Of Architecture and Process
In the Globe,
architecture critic Robert Campbell trashes Harvard's renovation of the Woodberry Poetry Room in Lamont Library, previously a "miniature masterpiece" designed by
Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.
Architect David Fixler did the renovation, but doesn't seem particularly proud of it, and contrasts Harvard's way of doing business with how MIT renovated MIT's Baker House, also an Aalto creation.
At Baker, we spent two years talking about the building. We convened a small committee of historians and architects and even someone from the National Park Service to evaluate it. Harvard has never had that process. That's not how things happen at Harvard.
Campbell argues that this is because of the university's ETOB territoriality. I'd argue that it's also because of Harvard's pervasive culture of secrecy, a tone set at the top by the Corporation.
Campbell writes, with understandable incredulity...
Projects like the Woodberry can go forward in virtual secrecy at Harvard. Emilie Norris , the university's Curator of Cultural Properties, says: ``Nobody heard about the renovation until it was well under way, and the area was off limits all summer."In fact, if it had not been for a letter in early June, sent to a number of people, including this writer, by a member of the Cambridge community who wishes to remain anonymous, it is likely the whole renovation would have been complete before anyone knew about it. And Harvard's intention, at that early stage, was to auction much of the original Aalto-designed furniture on eBay!
Ebay. Nice, Harvard.
Campbell blasts Nancy Cline, the librarian of Harvard College, as the one responsible for apparently botching this important renovation. Anyone know anything about that?
Of course, Harvard libraries are their own little tubs, and they've done other things in secret. The decision to play along with Google and digitize everything in Widener was done in complete secrecy, abetted by Larry Summers after he had
a secret meeting with Sheryl Sandberg, his former chief of staff at Treasury who is now a V-P at Google. Thus are policy decisions with huge public implications made in Harvard's culture of secrecy....
Sandberg has subsequently asked Summers to speak at Google, probably for a handsome fee. Will a position on the Google board come next?
This is what's known as a quid pro quo...and when decisions are made in secret, you can get away with it.
