The Graduate School of Design (GSD) was established in 1936 to foster interdisciplinarity among the previously separate Schools of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning. Within a few decades, though, the GSD had outgrown its home in Robinson and Hunt Halls, and the desired collaboration among the design departments proved difficult with offerings scattered throughout Harvard’s campus. Leadership recognized the need to unite the GSD’s programs under one roof to encourage cooperation among the school’s disciplines. In 1964, the GSD launched a capital campaign to fund the construction of the new building, to be named in honor of key benefactor George Gund II (1888–1966), a Harvard Business School graduate, banker, and real estate investor from Cleveland, Ohio.
THE ARCHITECT
Prior to earning his master of architecture at the GSD in 1958, Australian-born John Andrews had graduated with an architecture degree from the University of Sydney. By the early 1960s, Andrews had settled in Canada, where he developed a reputation as a strong architect and a thoughtful educator at the University of Toronto, for which he designed the well-feted Scarborough College, completed in 1966. The following year, likely on the urging of GSD dean Josep Lluís Sert (Andrews’s former professor), Harvard commissioned Andrews to design Gund Hall.
PROGRAM AND CONSTRUCTION
Issued in October 1967, the building’s brief called for studio space, an auditorium, an exhibition area, audiovisual and library facilities, workshops, and classrooms, to be located on a site at the intersection of Cambridge and Quincy Streets, just a block from Robinson and Hunt Halls. Andrews structured the parti around the design studio, which he viewed as the heart of architectural education, grouping the remaining programmatic elements alongside and below this dominant zone. Construction began in November 1969, and in fall 1972, the GSD moved into its new home.
THE DESIGN
Comprising exposed reinforced concrete and extensive glass, Gund Hall features at its core a shared multilevel studio block. A 125-foot clear-span steel-truss system soars above the four terraced studio “trays” that occupy this glass-enclosed expanse, traversed by open stairways and infused with light. Supporting spaces, including faculty offices and classrooms, wrap the studio block to the west and north.
Outside, Gund Hall’s main facade faces west, rising five stories with a deep overhang supported by a tall concrete colonnade that shelters the building’s primary entrance. The building’s recessed lower levels defer to the neighboring Memorial Hall while widening the brick-paved sidewalk along Quincy Street, thereby emphasizing the thoroughfare that Gund Hall shares with Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center and the Fogg Art Museum to the south. Plentiful glass offers passersby a glimpse into Gund Hall’s exhibition and library spaces. From Quincy Street the building slopes down toward the east, echoing the tiered studio space within. At night, the illuminated trays outline Gund Hall’s dramatic stepped profile against the dark sky.
Upon Gund Hall’s opening, New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable characterized Andrews’s creation as “a very powerful building,” citing “the remarkable architectural statement of the studio.” And despite the architect’s use of concrete and glass—a notable deviation from Harvard’s dominant use of brick—Huxtable described Gund Hall as a “handsome structure” that “sits well in the street and its surroundings.”[1]
RENOVATIONS
Since its completion more than 50 years ago, Gund Hall has undergone incremental renovations to address growing student numbers, evolving pedagogical needs, and facility maintenance. The most recent renovation, undertaken during summer 2024, rendered Gund Hall more sustainable through the installation in the studio trays of high efficiency glazing and shading systems to optimize interior climatic conditions and minimize energy use. Additional enhancements, such as updated lighting and widened exits, increased accessibility and well-being in studio spaces. David Fixler, lecturer in architecture at the GSD, characterized the renovated Gund Hall as a best-practices showcase for the rehabilitation and conservation of mid-twentieth-century buildings, emphasizing that the newest enhancements deliver “a significant upgrade in energy performance and occupant comfort.”[2]
[1] Ada Louise Huxtable, “New Harvard Hall: Drama and Questions,” NYT, Nov. 8, 1972.
[2] David Fixler in Joshua Machat, “The Plan for a More Sustainable and Accessible Gund Hall,” GSD News, Dec. 18, 2023, https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/2023/12/the-plan-for-a-more-sustainable-and-accessible-gund-hall/.
SUGGESTED RESOURCES
Anthony Alofsin, The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2002)
Bainbridge Bunting, Harvard: An Architectural History (Cambridge, MA: Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985)
Morton and Phyllis Keller, Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America’s University (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
Joshua Machat, “The Plan for a More Sustainable and Accessible Gund Hall,” News, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Dec. 18, 2023
Paul Walker, John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Design Press, 2023)