Author Description

"For the first time in history, what were once the disparate schools of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning came together at Harvard University in the 1930s to forge a new vision of modernist thought and practice. By tracing the powerful flux of ideas at Harvard's Graduate School of Design in the 1930s and 1940s, Anthony Alofsin reveals a radically novel picture of how American modernism emerged, struggled, evolved, and was ultimately eclipsed.". "The book follows the development of the GSD leading up to the pioneering deanship of Joseph Hudnut and his groundbreaking efforts with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, who came to teach at Harvard between 1937 and 1952. But even before Gropius entered the scene, a modernist agenda for collaborative design had already taken shape among the school's preeminent intellectuals, one that would redefine the boundaries of design and establish the fields of landscape architecture and urban planning as we know them today. Alofsin skillfully captures the passions and personalities that helped to ignite the movement, making this the first true-to-life account of the dawn of modernism in America.". "Filled with archival photographs, drawings, and renderings that have never before been published, this book is an excellent research tool as well as a fascinating historical investigation for students and professionals in the fields of art, architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning, as well as for architectural historians."--BOOK JACKET.