“My scientists want to start digging tomorrow,” Hyman said.

The professional schools committee endorsed the October plan of moving the public health and education schools to Allston.

The Allston life group suggests, in addition to the improvement of existing shuttle services and bridges, considering building a new bridge, installing a tram, creating a rail line from Allston to Harvard’s Longwood medical campus in Boston or enhancing the bridge on John F. Kennedy Street to become a “Ponte Vecchio on the Charles.”

The task force also recommended that planners investigate the less likely proposals of bridging over Soldiers Field Road and developing a regional transportation center in the area.

The committee pondered three cultural scenarios ranging from merely moving the Museum of Natural History to creating a museum “complex” with a major artistic center.

In moving to expand graduate housing, the group is contemplating modeling that housing along the undergraduate House, rather than the apartment, system.

The report also eyes the Quad as valuable space that would allow the University to meet its commitment to offering housing to 50 percent of its graduate students without much further housing in Allston.

For campus planning, the group outlined four models ranging from typical college quads to an integrated urban campus.

Summers said the University’s Allston master planner will consider the four reports after the planner is chosen in about a month. He said the committee charged with selecting a planner has completed most of its work but has not yet made a formal recommendation, he said.

“The committee I think has some ideas as to where it wants to go,” he said yesterday. “But we have not made a decision.”

Hyman added that despite eagerness to get started, patience would be critical to the University’s planning.

“This is going to really recreate the face of Harvard,” Hyman said. “We need to do this right.”

—Lauren A. E. Schuker contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Stephen M. Marks can be reached at marks@fas.harvard.edu.