Top Harvard administrators embraced plans this year to shift the University’s center from the Yard to the Charles River by constructing a second undergraduate campus in Allston.

The proposal would mark the most ambitious physical expansion in Harvard’s 368-year history.

Harvard’s campus of the future will likely include between three and eight undergraduate Houses, a science hub and the public health and education schools, in addition to the business school, graduate housing and the athletic facilities that already occupy some of the University’s Allston land.

The undeveloped parts of Harvard’s vast 341-acre Allston holdings are composed of a tollbooth and stretch of the Massachusetts Turnpike, a truckyard, a railyard and a few dilapidated storefronts—in short, an encumbered industrial wasteland.

While the University has not begun clearing the land, planners’ visions for the new campus have already started to take shape.

Last July, Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy and Senior Advisor to the President Dennis F. Thompson presented an outline of this plan at a retreat attended by top administrators and deans, including University President Lawrence H. Summers.

The plans first became public when The Crimson and The Boston Globe reported the meeting in early September.

Summers outlined a more detailed version of this proposal with his comments in an October letter to the community, confirming that other plans for Allston, like centering the land around a graduate school campus, were off the table.

The letter laid out the “planning assumptions” for four major areas: culture and urban life, science and technology, professional schools and undergraduate life.

Summers’ letter also announced the formation of four task forces to study possibilities for development in those fields.

In their monthly meeting the day the plans were released, faculty voiced concerns ranging from a lack of consultation in the planning process to the issue of splitting the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ (FAS) science departments between the two banks of the Charles.

The task forces have been meeting since the fall, and released a set of reports last month that embraced the existing plan while adding details to the vision. Most significantly, the undergraduate life group encouraged the College to move student dormitories from the Quad, constructing three to eight Allston Houses instead.

Last Friday, the University selected Cooper, Robertson & Partners, in conjunction with Laurie Olin and Frank O.

Gehry, as the master planner to lay out a framework for Allston development.

While they will inherit the reports of these four committees detailing possibilities for Allston, many facets of the campus’ implementation—including obtaining community approval and faculty support—must be worked out before breaking ground in the next five to 10 years.