With a Spring 1998 exhibition on Gio Ponti and the Villa Planchart we begin what we hope will be a continuous collaboration in promoting the design arts at Harvard with our natural intellectual, academic, and urban neighbor, the Harvard University Art Museums. In recent years, we have become aware of extraordinary and new conditions that have altered the modus operandi of the architecture profession. While we look confidently at architecture with a broad view by relying on our traditional strengths in the allied fields represented in the GSD's programs—landscape architecture and urban design and planning—we recognize that, in architecture, there are many overlapping boundaries that require a more specific focus.

Like the insights already brought to architecture by art, philosophy, and literary criticism, those of the design arts work on a figurative and intellectual level. In addition, not only are many of the new developments in manufacturing methods in the design world of potential interest to the production processes involved in design and construction but we are certain they will alter some fundamental aspects of the architecture profession. Furthermore, many of our graduates will establish careers in other areas of design that are related to architecture. We believe that it is both necessary and timely to strengthen and broaden our existing program to encompass areas of the design arts that are critical to our creative lives.