The Woes of the Workshop

The machinery remained silent yesterday as groups of women maintained their vigil in the cold, bleak warehouse setting of 888 Memorial Drive.

What was formerly a knitting factory is now a "Liberated Women's Center"; for the past five years the building housed a machinery work-shop and classrooms for the Graduate School of Design. The workshop contains metal and woodwork machinery, models, display and testing materials for students at both the Carpenter Center and the Graduate School of Design.

Four Classes

Before the occupation, four classes from the Design School met there weekly, in addition to seven others which utilized its machinery and classroom space for research projects.

According to Eli Traum, professor of Construction and director of Technology Studies, the building serves about 100 students and houses research projects of "several dozen graduate students."

One student at the Design School said, "It will be interesting to see what happens because the building really isn't that important."

In a statement read Saturday to the women in the Architectural Technology Workshop, Maurice Kilbridge, dean of the School of Design, said that the building is hazardous and the occupants are in "grave danger."

The building, which is over 150 years old, is in dilapidated condition. There are open steam pipes and wires and only primitive plumbing and heating facilities.

After helping to evacuate the building of some of its projects, one graduate student said, "The building is somewhat unsafe but the people in there know how to take care of themselves."

Two of the classes which formerly met at the technology workshop have been holding sessions in Hunt Hall. Several members of the class described the workshop as ugly, dilapidated and inconvenient. Apparently the lack of classroom space at the Design School necessitated the use of the workshop, a mile-and-a-half walk from the Yard.

In any case, the technology workshop was slated for demolition within a year since the building is part of the Riverside site on which Harvard plans to build graduate student housing.