Harvard Business School, Class of 1959 Chapel
Boston, Massachusetts, 1992
This nondenominational sacred and meditative building juxtaposes two very different spaces. A terraced garden rich in flowering trees offers a place for personal contemplation. Through its glazed, pyramidal roof visitors see the changing seasons of the campus outside. A 100-seat sanctuary, contained by rounded, apse-like concrete walls, rises to a height of 27 feet. This room is without a dominant axis for maximum flexibility and frequently functions as a home for musical performances of varying sizes. Skylights flood the walls with light from above and large-scale prisms fixed in the skylights refract the sun's full spectrum. The exterior of the building is a cylindrical oxidized copper drum penetrated on the west by the garden space. A tower timepiece marks the entrance to the chapel.
Project Type: Academic
Client: Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration
Cost: $2.5 million
Size: 3900
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Collaborators
Prisms Artist - Charles Ross
Timepiece Artist - Karl Schlamminger





