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ARGUING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE
Joan Wickersham’s exploration of “Bricks and Politics” (September-October, page 50) evokes a famous remark, attributed to Marcel Duchamp, that “all great art is irritating at first.” This does not, of course, imply that all irritating art becomes great. Personally: Hollein yes, Spangler Center no.
Dan Rosenfeld, M.B.A. ’79
Beverly Hills, Calif.
We have been cursed with the sort of architectural abomination that darkens the cover of this issue of Harvard Magazine, the high-rise housing complex at One Western Avenue. The worst of the 1950s could not have produced a more jumbled, less attractive building on that site. It reflects nothing of its context. It mars and shadows the beautiful neo-Georgian campus of the Harvard Business School and will be an eyesore as well for the new Harvard campus in Allston.
Sadly, one of the truly commendable recent additions to Harvard’s building inventory, the Spangler Center, by noted architect Robert A.M. Stern, is dismissed by critics who favor “visionary” designs as looking like a very nice country club. However, Stern got it right when he argued for continuing Harvard’s venerable red-brick-Georgian look. It is an important marketing asset in a fiercely competitive era for students and ought to be perpetuated.
This is doubtless why Princeton University has taken a very different approach. It has hired an award-winning architectural firm to lead the development of a long-term plan for its campus. As a spokesman for the architectural firm said: “The University has adopted an approach of planning complete neighborhoods, rather than individual buildings, in order to avoid ending up with a series of projects that are disconnected.” Word has it that Princeton also wants its new buildings to reflect the style and context of its historical campus.
To me, this sounds like the exact opposite of what Harvard has been doing.
If you are wondering why the Boston Society of Architects’ Parker Medal has not been awarded to any Harvard building since 1994, you need only look at most of the non-traditional buildings Harvard has chosen to construct since then—buildings that honor their context for the most part only by opposing it.
John A. McMullen, M.B.A. ’71, J.D. ’73
Burlington, Vt.
The problem with Harvard architecture is Walter Gropius. Harvard brought him over from Europe instead of hiring America’s seminal architectural genius, Frank Lloyd Wright. Gropius brought with him a distorted vision of Wright’s modernism, one based on pure geometry and technology which lacks the human factor and, consequently, is not organic.
Perhaps Harvard should first look at whether continued growth is appropriate to the quality of education it wishes to provide. The Harvard College experience diminishes as the size of the class and classes grows.
Great architecture must be organic, namely it must grow in unity with its site, era, and environment. If it does that, style becomes irrelevant and designs should satisfy the neighbors as well as the client.
William Allin Storrer ’58
Adjunct professor of architecture,
University of Texas at Austin
Frankfort, Mich.
A Career Colleague
Christopher (“Kit”) Reed debuted on the masthead of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, as this magazine was then known, in the issue of September 30, 1968—volume 71, number 1. As managing editor, he joined editor John T. Bethell, then in his third year at the helm, in launching a new design, a new printing process, new features, and a new publishing schedule. The temper of the times put a premium on the new: the cover of that first issue focused on “The Revolution.” By the end of that academic year, of course, Harvard’s campus was shaken to its core by that new tide: in the occupation of University Hall, the bust, and the strike, memorably covered by the magazine of April 28, 1969.
Photograph by Stu Rosner
Christopher "Kit" Reed
In the many years since, Reed enhanced the magazine’s content invaluably, contributing hundreds of thousands of words on every imaginable subject (and covering more than one-tenth of Harvard’s 356 Commencements, in whose ceremonies and costumes he delights). Had he not written with such humor and grace, and with such wry appreciation for the University’s traditions and foibles, his colleagues would have resented bitterly his calm confidence at the keyboard, no matter how pressing the deadlines.
It is with deep appreciation and affection that we thank Kit Reed for his service to our readers as he retires with this issue (volume 110, number 2), after crafting here and in the September-October magazine features on an art exhibition and on an extraordinary plant scientist—subjects in which he has always been deeply interested. Our sense of loss is tempered by his continuing work at the handle of The College Pump, in ranging across Harvard in search of Treasure, and on occasional reporting assignments.
We welcome to our ranks associate editor Elizabeth Gudrais ’01, a former Harvard Magazine Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow—the first such alumna to graduate to the staff—in the early years of another promising writing career.
~The Editors
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