The Harvard Graduate Center, also known as "the Gropius Complex" (including Harkness Commons), is a group of buildings on Harvard University's Cambridge, MA campus designed by The Architects Collaborative 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 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.[ citation needed ]
For The Architects Collaborative (TAC), an important modernist firm headed by seven Harvard graduates and Walter Gropius (then chair of the University's Department of Architecture within the Graduate School of Design), the Center was one of their first important works.
The building contains work from avant-garde Surrealist or Bauhaus artists Joan Miró, Josef Albers, Jean Arp and Herbert Bayer. A sculpture by Richard Lippold is in a nearby courtyard. [1]
The buildings are now primarily used as a student center and as a dormitory complex for Harvard Law School.
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. [2] 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.
Coming from the Bauhaus, 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 pilotis [ citation needed ]– 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."[ citation needed ] 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."[ citation needed ]
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. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function. Along with the doctrine of functionalism, the Bauhaus initiated the conceptual understanding of architecture and design.
Ludwig Mies van derRohe was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern architecture.
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius 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 of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of Bauhaus in Weimar (1919). Gropius was also a leading architect of the International Style. Gropius emigrated from Germany to England in 1934 and from England to the United States in 1937, where he spent the rest of his life.
The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to functional and utilitarian designs and construction methods, typically expressed through minimalism. The style is characterized by modular and rectilinear forms, flat surfaces devoid of ornamentation and decoration, open and airy interiors that blend with the exterior, and the use of glass, steel, and concrete.
Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, was an architectural movement and style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. Modern architecture was based upon new and innovative technologies of construction ; the principle functionalism ; an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament.
Benjamin C. Thompson was an American architect. He was one of eight architects who founded The Architects Collaborative (TAC) in 1945 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the most notable firms in post-war modernism, and then started his own firm, Benjamin Thompson and Associates (BTA), in 1967.
The Architects Collaborative (TAC) was an American architectural firm formed by eight architects that operated between 1945 and 1995 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The founding members were Norman C. Fletcher (1917–2007), Jean B. Fletcher (1915–1965), John C. Harkness (1916–2016), Sarah P. Harkness (1914–2013), Robert S. McMillan (1916–2001), Louis A. McMillen (1916–1998), Benjamin C. Thompson (1918–2002), and Walter Gropius (1883–1969). TAC created many successful projects, and was well respected for its broad range of designs, being considered one of the most notable firms in post-war modernism.
The Gropius House is a historic house museum owned by Historic New England at 68 Baker Bridge Road in Lincoln, Massachusetts, United States. It was the family residence of Modernist architect Walter Gropius, his wife Ise Gropius, and their daughter Ati Gropius. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000 for its association with Walter Gropius, as he was an influential teacher and leader of Modernist architecture. The house includes a collection of Bauhaus-related materials unparalleled outside Germany.
Jean Bodman Fletcher was an American architect who was a founding member of the well-respected design firm known as TAC, the Architects' Collaborative in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
John Cheesman "Chip" Harkness was an American architect who was a founder and partner of The Architects Collaborative (TAC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts with Walter Gropius and six other architects. He was a part of TAC from its inception in 1945 until the firm's demise in 1995.
Six Moon Hill is a residential neighborhood and historic district of mid-century modern houses in Lexington, Massachusetts.
The Fagus Factory, a shoe last factory in Alfeld on the Leine, Lower Saxony, Germany, is an important example of early modern architecture. Commissioned by owner Carl Benscheidt who wanted a radical structure to express the company's break from the past, the factory was designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. It was constructed between 1911 and 1913, with additions and interiors completed in 1925. Because of its influence in the development of modern architecture and outstanding design, the factory has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011.
The New Objectivity is a name often given to the Modern architecture that emerged in Europe, primarily German-speaking Europe, in the 1920s and 30s. It is also frequently called Neues Bauen. The New Objectivity remodeled many German cities in this period.
John MacLane Johansen was an American architect and a member of the Harvard Five. Johansen took an active role in the modern movement.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Federal Building is a United States federal government office building located in the Government Center area of Boston, Massachusetts, adjacent to City Hall Plaza and diagonally across from Boston City Hall. An example of 1960s modern architecture, and designed by Walter Gropius and The Architects Collaborative with Samuel Glaser, it is a complex that consists of two offset 26-floor towers that sit on-axis to each other and a low rise building of four floors that connects to the two towers through an enclosed glass corridor. The two towers stand at a height of 387 feet (118 m). The complex was built in 1963-1966. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
The Alan I W Frank House is a private residence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and partner Marcel Breuer, two of the pioneering masters of 20th-century architecture and design. This spacious, multi-level residence, its furnishings and landscaping were all created by Gropius and Breuer as a 'Total Work of Art.' In size and completeness, it is unrivaled. It was their most important residential commission, and it is virtually the same today as when it was built in 1939–40, original and authentic.
The Julian Street Jr. residence is an early Modernist fieldstone house in Briarcliff Manor, New York. The house was designed by the New York architect Wallace K. Harrison for Julian Street Jr. and his wife, Narcissa, in 1938. Harrison, primarily known as a monuments architect through his works in New York City like Rockefeller Center and the United Nations complex, also designed a few private residences. Harrison designed and built the residence at 710 Long Hill Road West as an unconventional experiment in the early Modernist architecture that was just being introduced in America during the late 1930s.
The Walter Gropius House is a residential building with nine floors and 66 apartments at the Händelallee 1-9 in Berlin Hansaviertel, bordering its central Grosser Tiergarten park. It was designed by Walter Gropius / The Architects' Collaborative - TAC in collaboration with Wils Ebert, Berlin, on the occasion of the first International Building Exhibition ("Interbau"), in 1957. It is regarded as an important modernist landmark and was declared listed monument in 1980. The actress Marlene Dietrich was instrumental in funding the Interbau project.
Torin Building is a heritage-listed former factory and now factory and office space located at 26 Coombes Drive in the western Sydney suburb of Penrith in the City of Penrith local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by Marcel Breuer and built from 1975 to 1976. It is also known as the Former Torin Corporation Building and Breuer Building. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 15 May 2009.
Alexander Cvijanović was a Yugoslav-American architect. He was a close associate of Walter Gropius and partner of The Architects Collaborative.