John Tournas

John Tournas

With this drawing, I was interested in how students move throughout an urban system of which their university is a part. I tried to depict from personal experience and observation of others, how students tend to interact with public vs. private university-owned space. From what I have seen, most undergraduate students do not make their way very far from university-property. Indeed, even when en-route from dorm to class, the average student will not engage with the environment around them nearly as much as they would were it Harvard property. To put it more simply, I tried to represent the “Harvard Bubble.”

As a result, my map looks much different than Google Maps in its scale and what I chose to include or exclude. In the spaces where students actively frequent such as the Science Center Plaza, or Harvard Square, I drew more detailed buildings and streets to show the increased level of interaction. On the route from the Quad to the Square, on the other hand, students do not often veer away from Mass Ave., or walk down side streets. I also attempted to draw attention to this phenomenon by including a “student path,” which goes through different parts of the campus, and so shows the different densities of interaction that most students engage in regularly.