The Plug-and-Play Harvard HouseGSD 3rd Semester Core Studio
Fall 2008
The Plug-and-Play Harvard House is a new model for academic housing that addresses the expanding role of networked digital culture in higher education. As classes, seminars and research are coordinated and attended virtually, the residence is increasingly becoming the locus for educational activities.
A new model must support these unconventional academic activities while recognizing and embracing the resulting blurred boundaries between living, learning and play.
Rather than building a rigid set of spatial resources, the residence must become a flexible infrastructure that allows for rapid adaptation to spontaneous academic and non-academic events, often driven by students themselves.
An ecology of prefabricated mobile interactive components encourage spontaneous social interaction while reinforcing group collaboration and negotiation skills as essential to personal, professional and academic growth.
Earlier in the development of this project, I was interviewed by the Harvard Crimson about new academic housing at Harvard. Read this article here .
