Community
The first phase of a master plan for a health sciences precinct, this building is the new home of the university?s College of Medicine. The centerpiece of the building is a four-story atrium that lies along a major campus pathway and provides access to a cafand a 250- seat auditorium. Clad in limestone and copper to delineate medical education and research programs on the exterior, this building provides a strong identity for the College of Medicine through its formal and material articulation and shaping of campus space.
Four student communities are individually expressed as two-story volumes and provide a home base for the medical education curriculum. Each community includes a social area, spaces for group work and private study, a classroom, and student support offices, in addition to an outdoor garden. Located across the hall from each community are classrooms and clinical skills suites. The communities and their adjacent facilities form an integrated learning environment for the basic, clinical and social sciences.
?The site plan successfully creates two campuses?a strong element at the entry contributes to the building?s openness to the rest of the campus, an openness also characterized by the building?s transparency at night? There is a rich spatial quality to this design and it helps create a celebratory public face.? Boston Society of Architects 2004 Honor Awards Jury.
Project Awards Include:
Boston Society of Architects, Design Award, 2004
AIA/New England, Design Award, 2003
Photographers credit: Jeff Goldberg/Esto