Word: sert
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...idea was to make it as low as possible on the side of the older buildings, the lower buildings of the Yard," says Jose Luis Sert, the Science Center's chief architect and former dean of the Design School. "We didn't want to break the scale of the buildings in the Yard. We didn't want the Science Center to seem menacing...
...particular, many of architect Sert's aesthetic features have been scrapped due to funding cutbacks and inflation. The 420-foot arcade running east-west through the center of the building was going to be decorated with art works. The terraces of the office wing were supposed to have been adorned with plants, "sort of like hanging gardens," Sert says. Sert had also hoped to have an outdoor amphitheatre on the roof of the semi-circular lecture hall section. The building's two courtyards were going to be sculpture gardens. "Unfortunately, the parts of the building that were supposed...
...Some of Sert's innovations have remained, however. One of the courtyards will hold a cafeteria, which will have outdoor tables when the weather is warm. And Sert is hoping to negotiate with the Peabody Museum for long-term loans of primitive works of art to decorate the Science Center...
...Sert--a Catalan who left Spain when the Loyalists were defeated in the Spanish Civil War--is sensitive to the criticism directed at the Science Center and his two other Harvard buildings, Holyoke Center and the Peabody Terrace married student dormitories. "You can stick to the old styles, or make imitations or fake them, but it would be very difficult," he said. "But I can't imagine how we could build the Science Center in Georgian style...
...Sert sees large buildings as an unavoidable consequence of specialization and over-population. And he believes human beings will become adapted to huge, intricately subdivided places of work. "Human beings are like animals," he says. "They get accustomed to the place they have. Like cats. I have a cat who likes to sleep in its own basket--if you change the basket it might possibly be unhappy. But a few days later it won't even remember the old basket...