Choosing of Architect Dismays GSD Students

Many Design School students are grumbling over the Harvard Corporation's method for choosing an architect to design Gund Hall, the new home of the Graduate School of Design.

The Corporation's decision to name John Andrews the architect for Gund Hall, overruled a unanimous Design Faculty recommendation of last year requesting the Corporation to hold a competition for the building's design.

Jose Louis Sert, Dean of the Faculty of Design, explained yesterday that for the past 30 years the President with the approval of the Corporation has chosen architects for all University construction.

Many students object to the University's naming only an architect to design the building. "Sociologists, and psychologists should have also been named," Robert W. Yelton, editor of Connection, the student operated Design School magazine, said yesterday.

"The new architecture is a broad and detailed response to society. It must be based on an accurate knowledge of that society through the discipline of sociology, economics, politics, and psychology," Yelton said. 'It seems incongruous that, here of all places, the building should be farmed out in the traditional fashion to an individual architect."

Gazia H. Sultan, another member of the editorial board of Connection, asked yesterday, "Why won't the Corporation take the advice of designers about the design of their own Design School in this designer's controversy."

Sert said the Design School faculty recommendation had been presented to the Corporation. "I don't know the grounds on which the Corporation decided; it's their business" Sert commented. A spokesman for the Corporation refused to reveal yesterday why they made their decision.