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Publications
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Josep Lluís Sert: The Architect of Urban Design, 1953-1969
With contributions by Mardges Bacon, Robert Campbell, Timothy Hyde, Richard Marshall, Cammie McAtee, Jordana Mendelson, Francesco Passanti, Jill Pearlman,
and Eduard F. Sekler
In 2003, the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University organized a conference and an exhibition in celebration of the fifty-year anniversary of Josep Lluis Sert’s appointment as dean, a position he held for sixteen years. It also felicitously coincided with the celebration of the retirement of Eduard Sekler, the eminent historian and Harvard professor emeritus who was one of Sert’s close associates. The initiative was launched by Professors Peter G. Rowe, then dean of the School of Design, and Professor Jorge Silvetti, then chairman of the Department of Architecture. For the GSD, the events were obviously meant not only to celebrate one of the school’s most formative periods but also, and most important, to reexamine the school’s commitment to the urban context of architecture. The conference made clear that it was Sert who had elevated what he called urban design to the status of a central platform of inquiry at the school, laying the foundations for what is now a discipline of global importance. These events highlighted Sert’s significance to the world of modern architecture and urbanism, and put a new focus on the creation of urban design, which would shape the development of the field in the United States and also the directions of specialization in the profession. This inquiry into the origins of the discipline were not meant as a return to an essence or to fictional roots but instead as an opportunity to examine with hindsight the causes of this idea and its evolution from circumstantial reactions to a full-fledged discipline and profession. These discussions benefited from the participation of many individuals, including Xavier Costa, Kenneth Frampton, Charles Haar, Alex Krieger, Paul Krueger, Ted Liebman,Jorge Francisco Liernnr, William Lindemulder, Panayiota Pyla,Josep Rovira, Patricia Schnitter Castellanos, and Richard Sommer. In addition to helping clarifr Sert’s role, these participants also placed urban design in a comparative perspective with other urban ideas that were brewing at the time and in the context of the design school, the design office, and urban development culture. The celebrations also presented an occasion to bring out material from the school’s archives and the Sert Collection. In an exhibition curated by Mary Daniels and Inés Zalduendo at the Special Collections of the Frances Loch Library at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and designed by Dan Borelli, the show brought to public attention some of Sert’s lesser-known projects, such as the Worcester Town Center and the Sonth Station Development in Boston, his Harvard Planning projects, as well as sketches, drawings, and material from the archives that were exhibited for the first time. Some of this material appears in the book, and for that we would like to acknowledge the Harvard Planning and Real Estate Office, Harvard University Archives, Boston University Department of Special Collections, Boston University Physical Plant, and Spectrum Digital Imaging. The conference also featured a walking tour with the late Huson Jackson, Sert’s partner and collaborator during most of his American years, with whom he generated a formidable body of projects. After the celebrations and conference were over, it was clear that these efforts could not stop at commemoration. A deeper, broader, and more critical inquiry into the origins of urban design in the United States was fundamental to the continuous evolution of the profession. For that, we have opted to focus this book on four main aspects of the emergence of urban design and Sert’s contributions to it: the close linkages between the postwar ClAM urban focus on the “heart of the city” and Sert and Sigfried Giedion’s development of them into urban design; Sert and Paul Lester Wiener’s Latin American town plans of the 1940s and 1950s as a parallel platform of articulation and experimentation with ClAM principles that led to urban design, particularly in their paradigmatic Havana Plan of 1955-57; the convergence of these ideas onto the American post-World War II urban challenges in the context of Harvard and the emergence of urban design; and Sert’s North American projects that most visibly embodied these ideas. We would like to thank the book’s authors for their hard work not only in making remarkable scholarly contributions but also for working with us patiently to complement each other’s thoughts and enforce the general premise of the book. We are also very grateful to Neyran Turan, assistant editor of this publication, for her dedication to the project, and above all to Melissa Vaughn, director of publications at the GSD, who understood the magnitude of this undertaking from the beginning and patiently took us and the book through all its stages. At Yale University Press, Michelle Komie, Heidi Downey, Mary Mayer,John Long, and their colleagues have been exceptionally helpful and supportive throughout. We thank Matthew Monk for his elegant book design. The preparations for this book were made possible through funding from the Josep LluIs Sert and Ramona Londas de Sert Bequest to the Graduate School of Design.
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