Harvard Business School
Klarman Hall
Project
Klarman Hall
Client
Harvard Business School
Location
Boston, MA
Completion
2018
Size
74,400 GSF
Certification
LEED Gold
Category
Featured Projects, Campus Innovations
Klarman Hall is a 1,000-seat hall that provides a flexible convening, presentation and collaboration space at the heart of the historic Harvard Business School campus. Equipped with state-of-the-art audiovisual systems, comfortable seating for variable audience sizes from 300 to 600 to 1,000 and excellent acoustics for spoken word, the building meets the current and future demands of the school’s numerous conferences, lectures, education, and cultural programs and performances. As a centerpiece of the school’s convening infrastructure, Klarman Hall is designed to extend HBS’s global convening footprint. Implementation of state-of-the-art audio-visual voice lift systems creates intimacy, dissolving distinctions between audience and presenter.
BUILDING IN USE
Hannah Jones and Panelists introduce “The 1619 Project”
After a film screening, Partners in Health founders Ophelia Dahl and Paul Farmer discuss data, leadership, and hope
Zakir Hussain Performance utilizes large screen for social media interaction with audience members
“Art, Music, and Social Justice” Talk with Yo Yo Ma
“Art, Music, and Social Justice” Talk with Yo Yo Ma
Percussion Performance featuring Zakir Hussain
"Tech Ethics," a University-wide course open to all Harvard students
Professor Michael Sandel poses a moral dilemma to students in "Tech Ethics" class
Klarman Hall - it’s a space that sparks imagination. It has all the great elements of our classrooms with little separation between our teachers, presenters and students, and a remarkable performance space.
Nitin Nohria, Former Dean, Harvard Business School
The Hall is designed to accommodate three events sizes: 300 seat case-study classroom, 600 seat convening space with audio voice-lift system and a 1,000-seat convening event. The ‘case-study’ classroom ethos of the room is distinctly present and visible from the adjoining Winter Garden; a flexible space that serves both as lobby, day-time living room, event registration room and evening reception.
An operable partition allows the room to be adjusted for smaller event size at the up-state side of the main cross-aisle separating the lower parterre from the upper parterre. A gently curving seating arrangement in the Hall makes speech recognition and visual participation intimate and supportive to the participants.
AUDITORIUM FLEXIBILITY
300 People Surrounding Platform
600 People Filling Main Level
1,000 People Filling Entire Convening Hall
300 People Building Section
600 People Building Section
1,000 People Building Section
Awards + Press
2022 USITT Architecture Honor Award
2019 CMAA New England New Building Construction Project of the Year
2019 IES Boston Section Illumination Merit Award
Project Consultants
Structural Engineer | LeMessurier Consultants, Inc.
Mechanical / Electrical Engineer | R.G. Vanderweil Engineers
Civil Engineer | Nitsch Engineering
Landscape Architect | Reed Hilderbrand Associates, Inc.
Lighting Consultant | Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design
Theater Consultant | Theatre Projects Consultants
Acoustical Engineer | Threshold Acoustics LLC
Photographer | Robert Benson, Jon Chase, Rose Lincoln, Evgenia Eliseeva