Summer at the CSWR at Harvard University

In the summer of 2024, while my partner was a visiting scholar at Harvard University, we stayed at the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR), Harvard Divinity School. Designed in 1960 by Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert, then dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, the CSWR is a striking modernist building rooted in Mediterranean traditions. A native of Barcelona, Sert organized the complex around a central courtyard, evoking the spatial rhythms of his homeland.

Conceived as both a residence and an extension of the Divinity School across the street, the building was designed to harmonize with its domestic surroundings while cultivating a unique academic community. Sert envisioned the CSWR as a residential hub that would encourage close, personal interaction among scholars of diverse faiths, fostering dialogue and deeper understanding of world religions.

Here is a glimpse into what it was like to live inside the CSWR.

Photos by myself and Meral Ekincioglu