GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN

To the Editors of The CRIMSON:

Thirty years ago Walter Gropius came to Harvard. This was the beginning of the end of the beaux arts system of education in the United States. Since that time the design professions have become increasingly aware of their responsibility to create an environment that is more than an act of will. The formalist traditions are giving way to something much more complex, appropriate, and exacting. At one time the environment was from, and the architect could justifiably freeze music, but today the situation is much different. The new architecture is a broad and detailed response to society. As such, it must be based on an accurate and thorough knowledge of that society, through the disciplines of sociology, economics, politics and psychology. The proposed Program for Advanced Environmental Studies seems to offer evidence that the school is very concerned with this sort of rational and comprehensive approach to the design of the environment.

In the light of the concern of the school noted above, it seems incongruous that, here of all places, the building should be farmed out in the traditional fashion to an individual architect. If interdisciplinary collaboration is a serious concern, then shouldn't it be a part of the design of the school, which is its advocate?

Mr. Andrews is a master of form, as proven by Scarborough College, but he is only an architect as proven by Scarborough College. The building and the educational system must develop together. If the intention is to make this a collaborative effort there must be an interdisciplinary team. Mr. Andrews, working in the traditional architect-client-consultant framework, will have no alternative but to create an object d'art like Scarborough, or Yale's Arts and Architecture building. Such an event would be an anachronistic catastrophe and inconsistant with the awakening philosophy of environmental design present in the Graduate School of Design. Robert Yelton   Second year student in The Graduate School of Design