Harvard Business School Campus Renewal

Boston, Massachusetts

Harvard Business School’s growth and change over the next decade is creating a more diverse and richer institutional identity, placing great importance on the campus landscape architecture.

For nearly two decades we have partnered with Harvard University and Harvard Business School in devising a long-range Master Plan for their Business School. Reed Hilderbrand is working closely with the school on the public approvals process, participating in numerous public meetings and hearings with the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Boston Civic Design Commission.

Our work at HBS represents a decade-long renewal and expansion of the McKim Mead & White and Olmsted Brothers-designed campus. (Image courtesy of McKim Mead & White Architects)

Expanding the Legacy Campus

Tata Hall and the Chao Center anchor a new quadrangle which has become a locus for the Executive Education program. The scheme reorganizes the eastern edge of campus and reshapes the school’s relationship with the public realm and the Charles River Reservation. Other recently completed projects include the reconstruction of Schwartz Common and Pavilion, a central social open space for the legacy campus. Landscape architecture improvements accommodate a desire for increased programming, encourage events and gatherings of varying scales, and realize the school’s ambitious sustainability goals.

The long-term plan reorganizes the eastern edge of campus and reshapes the school’s relationship with the public realm and the Charles River Reservation.

Encouraging Informal Collaboration

A twenty-first century culture of informal interaction, collaboration, innovation, and surprise is structured into the public spaces, programming, and furnishings throughout Harvard Business School. These are pedagogical landscapes but also environments that reflect a new way of life for the global business community in this century.

Year

2012–ongoing

Size

40 acres

Client

Harvard University

Services

Full DesignPlanning and Analysis

Collaborators

Architects
Beyer Blinder BelleCBT ArchitectsDewing Schmidt Kearns Architects + PlannersGoody ClancyJames CarpenterREID ArchitectureWilliam Rawn Associates
Contractors
Cambridge Landscape
Engineers
ArupNitsch EngineeringVanasse Hangen Brustlin (VHB)