Word: designer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...remained true to the spirit of reinforced concrete and the right angle during Sert's tenure--as evidenced in Peabody Terrace or Boston City Hall--orthodoxy was being questioned at schools like Pennsylvania (homebase of the influential architect and teacher Louis Kahn) and UCLA (where Charles Moore blended high design with neon glitz...
...result, Gropius, the industrial modernist, did not design a single building on campus until his 12th year on the faculty, in 1948. In that year he started work on the Graduate Center at Harkness Commons, which although typical of Gropius's work, ultimately encountered severe criticism from alumni. "No possible stretch of the imagination can see any sign of beauty in these structures," one acerbic alum wrote at the time...
...course stabilized, however, in 1953 with the appointment of Spanish architect Josep Lluis Sert as both dean of the GSD and of the architecture school. Not only did Sert design Peabody Terrace, Holyoke Center, and the Science Center, but the world-renown architect forged strong links between the GSD and the universal church of Modernism, the Congres Internationaux d' Architecture Moderne (CIAM...
Following Sert's departure amidst campus protests in 1969, the GSD entered a period of relative quiet, marked only by the move from Robinson to Gund Hall. Ironically, in later years Gund would gain the reputation as "the worst designed building on campus," after a series of leakage problems caused by inadequate maintenance and, yes, poor design...
...appointed as head of the architectural program, the International style received in one stroke the legitimacy it had previously lacked in the United States. True, during this time it was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, another refugee from the Nazis and a former student of Gropius, who would design the greatest edifices of Modernism according to his famous formula "less is more." But it is doubtful that his buildings would have been so rapidly acclaimed without the implicit approval of Gropius and the Harvard name...