Harvard high-rise: One man's eyesore is another's beauty
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RE "A look at the hub of early moderns" (The Observer, May 24): I appreciate Sam Allis's observation that the region's early modern houses by Walter Gropius and other architectural innovators were a continuation rather than a rejection of the New England design tradition of strong simple forms and unpretentious detailing. It was a surprise then, to hear him describe Peabody Terrace, the Harvard housing on Memorial Drive, in such derogatory terms. Although it is clearly a grouping of modern buildings, its forms have their inspiration in the ancient buildings that its designer, Jose Luis Sert, knew growing up in Spain and in the traditional Boston buildings he learned to appreciate as the dean of Harvard's design school.
The towers create a memorable silhouette, like the turrets of a castle or an old New England mill building, to mark the entry to the campus on the river. Peabody Terrace's projecting balconies and sunscreens provide a syncopated series of elements at the scale of the human body, similar to the buttresses of a cathedral or the little windows of a hilltop village, that celebrate its inhabitants. And although it may be easy to dislike the cold gray color of the concrete, in its solidity and honesty it really isn't much different from stone, or the weathered shingle walls of a barn.
Like a piece of music by Stravinsky, a painting by Picasso, or that house by Gropius, Sert's work has an allusive beauty that Allis rejects too easily.
David Eisen
Cambridge
The writer is a principal at Abacus Architects and Planners in Boston.
