Jose Sert Wins AIA Highest Honor

Jose L. Sert, former dean of the Graduate School of Design and architect of the Science Center and Holyoke Center, last week won the 1981 Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Announcing the nation's highest award in architecture, AIA Newsletter editor Peter C. McCall said yesterday, "So influential and far-reaching is the work of Jose Luis Sert that the social awareness and concepts of artistic collaboration that he brought to the practice of architecture have become almost commonplace."

Sert, the 42nd architect to win the award, said yesterday it reflects his accomplishments in "teaching and the relationship of architecture to art and people."

"We are all very excited for Sert," Gerald M. McCue, dean of the Graduate School of Design, said yesterday. McCue added that Sert's greatest accomplishment at Harvard was the creation of a degree program in urban design.

Married Housing

In addition to the Science Center and Holyoke Center, Sert designed the University's married student housing, Peabody Terrace, which won the AIA Honor Award in 1965. Other buildings he designed in the Boston area include the Boston University library and the Divinity School's World Religious Center.

Citing the Holyoke Center promenade and the low-scale face of the Science Center, both of which are "designed to generate street activity," Louis J. Bakanowsky, professor of Architecture, said yesterday that Sert's work stresses "the shape of the city consistent with the high quality of human life."

Before coming to the United States in 1939, Sert, who was a protege of the French architect Le Corbusier, worked in Paris and Barcelona. Among his well known European works are the Spanish Pavilion for the 1937 Paris Exposition and the Maeght Foundation in southern France.

Sert is author of the book "Can Our Cities Survive?" and co-author of "The Heart of the City."

Minneapolis, Here I Come

The AIA will present the Gold Medal--which it considers a mark of the "most distinguished service to the architectural profession or to the institute"--to Sert at its 1981 national convention in Minneapolis.