Harvard - Allston Campus

Ron Newman said:
chumbolly said:
Ron, Harvard is not moving. .
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that's exactly what they are doing, in the long term -- moving significant pieces of their campus out of Cambridge and into Allston. To some extent, this is a response to the costs (both financial and community-relations) of trying to continue expanding in Cambridge.
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all the universities are definitely in motion -- a bit slower, but not that much slower than the rest of the economy as a whole. and much faster than, say, healthcare or government.

off the top of my head: mit is moving into cambridge (UK) and online (opencourseware). Columbia invested millions during the goldrush to get new revenue streams from their IP and the Web -- neither are land based. friend of mine's spouse is a recruiter from Cornell -- she's bopping over to asia all the time exporting education. Emerson has a new campus in LA and another in the EU. BU relocated to boston from the hinterlands years back and could certainly start building their investments in other parts of the world. tufts is investing in biotech in Worcester based on their Grafton campus -- itself less then 30 years old -- not in Chinatown. UMB started down on arlington street but is now at columbia point -- bet Lynn would have loved to score that campus. Leslie University has one of our largest enrollments -- most of which are not in Cambridge (meaning that their 90m budget gets spent somewhere else and doesn't add to the intellectual competition in greater boston)... i'm sure the list goes on.

cambridge and boston could over the long term definitely shoot themselves in the foot over town and gown, public opinion and shortsightedness vis HU...

that said, i have no opinion on this topic...
 
singbat said:
...the universities are definitely in motion -- a bit slower, but not that much slower than the rest of the economy as a whole. and much faster than, say, healthcare or government.

off the top of my head: mit is moving into cambridge (UK) and online (opencourseware). Columbia invested millions during the goldrush to get new revenue streams from their IP and the Web -- neither are land based. friend of mine's spouse is a recruiter from Cornell -- she's bopping over to asia all the time exporting education. Emerson has a new campus in LA and another in the EU. BU relocated to boston from the hinterlands years back and could certainly start building their investments in other parts of the world. tufts is investing in biotech in Worcester based on their Grafton campus -- itself less then 30 years old -- not in Chinatown. UMB started down on arlington street but is now at columbia point -- bet Lynn would have loved to score that campus. Leslie University has one of our largest enrollments -- most of which are not in Cambridge (meaning that their 90m budget gets spent somewhere else and doesn't add to the intellectual competition in greater boston)... i'm sure the list goes on.
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And don't forget Boston College, which moved to Newton.

cambridge and boston could over the long term definitely shoot themselves in the foot over town and gown, public opinion and shortsightedness vis HU...

that said, i have no opinion on this topic...
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That's not an opinion?
 
Harvard has recently said that construction of the first complex of science buildings in Allston will take 46 months, with as many as 1,000 workers on the site daily for 11 months at construction peak. This may help explain why Harvard never admits to how much its science (and other) buildings cost, although supposedly two recent new buildings busted their construction budget and the arts and sciences budget big-time.
 
Rejoice, all ye limestone devotees.
Harvard is putting limestone facades on the science complex.

Lots and lots of new renderings here.

http://www.allston.harvard.edu/proj...ls_Presentation to the Task Force_6.11.07.pdf

the limestone
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(the little square insert indicates the perspective in the illustration.)
inner yard
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public space
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night
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Why is Harvard interested in recreating the Habitrail environment of the UMass Boston campus?

A recent globe article about a positive unintended consequence of the failing garage beneath campus:

Life on campus better at UMass

May 17, 2007

The University of Massachusetts at Boston has never been known for its outdoor campus life. The Dorchester waterfront campus, opened in 1974, was designed around a 1,600-spot underground parking facility for the commuter students.

Then last summer, the university was forced to close the deteriorating garage and create seven satellite lots to handle the demand. But what is, on the surface, a major inconvenience has come with a silver lining.

"Now that the garage is closed and students need to walk to the buildings, it's created a life and vibrancy that we've never really seen before," said Andrew O'Brien, the school's deputy chancellor.

"You see people walking on the lawns; you'll see a Frisbee or a football being thrown around; there's a whole new dynamic on campus."

A series of colossal brick buildings connected by elevated catwalks, the campus layout has always been seen as a barrier to student life, said Denez McAdoo, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, Mass Media. "People avoid spending any time here if they don't have to," he said. "But the change in traffic flow has really been for the positive."

But not all students see much improvement. Nell Taylor and Angela Eberle, seniors who transferred from Northeastern University, sat on the main plaza on a recent warm day, complaining about the lack of campus life.

"The parking thing is nothing but a big hassle," said Taylor. "I just come here to go to class and leave. I have no interests here. No ties."

"This place doesn't have a university feel at all," Eberle said. "It feels more like a big, brick prison."

BILLY BAKER
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From The Onion:
onion_news3242.jpg
 
MIT students generally like their interconnected buildings. I think Northeastern has them too, on a smaller scale.
 
Wow that's a great courtyard but look at the Western Ave side, nothing. God! You'd think that a school with such a urban planning school would be able to figure that one out.
 
stellar - where are you finding these? I didn't see them in the pdf.

MIT students generally like their interconnected buildings. I think Northeastern has them too, on a smaller scale.
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Why does it seem as if this is only ever done for the benefit of labs/science students? Humanities and social science students dislike walking in rain/snow too!

Harvard's new architects must have been reading up on their Derrida (or Tschumi). Deconstruction all around! Maybe they were jealous of Columbia's Alfred Lerner Hall:

lerner_ramps.jpg
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Wow that's a great courtyard but look at the Western Ave side, nothing. God! You'd think that a school with such a urban planning school would be able to figure that one out.
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That side may be understated intentionally. Across the street is to be the arts and theater complex, with a glass canopy courtyard.

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behnisch-harvard-allston1.jpg


Wow!!! Looks like the exciting architecture and pizzazz of Kendall Square are going to be replicated in Allston. I can hardly wait.
 
xec said:
Wow!!! Looks like the exciting architecture and pizzazz of Kendall Square are going to be replicated in Allston. I can hardly wait.
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That's all it ever had the potential for --from the get-go. This has been the drift from Day One.

Objectively from the evidence of Seaport, Kendall, Navy Yard and even Longwood: if it's built in Boston, it's got to be dull.

.
 
These are meant to be academic quadrangles and we're criticizing the streetlife? Harvard's designated part of Allston for commerce and "pizazz"...these renderings don't cover it.
 
ckb said:
Why is Harvard interested in recreating the Habitrail environment of the UMass Boston campus?
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when i was at umb there was a lot of life to the place, but it was internalized around people's interests rather than unprogrammed public space.

we didn't play frisbee on the garage deck (because for starters, then, you could break your neck on the broken cement), but there were regular hack circles in the open air courtyard of the Daily (four floors up) as well as jam sessions inside. most student activities centered around the cafe, the cafeterias, the dozens of lounges, labs and workshops tied to specific programs, activity groups, or researchers. there were pretty decent performance theaters in 4 of the 5 academic buildings that were always in use by some group (or occasionally for class). the museum had its own crowd. etc., etc.

in my experience people who had the time (i.e. not working a 40h week as well as being school) enjoyed spending their extra time on campus. i know i was often there from 8 to 8.

and the skyways contribute more than you might think to the environment since they were used as meeting places, by pamphleteers, and as message boards (sometimes to the point that you couldn't see the outside for all leafleting and posters.

Umb is more than the six monolithic buildings that you see from the outside. internally it is like a miniature city with main streets, neighborhoods, flea markets (literally and figuratively) and well known destinations. the corridors are its freeways--not elegant, but very effective connective tissue.

if cities don't need a lot of extra open space to be vibrant, why do universities?

and anyway it's nice to stay dry when it rains. my main non-academic memory of harvard is that it was always raining when i was late to class...
 
czsz said:
These are meant to be academic quadrangles and we're criticizing the streetlife? Harvard's designated part of Allston for commerce and "pizazz"...these renderings don't cover it.
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The illustrations I posted aren't quads. They're public streets. The first is Western Ave, surely a logical place to designate for commerce and pizazz. The second is Rena St. In any case, I was using pizazz in the sense of having style and flair, not in the sense of being active and energetic. In the first sense even a quad can have pizazz.
 
Several things to keep in mind. This particular science complex (Science I) is being built within the framework of a Harvard master plan, and I think you shouldn't look at it -- for better or worse -- without looking at it in the context of its intended surroundings.

To the left of it, and nearly abutting Barry's corner is to be a somewhat larger science complex, Science II, with a center greenspace called the West Yard. (Harvard does not own the pentagonal piece of land on the southeast side of Barry's Corner, where there is a CITGO station. There are several buildings on the land, which looks to be about two acres in size. Nor does it own the triangle parcel square dab in the middle of Barry's Corner.)

The westernmost building in the Science II complex is to be office, with ground floor retail.

The buildings in Science I will house Harvard's Stem Cell Institute, and laboratories for chemical biology, systems biology, innovative computing, and bio-engineering. Arguably, the various laboratory requirements can significantly constrain what the shell of the buildings housing these labs look like.

On the southwest side of Barry's Corner, Harvard intends to build a 135,000 sq ft museum (twice the size of ICA), though much of the space will be devoted to storage and conservatory shops. There is no rendering that I can find of the exterior, other than this night view below. The architect is Daly Genik of California. The Allstonites are unhappy with this project, voicing all manner of objections. At 3 or 4 stories its too tall, and museum visitors can see into their back yards; its appearance is not monumental enough; etc etc.

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For renderings of Daly Genik's institutional work, see:
http://www.dalygenik.com/
 
3 or 4 stories is to tall...I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
 
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