Adams House Residents Construct Video Room

For some houses, making a new video room means buying some old couches. For Adams House, the endeavor is an artistic challenge.

"Certainly we could have gotten a couple of used couches and called it a day," said House Committee Treasurer Sarah J. Dawidoff '86-87.

"We didn't want to go about it that way. We wanted to make a room that was durable and exciting," she said.

Adams resident Alvar J. Mattei '88 said the initial plans for the room were elaborate. "The committee was going to take base furniture, and cover it with latex so that the furniture would look like it had been covered with molten lava," he said.

"The room was also supposed to have 35 or 40 colored lights, but that idea faded," he said.

Having decided against that plan because they thought it was too outlandish, the students are now making their own furniture out of wood.

"It looks like non-Euclidean geometry," Mattei said of the furniture.

The primitive nature of the new design has a strong "Flintstone motif," said Aaron D. Edison '87-88.

Because the committee has been pressed for funds, House Master Robert M. Kiely made a donation of more than $1000 to help the effort.

But even with the donation, the artistic video room may still be short on funds.

"Apparently they [the chairs] were supposed to have names like Fred or Alice, but Master Kiely said that it would be a good idea to solicit donations from the senior common room," Mattei said. The names of the senior common room members who donated toward the project would then go on the furniture itself, Mattei said.

Dawidoff said she did not like the idea of putting donators names around the room.

Though enthusiasm for the room's decor runs high some, like Committee Co-Chairman John F. Tomlinson '87, felt the artistic design was a waste of time and money.

"When we originally planned it last spring, we thought the project would take nine days, but the artistic members had plans which were far too ambitious. They bit off more than they could chew," Tomlinson said.

The Adam's House video room is scheduled to open next semester. Adams, Eliot and Quincy are the only Harvard houses that currently lack video rooms.