Harvard University project enhances community spaces

The Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Campus Center, a radical reappraisal of the ten-storey, 1966 Holyoke Center by Josep Lluis Sert, has opened at Harvard University, in Massachusetts.

Designed by Hopkins Architects, the 96,242 square-foot-project was realised in association with Bruner/Cott Architects, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, and Arup.

It is part of a wider, ongoing “Common Spaces” initiative by the university to ensure its physical spaces foster the campus’s intellectual, cultural, and social experience and support the wider community. 

The project reconfigures the first, second, and tenth floors, reinterpreting the history and logic of Sert’s architecture in a series of additions to and removals from the existing fabric to create a family of new internal spaces, interspersed with a captured internal and external landscape.

The new Moise Y. Safra Welcome Pavilion at the front of the building creates a front door for the university and re-establishes a stronger connection between Sert’s Arcade and Harvard Yard. 

In the Arcade, by the careful removal of existing concrete fabric, light and view and landscape have been introduced into the heart of the building. 

A series of internal and external landscape thresholds mediate between the Arcade and the new Harvard Commons space—the central room of the Campus Center, around which are gathered a series of social and meeting spaces. 

The tenth floor has been completely reorganised to provide a flexible suite of formal and informal gathering spaces that openly engage Sert’s building with the campus, the Charles River, and the City of Cambridge beyond. 

The World Interiors News Awards showcase the best international design in both current and future projects. Entries for the 2019 Awards are now open - for further information and to submit your entry please click here.

To see the full list of winners from the 2018 WIN Awards, click here