Panel Attacks Harvard Architecture

"The failures in university architecture are the fault of the educators rather than of the designers," according to James S. Ackermen, professor of Fine Arts.

Speaking with Ackerman in an Eliot House panel discussion of Harvard architecture, Eduard F. Sekler, professor of Architecture, asserted that "no architect can be better than his client," and stressed the "responsibility of the soer for informed criticism."

Arthur D. Trottenberg, Assistant Dean for Resources and Planning, disagreed. Speaking from the floor, he called Sekier's contention "the utmost nonsense" and attributed the weaknesses of university architecture to "poverty of expression among architects."

Sekler warned against the "desecration of the environment by default." He cited the Cambridge electron nccelerator as an "unmitigated example of visual squalor" which had resulted from lack of concern. "It is not so much individual buildings us the total environment that matters."

Sekler criticized the "arbitrariness" of much University architecture. "Why does this building look the way it does except that maybe it's pretty?" Ackerman tied this to the tendency of modern architects to "strive for the creation of the isolated gem."

Discussing Holyoke Center, Sekler admitted that it had to be big, but added, "You don't have to lose the human scale when you have a tall building." He said he thought the married students' apartments, also designed by Jose Luis Sert Dean of the Faculty of Design, much more successful in this regard.