Chad Benoit

Chad Benoit

Harvard Square is a really interesting place for our first sketch assignment because it’s an area that I spend so much time in on a daily basis, but I have never given much thought to it from a design perspective. Harvard Square is really interesting to me because it is the confluence of so many different types of movement. This movement is what I focused on for my sketch. For me, the center of Harvard Square is the T station because it is found at the boundary between Harvard proper (Harvard Yard) and the businesses of Harvard Square. It also serves as the main connection point between Harvard and Boston, and it’s the first thing that many people see when they come to Harvard Square for the first time. In my sketch I tried to indicate some of the defining buildings of the immediate area, but more importantly, I indicated the train (red), bus (yellow), traffic (blue), and pedestrian (purple dots) routes. I think it is really interesting how the Square is definitely dominated by busy pedestrian routes. I also think that like many places in Boston, it is interesting to think about how Harvard Square is where architecture that is centuries old meets very modern buildings. Also, a sketch of Harvard Square is very brick red because so many things are made out of brick (sidewalks, buildings). For the next sketch, I definitely want to focus more on the “diagraming” aspect of it because that is what is most interesting to me, and because drawing is not my strong suit. When doing this from memory, I definitely got the basic components, but I missed out on a lot of the architectural details of the buildings and some of the subterranean features (for example, there are bus routes that run through a tunnel under Harvard Square as well).