Design --- A School Without Direction

During the thirteen years he spent at the University, Walter Gropius became almost a spiritual leader of the Graduate School of Design. To the outside world he was the school; to much of the faculty, he, not Dean Joseph Hudnut, set the policy; and to the students, he was the ideal architect, the master mold into which they poured their talents.

When Gropius resigned this fall, many felt the school had lost its heart. But behind the facade of Gropius there existed and still exists a vigorous school with some excellent teachers; perhaps none approximated the master, but most of them do not need his presence to function. Gropius, himself, did not consciously attempt to engulf the school with his beliefs; he encouraged his students to disagree with him, but many kept trying to emulate and become carbon copies of him. It was only a matter of time until the dean would begin to resent Gropius' presence, to envy his popularity, and attempt to pry him from his perch of preeminence.

The faculty watched the Hudnut-Gropius disagreements seethe and finally erupt into a bitter personal feud. After the lucrative post-war years, when the G.I. bill swelled the school's enrollment, inflation began to slice the endowment. Hudnut rearranged his program, dropping some courses and firing some instructors, mostly Gropius' friends. Finally, he turned to Gropius' own pet course, Fundamentals of Design, which had been running on a special Corporation grant. As soon as the money ran out Hudnut discontinued the course. With this gone and the general prospect of forced economy, Gropius left the school, leaving behind the dregs of his battle and a discouraged group of people.

Low Morale

Gropius' resignation was not the only blow to the school's morale. Hudnut retired officially last spring, and President Conant has delayed choosing a successor. Today students and faculty wait uneasily, unsure of who the new head will be and how he will reorganize the curriculum. Besides this, there is a deficit of about $10,000 a year for the school to erase. It has necessitated many one-year appointments, and a corresponding number of insecure instructors. Some on tenure spend little time teaching, concentrating on private practice, while the rest bear heavy teaching loads with inadequate salaries.

Rumors now circulate through the school, as to how the University will cut expenses. Each professor suspects that his program may vanish, and may students wonder which departments of the school will continue functioning. While the University delays taking any action, a good part of the school lies dormant. No one can start research projects. The libraries must limp along on inadequate budgets, and worn out equipment is not replaced. It is a poor atmosphere for academic development.

Those architects and designers who have glanced in from the outside are struck by a peculiar tragedy. Design has, perhaps, the best students in the country, and it has fine teachers; O'Neil Ford, a leading Taxes architect and a visiting professor, points out that the school's biggest lack "is not necessarily a matter of some great and important man. The students," he says, "should realize the great opportunities here, regardless of who is running the place."

It is difficult now to perceive an objective picture of Gropius by talking to the faculty. Since most of his supporters have left, the ones that remain will usually portray Hudnut as the misunderstood man, and Gropins as the unyielding genius. To the outside observer, there can be no real facts. Everything said by a professor or instructor is tainted with the bitter feelings of the quarrel.

Some of the faculty now say that Gropius had little direct contact with most of the school's students during the years he served as chairman of the Architecture Department. While the enrollment fluctuated around 200, they state, Gropius spend most of his time with only 16 students, all enrolled in his unique architect's course.

The Master course, which is now taught by for visiting professors, was Gropius' innovation. Created primarily for exceptional students, preferably with some experience, the course took men with architectural degrees and placed them under Gropius' wing. Some members of the faculty complained, out of jealousy, perhaps, about "Gropius' little geniuses, isolated by themselves downstairs." Gropius gave them specific problems to do by themselves, but they seldom mixed with the students studying for the Bachelors degree.

More Active Members

Ford, who is now teaching this course, admits he has not been at the University long enough to have the complete picture, but he thinks the Master students could become more of an active part in the school.

He and Hugh A. Stubbins, Jr., associate professor of Architecture and acting head of the department, point out that some of the students in the Master course have less ability than the Bachelor candidates.

And it was in the Master course, some complain, that Gropius had the most damaging effect on his students. Few of them turned out original thinkers, one professor commented. They were like Gropius in every respect except the most important one.

But Gropius, along with many leading architects, would dispute this. In a nationwide architectural contest two years ago 14 of his students won 50 per cent of the total prizes. As Gropius comments: "If they were all completely alike, one would think the judges might become a bit bored."

Today, some of his best students work with Gropius in his own firm, the Architects Collaborative, which designed the Graduate Center two years ago.

Even without direct contact with the entire student body, Gropius did give Design a point of view. He was an innovator in educational techniques and he backed his own theories of architecture. Many say that Hudnut, on the other hand, never actually made his philosophy of art clear. His disagreements with Gropius seemed to most completely personal.

It is not difficult to trace the beginnings of the animosity. Hudnut came to the school in 1933 with a distinguished reputation, not as a great innovator, but as a sound thinker and writer. He was responsible for integrating the three separate departments, Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning into a single School of Desing. He brought Gropius to the school in 1937, when Gropius was one of the world's most famous architects and educators, the man who developed multiple dwellings and expanded a new concept of functional beauty in the Bauhaus at Dessau, Germany, from 1922 to 1928.

In 1938, Hudnut also arranged the creation of the undergraduate architectural science program. And later, he, together with George H. Perkins, then chairman of Regional Planning and now Dean of the Pennsylvania Design school, created the integrated first year program for concentrators in the three Design departments.

Developed School

It is no wonder, then, that Hudnut felt responsible for much of the school's success. He had taken over a poor school with little reputation, and he had strengthened the faculty and enlarged the program. The school's planning department, the first of its kind in the United States, had grown and the architecture departments were run by some of the best teachers in the world.

But when Hudnut realized that Gropius was receiving all the credit for the school's success and that the master was obscuring him more and more, it was natural for the dean to resent the other's presence. At times he would make statements such as "learning should be a matter of experience rather than purely a matter of authority," and everyone knew, of course, who the authority," and everyone knew, of course who the authority was. But for the most part, the faculty reports, the Gropius Hudmnt battle was more a cold war than anything else, creating at times an unbearable tension in faculty meetings. Finally, Hudnut began to rule the school by divide and conquer. He played one member of the faculty against another, never making it clear who enjoyed his favor. He fired and hired without consulting his faculty, sowing the seeds of insecurity and inter departmental university.

George T. LeBoutillier, assistant professor of Design, felt the faculty was waiting for a real ideological argument, "If they would have argued that way, we might have had an interesting discussion." Instead, only Gropins aired a coherent viewpoint, and Hudunt never seemed to answer him directly.

Gropins was alarmed at "today's complete separation of design from the execution of buildings, of the drafting board from the building site." "This," he said while at the University and repeats now, "is artificial, and has led the architect to a dead cud mad."

He wanted the architect's education to prepare a man not only to design buildings but to "Take part as a legitimate equal with the engineer and the scientist in the conception, design, and execution of component parts of building."

For this reason, he pressed a more practical program in the Design School. "Architecture is so strongly tied up with practicalities and technicalities that building architects should have practical experience." He accuses the Design program of being "too theoretical and bookish," and there are many architects who agree with him.

Gropius, while at the University, encouraged his students to work on construction projects during the summers. The "Fundamentals of Design" course, which for two-years was a requirement in the school, was the further attempt to familiarize students with materials. By working with colors, metals, and organic media, Design students would begin to understand the builder's problems. He would learn what materials and colors snit certain constructions, and which figures are the best for particular forms of space.

When Hudnut discontinued the course, he commented that it was "a good general introduction to design courses, but not a necessary one."

Most members of the faculty agreed with Gropius in his desire for such a basic course. The point of view was a good one, but the actual course produced a large number of critics, mostly among the Hudnut supporters.

Students, however, were practically unanimous in their praise of the course. The point of view was a good one, but the actual curse produced a large number of critics, mostly among the Hudnut supporters.

Students, however, were practically unanimous in their praise of the course, and petitioned President Conant to continue it. Only a few were disappointed, thinking, like Stubbins, that the course "would be better placed on a high school level."

Stubbins argues that "Fundamentals of Design" lacked theory of architectural design. "Students were cutting our paper shapes." Stubbins recalls, "and how does this effect architecture." The course was based on one taught at the Rauhaus in 1928. We should be able to improve on that now."

Only Copied

Gropins answers that "Stubbins still does not understand the course. The Rambans course has been copied but never equaled."

Gropius first argued for the course in a 1948 faculty meeting. He was unsatisfied with the basic design course taught by LeBounllen (new reinstated), and he felt that Planning 1, then a required curse for architects, landscapes architects, and regional planners, was taking too much time from the architects. He though there eight to be an equally intensive basic design course. The faculty agreed such a course was needed, and Conant gave him $20,00 to experiment to two years.

To run the program Gropins bought in Rich and Filipowski, and Rauhans trained designer from Chicago Institute of Design. It would seem that Gropius' enemies, afraid of the given man, feel out then feelings on Filipowski. They co-operated half hearted's, not feeling him what they wanted and criticizing him for not satisfying. If the course was not successful, it was due to lack of time for development and assistance by Filipowski's colleagues. Filopowski left last spring when the grant ran out, and LeBoutillier's course is back again, not covering Design I's material, but costing the school less money and the students less time. But there is till need for a fundamental course, and even 'Gropius enemies agree on this, although they might disagree on its organization, if the school ever intimates another fundamentals of design program, it will, of course, need more money. But whether or not the course will ever materials depends mainly on the character of the new dean.

President Conant has indicated he will choose Hudnut's successor before the next Overseer's meeting on January 11. The faculty now asks itself who the new dean will be, and, perhaps, even more important; what kind of a dean doss Conant want.

Largely, this depends on what kind of a Design School Conant would like to see at the University. Will it be a school dedicated to a single doctrine of design or will it be more of a forum, where different professors espouse variations of architectural and planning philosophies, letting the students choose from among them?

Dogmatism

While Gropius was at the school, outsiders accused him of forcing students dogmatically into his own discipline. Although this probably was not true and Gropius never had the opportunity to model the courses into what he would consider an ideal framework, he doss believe a school should draw its interpretation of the future from one man.

"If you allow every professor in a school to give a different theory, as some people misinterpret democracy, you will educate cynics," states Gropius.

"The student would have the free choice to go to a contemporary, or a Beaux-Arts design school. But in that school the staff should click together. If the student does not like one school, he should transfer to another."

Gropius makes it clear that he does not want a complete academic tyrant to run the school. He thinks it needs a positive, artistic man, who has a unique theory, broad enough to encompass his students and faculty, giving them room to satisfy their particular fancies and ideas.

"The school does not need a strong man to make carbon copies. The teacher must put himself in his students' place, and get their interpretations, thereby enriching himself. We must encourage men to find their own approach, integrating these different methods in a common spirit.

"There is no direction in the school now," Gropius concludes.

However, many members of the faculty disagree with the Gropius conception. Others would modify it. But some agree wholeheartedly.

LeBoutiller backs Gropius, "We've got to have a point of View-Gropius' or someone else's. We need an overall policy."

Variety of Doctrines

But William L.C. Wheaton, chairman of the Regional Planning Department, feels that "Harvard should offer a variety of doctrines"

The school's deficit complicates the choosing of a new dean. Design needs a man who will go out and raise money for the school's programs. The Corporation's policy, since the post-war years, forces each graduate school to stand or fall on its own financial feet.

But few great artists are either able or have any desire to beat the bushes for endowments. They want to spend their time at their art, not at the boring tasks of administration. For this reason, most members of the faculty agree that the dean cannot be both an administrator and an artist.

In a letter to President Conant dated October 22, 1951, Gropius sent his own suggestions for improving the Design School. In one part of his letter he discussed the qualifications of a dean.

"I suggest," he wrote, "to promote the closest integration of all departments of the School of Design by placing it under one director as the responsible key man; this director to be simultaneously the Chairman of the Department of Architecture, since architecture is historically the mother art of design from which all the others have branched out; to give the director an able administrator as his assistant who should also be endowed with an ability for fund raising."

Others, like Wheaton, would suggest that a relatively conservative man become dean, while the innovator-artist become head of the architecture department. But remembering what happened when Gropius obscured Hudnut, most members of the faculty think such a combination would breed personal rivalry and animosity.

Design's other large problem is the financial one. The school now has an endowment of approximately $3,600,000, and almost all of it was originally marked for architecture. Landscape architecture shares in the Charles W. Eliot fund of $115,000, but Regional Planning has only one endowed chair.

From its 170 students, 110 in Architecture, 25 in Landscape Architecture, and 25 in Regional Planning, the school does not receive enough tuition to keep out of the red. Unless it gets money quickly, it must take one of a few decisive steps.

A distinct possibility is the merging or slicing of one or two of Design's triumvirate departments.

Architecture Safe

The history and endowments of the school make it unlikely that Architecture will suffer from any changes that might be made.

Design first grew out of the Fogg Museum from a course given by Professor Charles H. Moore in the Principles of Design in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. Later more courses were added, mostly taught by Professor H. Langford Warren. They were historical courses rather than design.

The school grew rapidly with a building of its own until 1900, when Nelson Robinson went to Eliot with the desire to create a memorial to his son, Nelson Robinson Jr., who had been killed the year before in a Yard accident. The younger Robinson had been interested in architecture, and Eliot suggested that Robinson give the department a building and an endowment.

Bachelor Requirements

From the first, the school required a bachelor's degree for admittance, something no other school in the country does. Now, it takes a student as long to get his Bachelor of Architecture degree at Harvard as the time needed for a master's at M.I.T. or Pennsylvania. But both students and faculty agree that a liberal arts training is necessary to an architect and planner, who must be able to comprehend all of man's environment in order to build for him. Some will argue, however, that there should be more practical rather than general courses in the college training, and Stubbins feels the University should arrange with other colleges to take their students in the junior year and arrange a joint degree in architecture from Harvard and liberal arts from the student's original school.

When he became dean at the beginning of the 20's, George H. Edgell explained the bachelor's requirement.

"Its advisability may be questioned" he admitted, "but the mature men which it brings to the school give the faculty far more satisfactory material than could be obtained in any other way. The results are beginning to show and the faculty believes in another generation they will show brilliantly."

Designers all over the world believe they have show brilliantly in the last few years, that the school's program has been a success.

Lester A. Collins, chairman of the department of Landscape, Architecture, states the school's aim is "not to educate draftsmen, but to educate the men who will run the whole works, the leaders and administrators."

Stubbins agrees, and he believes the school's requirements should be more stringent, if they are changed at all. "It might be better to have a smaller school of really top-notch students, doing research and learning both architectural and industrial methods." Stubbins says.

Hudnut Enters

In 1933, Edgell left the school to become director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Hudnut became dean. Four years before, however, a $250,000 grant had created the first department of City (later Regional) Planning in the country. The school, broken off from the landscape department, interested Hudnut. Some members of the faculty say he was intrigued by the social and political possibilities of the department, and favored it over the others, but there is no tangible proof of this.

Planning grew gradually under Perkins, and in 1948 the integrated first year program finally enunciated the aims of the triumvirate. The planners, who alternated in their training between Littauer and its social science curses and Hunt with its design courses, were to be the theorists who told the architects what was needed where and why. The landscape architects were concerned with the actual physical planning, 'what was needed for certain soils and rocks in both back years, highways, and large factories. And the architects, with the information and programs of the other two were to do their actual construction designs.

The purpose of the integrated program was to acquaint each group with the problems of the other.

Esthetic and Functional

The planners must speak in the language of the architects and all must be able to understand the broadest theories of design and function of both esthetic beauty and environmental economy.

Today at the school, all agree that the three are inseparable, but some feel the program has bogged down. Students in architecture say the planners do nothing but gather facts. They are not designers in any sense. The architectural faculty accuses planning of throwing screws into the joint student programs of failing to provide the planning in advance for the creation of model towns and projects.

On the other hand, the planners feel the architects have never made themselves clear. The planners don't know what the architects really want.

Gropius wrote to Conant explaining that there are two types of planners administrative and physical. The administrative are doctors, lawyers and economics. The physical are architects engineers and landscape architects.

"It should be obvious," Gropius wrote "that the School of Design should concentrate on the training of the first category rather than to include the other disciplines as auxiliaries only. Our present department of planning lacks clarity of the final aim, trying to tackle in many disciplines at once and losing therefore the depth of vocational Education.

Merge Planning

Gropius would combine planning with are more physical landscape architecture without separating theory and present but some disagrees. The pure theory is needed, as long as it is handled corrects.

"The best architects are planners, if says, positing to men like Rolferd Gropius wants to educate to whole distress and feels the school has lost sight of this aim.

Last spring, President Conant commissioned Helfard and John M. Gaus Professor of Government, to study for possibility of moving Planning to Littauer in order save money. Both told Caraut the idea was poor, that planned would lose its great significance to study texture and be completely as allowed in the Public Administration progress. The6JOSEPH HUDNUT came to weak, relatively unknown Design School in 1933. The school's present prestige is largely due to his programs and the faculty he secured. Only during the past few years did the personal feud with Gropius assume such large proportions.