Image: Steve Rosenthal
Project Description
The new five-story Classroom and Faculty Office Building for Harvard Law School formally completes Holmes Field, the large quadrangle north of the Old Yard shared by the Law School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The building provides for two technologically equipped 50-seat lecture amphitheaters and three seminar rooms at the ground floor and thirty-five faculty offices with conference rooms and support space above. The lower level, connected by a tunnel to other Law Buildings to the west, is devoted to computer services.
The composite form of the building responds to its location between the orthogonal geometry of Holmes Field and the asymmetries and inflections of Harkness Common. A bar-like volume of faculty offices and seminar spaces faces the quadrangle and features a portico and Richardsonian arch reminiscent of nearby Austin Hall and the drum shaped volume containing the lecture amphi-theaters makes the formal transition between the open spaces of Holmes Field and Harkness Common and the buildings that surround them. The building is clad in brick and limestone and combines the traditional materials of the yard with the modern glass and steel assemblies of the faculty office bays. At the interior cherry wood paneling enriches the wall surfaces.
Project Awards
1997 AIA Brick In Architecture Award
1996 Craft Award for Best Brick & Stone Project
1995 Illuminating Engineering Society - New England Section
1994 Harleston Parker Medal, City of Boston
1994 BSA Award for Design Excellence
Project Publications
Educational Spaces Vol. 3, 2003
Brick in Architecture, May 1997
Architectural Record, March 1995
Architecture, February 1995
The Boston Globe, May 1994
The Harvard Gazette, March 1994
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