Harvard Law School Dedicates Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, and Clinical Wing

April 20, 2012

Today Harvard Law School dedicated the new Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, and Clinical Wing.  The LEED Gold, 266,000-gross-square-foot building houses classrooms, legal clinics, an 875-seat conference center, lounges, and dining, all above a 700-car underground parking garage.  The building's three wings form a "C" wrapping around a landscaped courtyard raised to the second level to conceal a ground-level loading dock.  An east-facing glass wall that opens to the courtyard brings light into a double-height main gallery. The building's south wing connects to Harkness Commons (Walter Gropius, 1951) and will open to a new quadrangle to be completed in 2013.

“Welcome to the Law School’s living room, welcome to the new shape of legal education,” said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, who saw the project to its completion

“My sense,” said Elena Kagan, former HLS Dean and now Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, “is that it has succeeded beyond anyone’s dreams.”

"For the Law School we worked to imbue this new building with the character of what went before, so we hope you will find that the Wasserstein-Caspersen-Clinical building seems to belong here yet to be its own thing," said Robert A.M. Stern.  "I hope that this new building will be embraced as the physical embodiment of the Law School's march forward far into the 21^st century."

RAMSA partners Melissa DelVecchio and Graham Wyatt worked with Mr. Stern on the project.