Tufts University: Olin Center for Languages

the project:

Construction Completed: 1990
Faculty Offices, Seminar Rooms, Classrooms, Conference Rooms, Theater, Language Lab, Television Studio, Resource Room

This academic project focused on imagining the “high-tech” teaching environment from first principles. The school challenged the team to take full advantage of available technologies to enable full cultural immersion and powerful storytelling: to re-imagine the classroom as a powerful teaching tool. Working with architect ARC, we focused on sight lines, camera angles, lighting, and acoustics, shaping classrooms as performance spaces in which the teaching wall transformed into a “learning stage” and content arrived electronically to combine distance learning and full immersion. This teaching model was supported by a library, language lab and a TV studio that allowed content generation and transmission.

Interior Designer: Polly Dithmer
Architect: Architectural Resources Cambridge, Inc.