Name: The Plan 167
Brand: The Plan
Price: 15.00 EUR
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David Rubenstein Treehouse at Harvard University

By Paola Foster - 15 December 2025
Schüco, Hasslacher group have participated in the project

Where tracks and service yards once divided Boston’s Allston neighborhood from Harvard University’s campus, a new building has taken form. The David Rubenstein Treehouse at Harvard University, recently built as part of the Enterprise Research Campus (ERC), offers a new vision for how institutions and neighborhoods might meet through shared spaces of movement, encounter, and light. Intended to evoke the wonder and excitement of a treehouse, the project begins to redefine the conference building not as an isolated venue, but as part of its social and ecological fabric. Designed to meet the Living Building Challenge Core Certification and Living Building Challenge Materials Petal standards, the Treehouse integrates environmental performance at the level of both structure and daily use. These sustainable strategies ultimately support a broader architectural proposition: that our gathering together should be elevated – both literally and culturally – within the life of the city.

The Treehouse forms part of the ERC’s first phase – a 8.4-ha
mixed-use district along the Charles River approved by the Boston Planning and Development Agency in 2022. The campus occupies the site of a former industrial zone, historically defined by infrastructural separation and limited public access. The ERC is intended to reshape this relationship, transforming what had been a divisive boundary into a point of connection. Following a competition, Studio Gang and Henning Larsen – working with Utile and Scape – were selected to co-lead the district master plan. The original brief paired a conference center with a hotel; Studio Gang proposed separating the two. As Weston Walker, Partner and Design Principal at Studio Gang notes, this will allow for a “more exciting, urban experience for conference-goers to be part of the neighborhood”. The result is both a gateway and a gathering space: a 5,110-sq. m building providing...