Behnisch Architekten designs Harvard’s proposed Science and Engineering Complex

Behnisch Architekten designed the Science and Engineering Complex, a new facility for Harvard University's Allston campus in Boston. It will be the home of the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

The 497,000-sf building will have a series of research boxes situated above a two-story transparent plinth. Classrooms and teaching labs will be in the plinth’s lowest floors, and isolated research labs will be in its highest floors. Fabrication shops, core research facilities, and a loading dock will be placed in below-grade levels. All levels are connected by a central atrium, which receives daylight from an attached courtyard.

Glass ribbons will wrap around the complex’s lowest levels. The upper boxes will be covered in a screen enclosure that both shields the building from solar heat gain during warmer months and reflects daylight into the interior.

The massing of the building will form a courtyard, which students and staff can use for outdoor recreation and other events.

The school expects 1,600 students and 360 staff members to use the building daily, and it anticipates the building to be open by 2020. Construction will begin this year.

(Click photos to enlarge)

The central atrium and the major entries have multi-story all-glass façades that are shaded by integrated roof planes at varying heights.

The massing of the building forms a new landscaped courtyard space suitable for outdoor recreation and events towards the site’s center.

As the primary home of the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the complex will create public spaces at different scales throughout the building.

The new facility emphasises outdoor space, street activation, and integration with larger public space networks.

For most of human history, design has mostly considered “typical users” who are fully able-bodied without clinical or emotional disabilities. The problem with this approach is that it offers a limited perspective on how space can positively or negatively influence someone based on their physical, mental, and sensory abilities.

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