Harkness Commons
Harkness Commons was designed by Walter Gropius and The Architects' Collaborative in 1950. Despite being described as "Not one of Gropius's best buildings by any means..." by Dennis Sharp in A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Architecture (p.183), the Harvard Graduate Center has been a work regularly studied by students of architecture. Though often the subject of criticism and complaints by the law students who are the primary tenants, it has strong supporters within the architectural community.
Harkness contains many works of art designed for the building by friends of Gropius. $40,000 from an anonymous donor allowed Gropius to select several ex-Bauhaus colleagues: Herbert Bayer designed a large mural pattern of square tiles, a transparent screen at the head of the Commons ramp, and a mural in shades of green in what is now the Mallory-Smith Room; Josef Albers designed an abstract pattern using the brick module at the back of the Commons fireplace; Jean Arp cut out a series of free shapes of plywood and placed them on opposite sides of the dining room.
In addition, Joan Miro prepared a large mural for the dining room. Food damage caused Harvard to transfer this to the Museum of Modern Art and replace it with a ceramic copy. Gyorgy Kepes designed a world map for the Wheeler Room. When some of the material deteriorated with age and fell off and the parts thus exposed became darkened with time, the Law School and the artist agreed not to have the map restored. However, Richard Lippold's World Tree still stands in the quadrangle in front of the Commons.