THE DAVID RUBENSTEIN
TREEHOUSE

The David Rubenstein Treehouse is Harvard's first university-wide conference center, designed by Studio Gang and built by Consigli/Smoot, on Harvard's Enterprise Research Campus in Allston. A central stair, lit by skylights, leads up to Canopy Hall, the main conference space, with sweeping views of the surrounding landscape. It's a building designed to be climbed into, not just walked through - and getting it right took a project team as coordinated as the building itself.

The building uses cross-laminated timber floor and roof panels supported by exposed glulam columns and beams, helping the project achieve a 60% reduction in embodied carbon. Every timber component had to be engineered, fabricated, coordinated, and sequenced before it reached the site—a level of precision made possible by Consigli/Smooth and the wider project team getting every detail right, together.