Canaday Hall**      
Cambridge, MA

Harvard University
Carefully knitted into historic Harvard Yard, this 210 room dormitory was required by donor concerns to be designed and built in 18 months. The design, which engaged and presaged neorationalist and post-modern contextualism, employed traditional planning and materials, load-bearing masonry structure, and overall building massing and forms but was clearly and unabashedly modernist in detailing, fenestration and sensibility. The donor-required contextual pitched roofs also provided volumetric interiors for the top floors along with top light and ventilation; the silhouette of the roof scape with ventilators and clerestories related to active roofscapes of traditional campus buildings; and the stepped and deep set masonry openings were proportioned and scaled to resonate with the traditional Georgian 6 over 6 divided light sash. The creation of new quadrangles, the use of pedestrian passageways through the building complex and the alignments with the axis of Memorial Chapel and Widener Library integrated the complex into the Yard’s 400 year old traditional campus fabric.

Published in Progressive Architecture, 1974
New England AIA Honorable Mention in Design, 1975

**Jacob Alspector served as Project Architect & Designer at Ezra D. Ehrenkrantz & Associates.