Word: gropius
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First came Columbia University architect Joseph Hudnut '09, who assumed the deanship of the newly-formed school. At the time, Hudnut was a hot ticket and his "lectures throughout the country were creating a sensation" according to GSD historian and visiting professor Anthony Alofsin '71. And then came Gropius...
...arrival of Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and undisputed holder of the "Mr. Modernism" title, reinvigorated the department, remembers Len Currie (GSD '38). Though "Harvard has always been tops" in the field, Currie says, "in '36 architecture was at a low ebb." Squabbles in the faculty, the departure of the old dean of architecture, and the sad state of American design during the Depression had shaken the school's confidence. Gropius's arrival boosted morale, and Harvard soon rocketed to the to the forefront of international design...
...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...
Hudnut and Gropius had a falling out soon after the war, a natural result of the friction between these two strong personalities and their ideas. Both departed the school within several years of each other...
...reorganization and modernization of the architecture program, begun before the GSD was founded and culminating in Gropius's not entirely successful "Bauhausization" of the curriculum, provided the model for teaching architecture in the post-war period. Even if one studied architecture somewhere other than Harvard, one still learned the principles Harvard taught, the way Harvard taught them...