Harvard Student Housing | 10 Akron St | Harvard Square | Cambridge

I was being facetious, excluding the commentary on the use of marine grade plywood.

Seriously it's the Dutch version of alucobond. The fact no one has really picked up on that quite yet is a little sad.
 
I guess that's why Dutch architecture is on another plane than our alucobond cities. I'll take it.
 
Was that "plane" comment meant to be a pun?

Ablarc, my harshest criticism of this project would be the articulation of the control joints and relieving angles. They are highly visible due to the sealant and flashing being medium gray instead of being tinted to match the field of brick. These necessities could have been better disguised or, if one is apt to celebrate the moments, articulated with thin reveals. The fenestration so cleanly meets the brick in this project it is an utter travesty the other joints weren't as carefully considered.
 
Not intentionally, no. Were that I were so clever...
 
Lurker said:
my harshest criticism of this project would be the articulation of the control joints and relieving angles. They are highly visible due to the sealant and flashing being medium gray instead of being tinted to match the field of brick.
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I'll buy that.
 
Re: Harvard - Allston Campus

ablarc said:
Just beautiful!
Modernism at its very best --something you don't see much. Crisp, clean and well-detailed, these buildings are simultaneously true to Modernism's minimalist vocabulary and kind to their context --which is very hard to do, given that minimalist vocabulary's limited repertory of moves.
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when the mood for a photo essay hits you next it would be great to learn more about what you are seeing in these buildings. i'm afraid i don't have enough knowledge about Modernism.

what i see is designs that are crisp, but feel like an assignment on negative vs. positive space more than like an effort to embrace and/or augment either. lots of angles and cut outs that don't seem pointedly ornamental, functional or evocative.

what am i missing? what local landmarks should we judge these buildings against? my mind goes right to the Lindeman and Boston City Hall (I like both much better for all sorts of reasons), but i'm not sure that's a fair comparison.

and unlike the Lindeman, Simmons Hall or Stata, these don't seem to be playful or like they are interested in bonding with us in any way. they leave me kind of cold.

not against them, but i guess i'm not clued in enough to see their best aspects.


ablarc said:
This is what modern architecture is all about. It may be an acquired taste, but if you examine its origins, you'll see that Modernism was always an elitist plot. Here it's practiced in its purest form, ready --if we'll let it-- to turn us into aristocratic proletarians (or is that proletarian aristocrats?) See LeCorbusier for further elaboration --particularly Towards a New Architecture.
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czsz said:
I guess that's why Dutch architecture is on another plane than our alucobond cities. I'll take it.
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Indeed. I'm ready to go into alucobond detox. I don't care if the methadone is that stuff.
 
I don't know about the Dutch alucobond, but I like how it looks. Actually, it's one of my favorite aspects.

For the project itself, I'm getting a very Zen Garden + Newton Townhouse vibe. I like the brick/Dutch/glass boxy building a lot-but the others, the "three deckers;" what the hell happened?

And, maybe a tiny bit too much grass? Just maybe?
 
the "three deckers;" what the hell happened
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NIMBY reared his ugly head and demanded hyper-contextual architecture.

They didn't consider the context of the rest of the riverfront.
 
More than 300 units of new housing (500 beds), primarily for graduate students but some for faculty and staff, are being built on two sites in the Riverside area of Cambridge, near Mather House and Peabody Terrace. The development was made possible when Harvard reached an agreement with the Cambridge city council and neighborhood representatives that involved significant downzoning of some of the parcels and a commitment by Harvard, once occupancy permits are issued for the new structures, to erect 34 units of affordable housing in a former industrial building on Blackstone Street and to provide publicly accessible open space at the corner of Memorial Drive and Western Avenue. At the Grant Street site, six new wood-frame buildings will hold six units each. On Cowperthwaite Street, one three-story wood-frame building and a large glass and brick structure above a new underground garage will replace an existing parking lot. Halvorson Design Partnership will handle the landscape features, while Elkus/Manfredi Architects will design the buildings, as well as three wood-frame houses at the Memorial Drive site. A large, two-section building by Kyu Sung Woo Architects will rise on Memorial Drive. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates will provide the landscape design there. As Harvard planners had hoped, the use of project managers Spaulding & Slye Colliers is facilitating progress toward the University?s goal of housing 50 percent of its graduate students.
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http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/09/university-housing-on-th.html

University housing. On the site of a former garden center on the corner of Memorial Drive and Western Avenue, near Peabody Terrace, the Harvard University Art Museums had proposed to build a low, glass- and wood-clad museum designed by Renzo Piano. But a vocal group of local residents protested. And so, instead, Harvard, the Riverside community, and the city opted for housing, for which the property was already zoned (?University Housing on the Rise,? September-October 2005, page 63). As a result of the compromise, in which Harvard agreed to significant downzoning of some of the parcels, the University is putting up 300 units (500 beds) of new housing, mostly for graduate students, on two sites in the Riverside part of town. The Memorial Drive site features a big structure?strikingly red, as will soon be apparent?designed by Kyu Sung Woo Architects for the north part of the parcel. Three wood-frame houses with multiple units, designed by Elkus/Manfredi Architects, will sit at the back of the south piece of the site.
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http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/05/ripening-nicely.html
 
Great museum -> dense housing (on prezoned land!) -> not-so-dense housing

And thus is came to pass that the "community" robbed Boston of a great cultural institution, or at least another impressive building along the Charles, in favor of a dull, suburban block.
 
7/23... the park is almost done:

1060307.jpg


1060306.jpg
 
Ghastly. I wonder how those Harvard grad students feel about dropping a small fortune to live in the collegiate equivalent of Hope IV housing.
 
Looking at the caliper of the trees, they have spent a pretty sum on the park, which is built on top of a parking garage.
 
I really don't understand the continued fawning over Kyu Sung Woo ... or Sert, for that matter.

Sure, this effort is much better than the truly awful housing project he threw up at Northeastern. And it's better than the retro dumpy triple-deckers. Even if the positive/negative space bit has been done before by countless others, and even if it's been done better elsewhere by Kyu Sung Woo himself. And even if he's done it and over and over again. To appeal to the modernist elites you need a schtick, and I can live with that. There are worse schticks.

But while the pop-in / pop out academic noodling may arguably be an "acquired taste," and an "acceptable" way of getting some interest and variety into a building without violating absurd modernist tenets, let's get back to the basics of the building and how it works. The engagement with the street is still 1950s awful. Those damned hedges and fringes don't belong in an urban environment. And the entrances? He learned from Sert, all right. Bravo. And from Corbu's bunker not far from here. To the architectural community: can we move on now? Please?
 
InTheHood said:
The engagement with the street is still 1950s awful. Those damned hedges and fringes don't belong in an urban environment.
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It's the nimbified zoning that keeps this area so suburban. I'm sure if the zoning had allowed ground floor shops, the architect would have provided them.
 
"But while the pop-in / pop out academic noodling may arguably be an "acquired taste," and an "acceptable" way of getting some interest and variety into a building without violating absurd modernist tenets, let's get back to the basics of the building and how it works. The engagement with the street is still 1950s awful. Those damned hedges and fringes don't belong in an urban environment. And the entrances? He learned from Sert, all right. Bravo. And from Corbu's bunker not far from here. To the architectural community: can we move on now? Please?"

In a word:
NO

Because hero worship and the 'cult' of modernism is deeply entrenched in academia and the mainstay of the architectural press in this country.

That generation will have to die off first, and one most hope the indoctrination of the next generation was not as prevalent, for things to change. Unfortunately, the growing love affair with blob/sculpture-tecture, Koolhaus koolaid, and digital fantasy-land render cloud porno, isn't likely to inspire anything better.
 
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