10. Engineering Yard

The extensively landscaped Engineering Yard on the south side of the building functions as an outdoor study space, a social and recreational gathering area, and an event space. A green and hardscape amphitheater includes hidden speakers. Electrical outlets are located throughout the outdoor space.

Paths to the east entrance link to a greenway that will eventually extend to the Charles River. To the west, the Yard connects to the City of Boston’s Rena Park and Honan Allston Library.

The landscape is designed to be adaptable to storm surge and flood events and retain and filter the majority of the site’s stormwater. The site design was conceived as a continuation of the building’s interior corridors and atria, superimposed on an abstraction of the salt marshes and hummocks that once existed in the area.

Visit two young beech trees, propagated from cuttings of the iconic trees that have long grown outside of Pierce Hall — the original home of Harvard engineering  in Cambridge. The collection of young trees planted in the southernmost area of the Yard are intended to be replanted at other Harvard sites in the district as they undergo development.

Note the rubbed concrete and granite slabs and decoratively carved stone pieces that have been repurposed as outdoor benches. They were saved from a scrapyard that was once located at this site.