Modern-era buildings are aging on campuses across America due to obsolete building codes that cannot meet contemporary envelope, seismic, public access, and energy requirements. At the same time, universities cannot dismiss the embodied energy and materials that went into constructing these buildings. The Tozzer Anthropology Building at Harvard University takes a bold approach to this problem by consolidating the original library holdings and calling for new construction that builds upon the existing building’s carbon investment. The transformative adaptive re-use project creates a new public identity and program for Johnson and Hotveld’s 1971 Tozzer Library, while re-using the original building’s foundation, campus infrastructure connections, and steel and concrete structure.
