One Western Avenue

Allston, Massachusetts, USA
Foto © Michael Moran
Foto © Michael Moran
Foto © Michael Moran
Foto © Michael Moran
Foto © Michael Moran
Foto © Michael Moran
Foto © Michael Moran
Foto © Michael Moran
Foto © Michael Moran
Architetti
Machado Silvetti
Sede
one western avenue, 02163 Allston, Massachusetts, USA
Anno
2003

One Western Avenue occupies a prominent site at the southeast corner of the Harvard Business School, adjacent to the Charles River, where Western Avenue crosses Soldiers Field Road. The site marks arrival to Harvard’s campus from downtown Boston and areas south. The building’s configuration and image are based on interpretations of its physical context—the early-twentieth-century, five-story, brick-clad, U-shaped neo-Georgian courtyard houses and the mid-twentieth-century, twenty-story, concrete paneled modern towers. While One Western Avenue combines these two emblematic types, it adds something else, a three-story bridge raised four levels above the ground and spanning 180 feet. This volume divides the main central void into two contrasting spaces, a courtyard (with framed views to the river) and a front lawn. It creates a large covered terrace, furnished with a wooden platform intended for everyday use as well as special occasions. This configuration produces desirable conditions that normally exclude one another: a courtyard open to the river and three stories of apartments occupying the same riverfront situation. The low-rise is wrapped in two brick patterns, one for the exterior walls and the other for the interior walls. These overlap in the entry passageway, producing a third pattern. The mid-rise and the bridge are clad in cast stone blocks, but used differently from one another. The surface treatment of all of the volumes is designed to allow the ideal prismatic geometry of the various building masses to register on the façade planes. One of the first buildings designed to fulfill a new sustainability initiative at Harvard, known as “The Greening of the Crimson,” the project has recently received a silver LEED rating.

Progetti collegati

  • Promenade Favorita, Lugano TI
    mavo gmbh
  • Garten Höhenweg St.Gallen
    mavo gmbh
  • Sagiareal, Greppen LU
    mavo gmbh
  • Progressiver Reinraumausbau
    Lindner Group
  • Büro Allmendstrasse
    BFB Architekten AG

Rivista

Altri progetti di Machado Silvetti

The Center for Asian Art at the Ringling Museum of Art
Sarasota, USA
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA
Dewey Square Master Plan and MBTA Headhouses
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Boston Public Library
Allston, Massachusetts, USA
Hassayampa Academic Village, Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona, USA