In her seminal “A Room of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf wrote: “A writer needs money to provide her with the time, and she needs room to provide her with the space.” Envisioning Harvard University’s new Creative Writing Center gave us the rare pleasure of offering its occupants, luminary authors Claire Messud, Susan Faludi, Jill Abramson, Michael Pollan among others, exactly that—inspiring spaces to think and write in.
The project also sent us back to our archives looking for the original documents of our design of Harvard University’s Lamont Library, built in 1948, which now houses the Center. Working within the existing infrastructure of the building, we set out to refresh and update key design elements to reflect the current flow of activities in the space.