Today, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) announced that Basel, Switzerland–based firm Herzog & de Meuron and New York–based Beyer Blinder Belle (BBB) have been selected to to reimagine and expand the GSD’s primary building on the Cambridge, Mass., campus, Gund Hall. BBB will serve as the architect of record, with Herzog & de Meuron serving as design consultants.
“Herzog & de Meuron and BBB have carefully studied and observed the school’s many qualities and characteristics, and they have a bold design vision for the GSD and its engagement with other disciplines and professional schools across Harvard, and for its impact on the world,” said Harvard GSD dean and Victoria Wiley professor of design Mohsen Mostafavi, Intl. Assoc. AIA, in a press release. “We are excited to collaborate with both firms on the creation of an important and dynamic center for design innovation here at the GSD.”
Selected in a two-stage process organized by the University, Herzog & de Meuron and BBB propose what the release calls “an anchored point of intersection” to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and to connect existing studio workspaces (known as “the trays”), faculty and departmental offices, seminar rooms and classrooms, research library, production and fabrication facilities, to new spaces for informal meetings, social gatherings, and public programs. A new addition will minimally add to the building’s original footprint, and will not require more land.
“We’ve met several generations of professors, staff, and students. We learned from the talent and excellence of many of those people from across the world. Also, we have always admired the intellectual spirit and free-thinking atmosphere of the School with its mythic Gund Hall building,” said Herzog & de Meuron founding partners Jacques Herzog, Hon. FAIA, and Pierre de Meuron, Hon. FAIA, in the release. “We envision transforming this building by excavating, adding, and connecting spaces that will support communication and exchange within the GSD community. We are very excited to be awarded this project, and look forward to working with all our friends and dear colleagues in the years ahead.”
“We are excited to continue our work on Harvard’s campus, and to be partnering with Herzog & de Meuron. The Gund Hall project goes beyond expansion, to re-visioning a building that is both professionally important and personally meaningful to us as designers,” said Elizabeth Leber, AIA, BBB partner in the same release. “It resonates with our firm’s philosophy of sustainable transformation of existing buildings to adapt to many types of change.” BBB has recent, and continued, experience working on Harvard’s campus: Its renovation of the Winthrop House residential building opened last September, and a refresh of Adams House slated to start construction next year.
Herzog & de Meuron has already begun its concept and schematic design proposal, which is expected to be completed this fall. No further timeline for the work was provided.
