During early 2020, BushWang began the design process associated with the renovation of the Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) most prominent classrooms. This design process included establishing a design standard for all future classroom renovations in order to maintain a consistent aesthetic expression and the functional use of these spaces.
This standard included the general lay-out of the rooms, desk and aisle configurations, teaching wall, pit and lecterns, the finishes and lighting used and the technology within the classroom spaces.
Following the development and approval of these standards, BushWang initiated these design standards in the renovation of two sets of highly used classrooms, L-140 & L-150 in the Littauer Building.
The owner’s intention was not to just implement the new standards, but to increase the seating capacity by approximately 20% of the former classrooms to a capacity of approximately 130 seats, and to make the teaching experience within each room more interactive among the students, professors and teaching assistants. BushWang accomplished this by reworking the tiers of stepped desks within the space, redesigning to the aisles to foster more efficient circulation, and fine tuning the design of the teaching wall and the teaching pit to address the professors’ input on the design approach and the most recent technology for the visual and audio systems.
The design and documentation of these two classrooms took approximately 20 weeks, including the development of the standards, and the duration of the construction phase was approximately 24 weeks to occupancy.
