Kyu Sung Woo (MUD ’70) was awarded the Harleston Parker Medal by the Boston Society of Architects and the City of Boston. The annual award recognizes “the single most beautiful building or other structure” built in Boston within the past ten years. The Harvard University Graduate Student Housing building at 10 Akron Street was completed in 2008 with consideration for the specific goals of the university. “Every institution has a different mission,” he says. “It’s interesting and exciting to see how we relate those missions into different buildings. For example, all the dormitories we have done, none of them have the same unit plan or floor plan. It’s not just because of a site being rural or urban or suburban, but also, I think, each university has a different tradition and a different mission.”
The housing acts as a gateway to both the southern edge of Harvard’s Cambridge campus and to Harvard’s new developing initiatives in Allston across the Western Avenue Bridge. The building’s various scales and courtyard space mediate between the river and the City of Cambridge. The 177,000 sf building houses 215 beds, a Faculty Director’s Suite, several common & study lounges, a Multi-Purpose room, and an underground parking facility. Its regionally sourced siding, recycled content, bamboo flooring and wall paneling, low VOC finishes and low energy system have earned the housing project LEED Gold certification. Of Harvard’s 600 buildings, 24 are LEED certified, more than any other university in the country.