office park.
Click to expand...
Yea they really had a blank slate and a blank check at the same time and this is what they got… Hopefully they change course going fwd. Its still not too late 90% is still yet to be built.
 
Charlie_mta said:
I see this project as unconnected visually and functionally from the existing adjoining Allston community. This new development doesn't have a meaningful street grid, doesn't have much housing, affordable or otherwise, not much retail, and it doesn't have any kind of architectural unity or cohesiveness. It's just a bunch of misfit buildings thrown randomly like dice onto a giant empty lot next to, and unconnected to, the existing neighborhood. Harvard could have built a finely grained, exciting mixed-use urban environment connected to, and giving life to, the community of Allston. Instead we get an isolated suburban office park.
Click to expand...
It's pretty astounding how bad it is. At least with the business campus it has green quadrangles and it's nice to walk through. Is it just not possible to do good design by institutions anymore? I think @Longfellow is dead on in bemoaning the degree of rot at the big places. No matter what, you get an office park in the end... sure, it'll have bike lanes and all the complete streets nonsense that checks boxes; LEED-certified buildings, maybe a starchitect piece here or there, but the overall form? No, that is what is gone from the USA these days. All content, and nothing more.
 
I would not be surprised if LEED mandates end up driving designs towards the larger floor plates. It’s probably easier to hit the efficiency numbers over a larger plate than a collection of smaller ones.
 
We don't even need the buildings to look good. I think we have lost that argument. What would be nice is if the form made sense. If we had smaller urban streets on a grid and the buildings were single prisms that were not landscraper-y, fine, make the facade vinyl panels or whatever makes your heart happy. But we have to make the top down render look interesting so we're creating windy paths between the buildings and cutting pieces out of them.
 
RandomWalk said:
I would not be surprised if LEED mandates end up driving designs towards the larger floor plates. It’s probably easier to hit the efficiency numbers over a larger plate than a collection of smaller ones.
Click to expand...
Other schools seem perfectly capable of building attractive LEED certified buildings.
Kroon Hall — Yale School of the Environment:
https://centerbrook.com/project/yale_university_kroon_hall_school_of_the_environment

I took this just now:

IMG_0226.jpeg
IMG_0219.jpeg
 
Last edited:
I suppose the point to be made is that Harvard expects to be the main user of the treehouse - it doesn't expect to be the main user of the surrounding buildings which were built on-spec to be leased to other entities. Think of those as a speculative investment, and compare to something thats going to actually be part of their campus. The buildings that are tailored for their own uses, like the new economics building or the recent SEC complex, are likely better for being designed for a purpose and need, with no expectation of fiscal return? While architecturally not shining examples of the species, they aren't that bad.
 
Stlin said:
I suppose the point to be made is that Harvard expects to be the main user of the treehouse - it doesn't expect to be the main user of the surrounding buildings which were built on-spec to be leased to other entities. Think of those as a speculative investment, and compare to something thats going to actually be part of their campus. The buildings that are tailored for their own uses, like the new economics building or the recent SEC complex, are likely better for being designed for a purpose and need, with no expectation of fiscal return? While architecturally not shining examples of the species, they aren't that bad.
Click to expand...
Harvard still had the overall responsibility to ensure a quality development which, in my opinion, they failed to do.
 
Perhaps the Treehouse could use some "leaves" inside and out. Greenery can distract or disguise and thus largely improve almost any building. Back in I think 2008 (?) I did a media job that took me to the Grand Ole Opry Hotel in Nashville. It has a spacious atrium, something like what you'd see in Vegas. They had people, or performers (2 or 3) walking around on stilts covered in greenery, leaves, and their arms, also covered, extended out about eight feet and could bend. With the stilts and their arms could reach up to maybe twenty feet. They would change positions and remain motionless for a few minutes to become de facto indoor trees. It's maybe one of the craziest and most interesting performances, or continuous movement landscaping if that can be the term, that I've seen. Let's see that. Give the place some zip.
 
Last edited:
bdurden said:
Other schools seem perfectly capable of building attractive LEED certified buildings.
Kroon Hall — Yale School of the Environment:
https://centerbrook.com/project/yale_university_kroon_hall_school_of_the_environment

I took this just now:

View attachment 68265View attachment 68266
Click to expand...

Yeah, that’s not what RandomWalk was saying.

His words:
“I would not be surprised if LEED mandates end up driving designs towards the larger floor plates. It’s probably easier to hit the efficiency numbers over a larger plate than a collection of smaller ones.”

That long building looks like it has very large floor plates.
 
JS38 said:
Metropolis on the ERC:
metropolismag.com

Inside Harvard’s Next Big Urban Experiment - Metropolis

The Harvard Enterprise Research Campus draws on the talents of Henning Larsen, Marlon Blackwell Architects, Studio Gang, and more.
metropolismag.com metropolismag.com
Click to expand...
"That structural hierarchy of its mass-timber skeleton is gifted to the viewer as a visual cipher to the building’s predominant architectural language, even if the true breadth of nuance is not yet fully evident".....

If you can't say something nice, well, make it inscrutable.
 
SteelyTom said:
"That structural hierarchy of its mass-timber skeleton is gifted to the viewer as a visual cipher to the building’s predominant architectural language, even if the true breadth of nuance is not yet fully evident".....

If you can't say something nice, well, make it inscrutable.
Click to expand...
"Outside look like inside, except inside more complex."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top