Harvard Planning and Real Estate has selected Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston to design 253 graduate student housing units in Allston.

The new project will be located on Harvard's current campus immediately adjacent to Harvard's Soldiers Field Park housing complex. The site for the new graduate student housing was earmarked for that purpose in 1975, when the Soldiers Field Park housing complex was built. The project is part of Harvard's recent institutional master plan approved by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and its site is not part of Harvard's recently acquired land.

The 214,000-sq.-ft. project will provide 418 bedrooms on a site adjacent to the Business School, overlooking the Charles River. The housing complex is scheduled to begin design this April and to open in January 2002.

The University graduate student housing development will allow Harvard to proactively respond to the interests of the city of Boston and the Allston Campus Community Task Force by providing a greater percentage of Harvard's graduate students with on- campus housing alternatives. This project will increase the number of bedrooms in the Allston campus by 35 percent.

The selection process originated with a list of 40 national architects who were invited to submit their credentials. The architect-selection committee chose seven firms to respond to a detailed request for proposals. After narrowing the list to three finalists, the committee selected Machado and Silvetti Associates, an internationally recognized planning and architecture firm.