Ambitious HBS Campus Master Plan Marches Forward with Two New Buildings
Plans were filed earlier this month for two new buildings on the Harvard Business School (HBS) campus, according to a report in the Harvard Crimson. The new facilities, called Klarman Hall and G2 Pavilion, will replace the existing Burden Hall, which is slated for demolition in 2018. They are part of an ongoing HBS campus master plan that will have spanned more than a decade when completed.
According to development project plans filed with the Boston Redevelopment Authority in early October, the two buildings will total 105,100 square feet of new construction. Klarman Hall, scheduled for completion by August 2018, will be three stories tall and will house a 1,000-seat auditorium capable of accommodating HBS’s entire MBA class, the Crimson reports. It will feature a more “welcoming” design than Burden Hall, which the documents described as “a windowless building lacking a positive relationship with campus open spaces, pedestrian paths, and buildings.” The G2 Pavilion will be connected to Klarman Hall, but plans for it are still under development.
William Rawn Associates are the project architects, and Walsh Brothers Construction will manage the project, the Crimson reports. The new buildings will uphold the tradition of Georgian architecture prevalent elsewhere on the HBS campus, with large, open windows to underscore the “public character of the project,” according to the filed plans.
When complete, the two new buildings will bring HBS’s total building count to 36. Their development is part of an ongoing campus master planning effort set into motion in 2006. Tata Hall, completed in December 2013, expanded the school’s executive education facilities. Another new executive education facility, the Ruth Mulan Chu Chao Center, is slated for completion next year, when it will become the first building on the Harvard campus named for a woman and the first named for a Chinese-American.
Learn more about the ongoing HBS campus master plan.