GSD Students Hit Gund Hall Design

Design School students voted Thursday to accept representation on the expanded advisory committee for the planning of the new $7 million home for the School of Design.

At the same time, the students withdrew demands that the planning of the complex be stopped until it could be reviewed by students and faculty.

Jose Luis Sert, dean of the School of Design, authorized increased student-faculty involvement in the advisory committee earlier this month after receiving a petition signed by over 150 students and faculty members. The petition called for both increased representation and for a planning halt.

Students have attended occasional committee meetings in the past, but not on a regular basis. Under the new system, the departments of Urban Design, City Planning, and Landscape Architecture will each have one elected student representative, and Architecture two.

The committee reviews the work of the architect, John H. Andrews, and makes suggestions for changes in the building. Construction, on the corner of Cambridge and Quincy Streets, is scheduled to begin this spring, Dean Sert said.

The new building, Gund Hall, is not being planned to consider the needs and convenience of the people who will use it, charged Myron Miller, the Architecture student who wrote the petition. "It's an architect's tour de force, but it's not functional," he said.

Wants Problems

Although he now plans "to work within the framework of the Building Committee," Miller said he hoped that budget problems would bring a stop to the work or at least make major changes in the building necessary.

Sert said he expected work to continue despite finances, but agreed that many changes in design would have to be made due to lack of funds.

Between 150 and 200 students--about half the Design School's enrollment--have attended meetings to discuss and criticize Gund Hall in the past two weeks. Most have been Architecture students, but students in the other Design School departments were also involved.