HARVARD
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Year enrolled: 1981
Degree: Master of Architecture
Graduation: 1983
After taking a year off from school to work at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in San Francisco, I received advanced standing in the Masters program at the GSD, and completed the 3-1/2 year program in two years. I was privileged to have Gerhard Kallman as my advisor, although my design emphasis - which was distinctly Wrightian at the time - appeared tangential to the strong historical-precedence obligations of many of the faculty. My final design project of a replacement to Memorial Church in Harvard Yard was aptly nicknamed "E.T." To my chagrin, the Frank Lloyd Wright "movement" at the GSD began three years after I graduated.
Project 1 - A performing arts center next to Memorial Church. Turned out to be a veritable disaster! My professor stood staring silence at the drawings during the final crit. After a good minute, he shook his head, then he sat down in stupified silence...
Project 2 - Design an addition to Le Corbusier's Villa Meyer...vague memories of being fascinated by the forms!
Project 3 - a design for an office building in Harvard Square. Years later, I observed a very similar design constructed on the self-same site. Greta minds must think alike.
Project 4 - Back Bay Apartment Building. A utilitarian solution to an evolving neighborhood. The views would have been fab!
Project 5 - Prof. Lo-Yi Chan.
A hospice designed on the property in front of the JFK SChool of Government (strange site). In spite of all the deaings and readings about death and dying, I like how this design resolved.
Project 6 - Prof. ??
Maimonides Memorial Gymnasium (arbitrary location) commemorating holocaust victims. This project had a lot of depth.
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Project 7 - Prof. Gerhard Kallman
Nicknamed "E.T.", this design was out of place in a different time. Everyone else seemed to be designing historical precedence projects, and here was this Wrightian alien!