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Harvard Business School seeks to replace building it hates with new auditorium worthy of a world-class institution

Proposed new auditorium at Harvard Business School in Allston

Architect's rendering.

Harvard is seeking BRA approval to tear down what it considers an inadequate auditorium on the Business School campus in Allston and replace it with a more elegant and larger structure able to "host global events and create a first-class learning environment."

The proposed Klarman Hall and G2 Pavilion would house a 1,000-seat auditorium and state-of-the-art "foyer, reception, meeting and service space to support world-class convening," all in a total of 105,000 square feet.

To make way for this, the current Burden Hall would - rather gleefully, it would appear - be demolished:

Burden's auditorium is too small for many of HBS's current gatherings, and the Hall's lack of foyer and meeting space, support facilities, and accessibility, limit HBS's ability to host global events and create a first-class learning environment. Burden Hall was not built as part of the McKim, Mead and White campus, and is a windowless building lacking a positive relationship with campus open spaces, pedestrian paths, and buildings. It is disconnected from other campus academic and student buildings, and does not contribute to a positive participant experience, or campus life. It constricts views and pedestrian connections between the HBS Central Green, the focus of the academic campus, and Kresge Way, an important pedestrian route.

Klarman Hall project notification form (25M PDF).

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Comments

Once they state paying property taxes.

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Or Harvard.

Harvard's exemption is a matter of federal law.

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Looks like an expansion or riff on the art museum building at Bowdoin.

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It looks like the Legion of Doom as designed by Thomas Jefferson.

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Just asking.

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Those were in danger of becoming a Boston architectural rendering cliche.

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What's your plan Adam? My comment was in. Then it was removed. My follow up comment wasn't posted in between. You insert drivel about blimps. Why curate the comments so? Is this a news site or your personal blog?

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I normally just delete anonymous ad-hominem attacks. 99% of the time, they're single-line, sometimes just single-word insults.

Your comment, if I recall correctly, had two sentences. The first was some legitimate point. The second was just some ad-hominem thing, which I missed at first. When I saw it, yes, I deleted it.

If you didn't get the blimp reference, my apologies. It was an in-joke reference to a couple of earlier architectural renderings I'd posted that had blimps in them (here's one). Drivel is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

Is this a news site or your personal blog? Yes.

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Garbage comments (ooh, where's the blimp?) and attacks by registered users are in I guess. I don't see how calling someone a troll is an insult when it's a fact based on their behavior.

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You want blimp , http://www.patriotledger.com/photogallery/WL/20150...

here's a zeppelin for you , IMAGE(http://image2.findagrave.com/photos250/photos/2001/271/2760_1001780805.jpg)

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No? Then why should they have to ask the government for permission?

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isn't evoked by that rendering. Do better! Be more garish! What would Donald Trump do? Think more Las Vegas!

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but after-all, we are talking about Harvard.

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Don't Burden me with Hall of this....

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Harvard is the largest free range mental hospital in the world

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It is, indeed, a moderately miserable place. Perhaps not the worst example of mid-century "architecture" but neither does it do much to distinguish itself.

Perhaps its most interesting feature is the partition system that allows it to be divided into three separate lecture halls. That should tell you something.

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Why should this quasi government agency with authority based on blighted properties, have any involvement here at all?

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It's been like this for a long time - the BRA has jurisdiction over all large projects in the city - as well as the "institutional master plans" that places like Harvard are required to file (which this new construction would fall under).

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Wait - Harvard is going to host the Olympics?

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