The Harvard Graduate Center, also known as "the Gropius Complex" (including Harkness Commons), is a group of buildings on

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

's Cambridge, MA campus designed by

The Architects Collaborative The Architects Collaborative (TAC) was an American architectural firm formed by eight architects that operated between 1945 to 1995 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The founding members were Norman C. Fletcher (1917-2007), Jean B. Fletcher (1915-19 ...

in 1948 and completed in 1950. As the first modern building on the campus, it represents one of the first endorsements of the

modern style The Modern Style is a style of architecture, art, and design that first emerged in the United Kingdom in the mid-1880s. It is the first Art Nouveau style worldwide, and it represents the evolution of the Arts and Crafts movement which was native ...

by a major university and was seen in the national and architectural presses as a turning point in the acceptance of the aesthetic in the United States. For The Architects Collaborative (TAC), an important modernist firm headed by seven Harvard graduates and

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one ...

(then chair of the University's Department of Architecture within the

Graduate School of Design The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban ...

), the Center was one of their first important works. The building contains work from avant-garde Surrealist or Bauhaus artists Joan Miró,

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College ...

, Jean Arp and

Herbert Bayer Herbert Bayer (April 5, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an Austrian and American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and architect. He was instrumental in the development of the ...

. A sculpture by

Richard Lippold Richard Lippold (May 3, 1915 – August 22, 2002) was an American sculptor, known for his geometric constructions using wire as a medium. Life Lippold was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Chicago, and graduated from ...

is in a nearby courtyard. The buildings are now primarily used as a student center and as a dormitory complex for Harvard Law School.

Architecture

Located at the northern end of campus along Everett Street, the complex takes the traditional form of an academic quad with a modernist aesthetic, putting it at odds with the surrounding buildings. It is made up of seven buildings (five of which are connected by hallways), arranged around two central green spaces. It contains Story Hall, Dane Hall, Holmes Hall, Richards Hall, and Child Hall. The buildings' façades are yellow brick with a variegated-red brick watercourse and are defined by large ribbon windows.

Gropius's Influence

Coming from the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...

, Gropius had been a pioneering innovator of educational architecture and many of his hallmarks can be seen years later in Harkness Commons. The physical Gropius hallmarks – large windows, flowing rooms, floating facades on raised

piloti Pilotis, or piers, are supports such as columns, pillars, or stilts that lift a building above ground or water. They are traditionally found in stilt and pole dwellings such as fishermen's huts in Asia and Scandinavia using wood, and in ele ...

s – are all present here. Gropius makes clear statements for employing ribbon windows, “…Our contemporary architectural conception of an intensified outdoor-indoor relationship through wide window openings and large undivided window panes has ousted the small, cage-like, 'Georgian' window.” Further, explaining why TAC designed the structures in a modernist style, Gropius said, “if the college is to be the cultural breeding ground for the coming generation, its attitude should be creative, not imitative.”

References

*“Graduate Center: Harvard University, Massachusetts,” Architects' Year Book (1953, vol. 5) London: P. Elek, 146. *Nancy MacLennan, “Harvard Decides to ‘Build Modern’,” New York Times, 25 October 1948, 25. *Walter Gropius, "Not Gothic But Modern For Our Colleges", New York Times, 23 October 1949. *The Architects Collaborative; ed. Walter Gropius (and others). (Teufen, AR, Niggli, 1966). 63 {{Harvard Residential buildings completed in 1950 Harvard University Harvard Law School Walter Gropius buildings Modernist architecture in Massachusetts