Harvard’s Architectural Deficit: How Town vs. Mortarboard Affects Bricks & Mortar

A must-read for Columbia University’s expansionists (and anyone else interested in how neighborhood opposition can scotch starchitect projects) is Joan Wickersham‘s article, What Gets Built at Harvard, What Doesn’t, and Why, in the Sept.-Oct. issue of Harvard Magazine.
The article reaffirms that the Renzo Piano-designed renovation and expansion of Harvard’s Fogg Museum will not begin construction “until at least a year from now.” And it tells the stories behind the demise of a more ambitious Piano plan for a new Fogg building on a different site, as well as the successful political opposition to a Hans Hollein building for the Harvard libraries.
Wickersham writes:
Among architects, no one is waxing nostalgic over the good old days of arrogant, autocratic development. But they do worry about the impact all this public process has on the quality of architecture. Says one designer: “There’s now so much community review that it’s hard to build a building that hasn’t been pushed and massaged and changed.”
For previous CultureGrrl posts on attempts to remedy the substandard physical state of Harvard’s art museums, go here, here and here.