Word: comfort
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Japanese gardens recalls the austere asceticism of the Seasons as well as Quincy's slightly more Orientalized vision. The effort can be soothing when the fountain is gurgling, but it mostly looks so out of place and deliberate it only further alienates those eating in the house from feeling comfort or familiarity there...
...lives. All House dining halls were intended to be communal spaces where House residents could gather at the end of the day to eat like one big, happy family far removed from the vast impersonality of Harvard University, Inc. Each House struggles daily with reconciling institutional efficiency with residential comfort, and each House's architecture reflects an attempt to merge these two forces. Below is a look at four dining halls' attempts to do just that: Eliot House, where institution and residence meet, but don't interact; Currier, where something is lost in the institution's translation of "residence"; Quincy...
...architect of Mather House (Jean-Paul Carlhian, the man behind New Quincy and Leverett Towers) designed it as both a warmly embracing "community" building and a giant, empty gallery space meant to be filled with art from the University's museums--a perfectly rendered balance between private comfort and public display. For financial reasons, the Unversity's art was never showcased, turning much of the House into an impersonal blank canvas (artes interruptus). Nowhere did this seem more of a problem than the dining hall, which was to encapsulate the gallery feel of the House while functioning as the focal...
...recently designed service area clashes discordantly with the cavernous gloom of the Eliot House dining area. The dining hall does not integrate efficiency and intimacy but grafts the two onto each other like some ghastly sideshow freak. Any dining experience there is a fitful shift between discomfort and comfort, between Harvard and home...
...Mather's dining hall is a ski lodge, Currier's is an EconoLodge. Familiarity is a large part of comfort, and most residents are probably familiar with nondescript hotels; making the dining hall into the lobby of one, however, does nothing but conjure up the warmth of tepid coffee from free continental breakfasts. In trying to produce comfort for the masses, Currier stumbled upon mass-produced comfort. The dining hall's attempt to turn its institutional space into a homey place is bipartite: the area tries to hint at the comfort of the natural world (bridging the distance between...