Harvard - Allston Campus

When we toured Harvard they said that intro CS classes are now some of the largest.
CS 101(or whatever is Harvard's name for it) lectures are at Sanders theater which is the biggest auditorium apparently.
That's couple of blocks from Dworkin but more than a mile from the new building.
Conversely, if they move intro CS classes to new building hundreds of students will have to make their way across the river.

Maybe I am overdramatizing, but I think there's a number of transportation logistics issues to deal with and I haven't seen any plans...
 
Smartiro said:
When we toured Harvard they said that intro CS classes are now some of the largest.
CS 101(or whatever is Harvard's name for it) lectures are at Sanders theater which is the biggest auditorium apparently.
That's couple of blocks from Dworkin but more than a mile from the new building.
Conversely, if they move intro CS classes to new building hundreds of students will have to make their way across the river.

Maybe I am overdramatizing, but I think there's a number of transportation logistics issues to deal with and I haven't seen any plans...
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I doubt Harvard will move those undergrad CS courses that are often taken by non-CS majors (concentrators) out of Cambridge. A course in Autonomous Robot Systems will be in Allston, a course in "The Internet: Governance and Power" will likely remain in Cambridge.

CS 50 is the course given in Sanders.
https://courses.my.harvard.edu/psp/...S\") (SUBJECT:\"COMPSCI\")","DeepLink":false}
 
Harvard's Construction Mitigation website has this for Charlesview activities this week.

Demolition activities will continue throughout the week.
Please note, hoe ramming will be required to perform this work and remove concrete from the site. This activity will generate noise.
Regulated material removal will occur daily.
Materials will be delivered and hauled off the site daily.
Click to expand...

I had thought that Charlesview itself was long gone and carted away, and I also thought this might be the New England Book Depository (the red brick building to the east of the original Charlesview). But the site plan in Harry Mattison's link shows the Depository building still there, to the west of the 'wet lab'.
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Also I wonder if Harvard is re-thinking the new basketball arena which was/is to be built to the north of Samuel's Continuum on N. Harvard St. The link pushes the timeframe for the venue out, and in the interim Harvard will alter and slightly expand Lavietes Pavilion where basketball is now played.
 
Would fit in well in a suburban office park. Totally contrary to what I hoped Western Ave would be.
23336414442

https://www.flickr.com/photos/37515024@N06/23336414442
 
Harry Mattison said:
Would fit in well in a suburban office park. Totally contrary to what I hoped Western Ave would be.
23336414442

https://www.flickr.com/photos/37515024@N06/23336414442
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From the text on the link, this building would be temporary, five or ten years as a pilot. If the pilot works as expected, the inference I drew is that a bigger, permanent 'wet lab' structure would replace it.

The sketchy description suggests that Harvard would act as building owner / landlord, and startups (related even tangentrially to Harvard) would rent space in the 'wet lab' to further develop their concept / innovation. I read the 'wet lab' is really being an incubator building.
 
stellarfun said:
From the text on the link, this building would be temporary, five or ten years as a pilot. If the pilot works as expected, the inference I drew is that a bigger, permanent 'wet lab' structure would replace it.
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Sure, for Harvard's lifespan 10 years is like a millisecond. For us humans, not so much. Plenty of internal campus locations would make sense for this. Shouldn't Western Ave be 5-10 story buildings with public active ground floors?
 
stellarfun said:
From the text on the link, this building would be temporary, five or ten years as a pilot. If the pilot works as expected, the inference I drew is that a bigger, permanent 'wet lab' structure would replace it.

The sketchy description suggests that Harvard would act as building owner / landlord, and startups (related even tangentrially to Harvard) would rent space in the 'wet lab' to further develop their concept / innovation. I read the 'wet lab' is really being an incubator building.
Click to expand...

Hopefully it is successful, but unless I'm collaborating closely with someone at Harvard's engineering school, Lab Central has much more space, which means there are more companies and thus exponentially more opportunities for the synergies one looks for in an incubator.

Hopefully Harvard creates something great, but everything currently reads as a scaled down version of what I would like to see to be competitive with either Kendall (biotech startup-wise) or Harvard Square (urban environment-wise).
 
Demand is tight enough for lab + biotech space as is that they should just build a permanent structure with ground floor activation. Even if they don't get tons of startups right away, there are hoards of companies just past the incubator stage that need space and some even later stage ones that need larger, but not whole building commitments. Companies like these can bring innovation to a new place - and I'm sure many of them would rather be there than in the industrial Cambridge-Somerville borderlands.
 
curcuas said:
Demand is tight enough for lab + biotech space as is that they should just build a permanent structure with ground floor activation. Even if they don't get tons of startups right away, there are hoards of companies just past the incubator stage that need space and some even later stage ones that need larger, but not whole building commitments. Companies like these can bring innovation to a new place - and I'm sure many of them would rather be there than in the industrial Cambridge-Somerville borderlands.
Click to expand...

I'll crawl out on a limb.

The rendering is of a building that could be built in a year, and as a 'temporary structure', built without having to go through many of the process loops.

A permanent building might take five years: revise the IMP, do all the environmental / traffic studies, design, then build. And if Harvard is thinking of a site on the other side of Western Ave, to the east of Rotterdam and Hague streets, that's an area being remediated and who knows how long that will take.

So wouldn't surprise me that Harvard is thinking of a building 75,000 - 150,000 sq ft., and will spend several years determining how much of the incubator space will be dedicated to 'wet space' projects (needing plumbing, venting, HVAC) and how much for 'dry space' project (robotics, software / apps, etc.)
 
oh I thought the thread meant both Harvard and its Allston campus, Western ave today then> Charles view
 
Continuum will be a very good thing here. Barry's Corner now has an actual corner, well done.
 
From Boston 02124's pix, the demolition that is on-going is the slab area for the old Charlesview.
 
Harvard buys another 20 acres in Allston, this last purchase is from CSX. It will donate the land to the Commonwealth for the Pike re-alignment.

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/r...mpletes-allston-landing-acquisition-with.html

Not clear whether the $97 million quoted was for the 20 acres, or for all of Harvard's land purchases in this section of Allston. I think the latter.

The article also mentions the environmental remediation that is ongoing on land just south of Western Ave, by Rotterdam and Hague streets.
 
Wait, wut?! "The site could also eventually feature a 35-acre air-rights development over the highway and rail yard that would both mask the railroad presence and “knits the neighborhood together,” Harvard said in its August presentation."
 
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