ABSTRACT
In 1937, the founder and long-time director of the German architectural school, Bauhaus Walter Gropius, was appointed to the newly founded Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Its dean, Joseph Hudnut, abolished its traditional Beaux-Arts approach in architectural education and sought to modernize it. Together, Hudnut and Gropius reorganized Harvard’s curriculum, devised new courses, and hired new teachers who shared their views on progressive educational philosophy. While working together, Hudnut grew skeptical of Gropius’ modernist approach and tried to stop him from turning Harvard’s Graduate School of Design into an American Bauhaus. Finally, their dispute over architectural education, history of architecture, and modernism led to them leave Harvard in the early 1950s.
