HARVARD RESEARCH CENTER
The familiar notion of the American Dream proposes that opportunities will be readily available for those who work to grasp it. This ideal, though, has rarely translated into architectural form. Utilizing Inland Steel’s industrial approach to architecture, the Harvard Research Center manifests the framework necessary to pursue intellectual, physical, and professional advancement for all students, positioning “success” as a product obtained by moving through the complex.
The research center for 100 students delaminates programmatic groups into their independent structures. Classrooms, labs, living units, and offices fill periphery bars that infill empty residual urban spaces. These buildings encircle and feed into three open bars positioned in an endless loop on a central site, within which chance interactions between students can occur in flexible spaces like the gym, library, lounge, and field. The scale of the buildings modulates as you move through the site, taking the user into unexpected pockets that separate themselves from the larger city. This hierarchy can additionally be read on the façade with the two different intervals of vertical fins.
The design at once completes and rejects the urban site, prioritizing the creation of an ideal world, separate but reflective of the larger city.
