| URBAN DESIGN
Harvard Square has undergone many changes over the last thirty years.
The most dramatic of these is certainly the MTA renovation that accompanied
the extension of the red line to Alewife.
|
| Once I recognized the materials and details that
are characteristic of the renewal, I noticed them everywhere. For instance,
someone mentioned to me that when he thought of the new Harvard Square,
he thought of red brick. Now, brick is a traditional material for this area.
However, the designers of the renovation lifted brick from the sidewalks
and plastered it all over the project like wall paper. The walls, planters
and even a large sculpture are all made of the same brick. And yet, I do
not think that the visitor to Harvard Square is immediately struck by this
use of brick, or most of the details that identify the renewal. |
| If I were to choose a symbol of the renewal
it would be the pay phones shaped like free standing, truncated columns.
The row of them on the one side of the T entrance are a distinctive feature
of this primary space, forming an edge along the taxi stand. As I spent
more time studying the square, I began to notice them everywhere--in clusters
across the street, in two stands in Brattle Square, even a few by themselves
along the sidewalk by the traffic circle. Somehow though, just as the smaller
details, the payphones almost disappear in their ubiquity. |
|
LAYOUT
The repitition of design details and the strong hand of the planner led
me to expect that the series of open spaces in Harvard Square would form
some sort of unified system of public spaces. To link the spaces and create
a whole greater than the sum of its parts would, in theory, be desirable.
However, though people pass through all of the spaces forming sequences
and loops, the spaces do not gel but retain their individual characters.
|
| As you look through my pictures, when you visit
Harvard Square, do you experience it as somehow unified or as a series of
adjacent but distinct pockets of open space? |
