Though this post was originally set to address the exterior enclosures of mid-century modern buildings, we thought it important, instead, to reflect on the recent death of modernist master Oscar Niemeyer and what might have been.

Niemeyer’s passing serves as yet another benchmark in the passing of the mid-century modern movement into our distant memory. Generally speaking, North American architects are not very familiar with the Brazilian architect’s work. Many would be unable to conjure up mental imagery of it, beyond his government buildings at Brasilia, United Nations collaboration, and perhaps a residence or two. During Niemeyer’s prime, these architects were, as they largely remain today, primarily Eurocentric in their focus.

In mid-century America, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe were chiefly regarded as the “true” masters of the modern movement. Even in more recent history, we’ve paid little attention to the legacy of Niemeyer and his colleagues to the south such as Alfonso Reidy and Lina Bo Bardi in Brasil, Carlos Raúl Villanueva in Venezuela, and the Mexican masters Juan O’Gorman, Luis Barragan, and Felix Candela. We seem to know of them, but not much about them. All of this this might have been very different if Harvard GSD had followed through with its intention to select Niemeyer as its dean when it had the chance.

Carlos Raul Villanueva. Covered plaza, University of Caracas, 1952-1953. Photographer unknown. Printed in do.co.mo.mo, Journal 42 – Summer 2010.

Alfonso Eduardo Reidy. Primary school and gymnasium, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1948-1950. Printed in Latin American Architecture Since 1945, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1955.

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My friend Andres Duany is as clever as can be, and so, surely timed his Metropolis obituary for Harvard’s Urban Design Program to correspond with our celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Urban Design Program, at which he is to speak [this week, November 12, 13]. Why not a shot across the bow a week early? It certainly got our attention. Though how he intends to defend this theory in front of several hundred people looking ahead to participating in the second half century of the discipline of urban design will be interesting to observe. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. While, yes, an increased interest in environmental stewardship is surely in our future. It would be utterly irresponsible for it not to be so during these next decades of the 21st century.

Those of us who teach and practice urban design welcome an environmentally-based broadening of the discipline, which at times has been perceived as too narrowly aligned with architectural sensibilities. Addressing urbanism wisely in its many contemporary guises, we now know, requires a multiplicity of arrows in our intellectual quivers – ecological considerations being among the ‘sharpest’ of these. Why should not the landscape architecture profession re-assert its voice, as concern about ecological footprints gains broad public notice. It has been the design discipline that has most consistently retained consciousness of humanity’s impact on land and environments. We at the GSD even recall that the birth of American urban planning, as a serious academic discipline, begins with the lectures at Harvard of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. in the 1920’s.

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Without a doubt, architect Andres Duany is a pivotal figure in creating a less car-dependent, more walking-oriented American landscape—the kind of human-scale, personally navigable, tight developments that seem to have sturdy green roots and point, generally, toward a more urban lifestyle. Certainly, densely-settled cities have what Duany and his cohorts have been advocating for 30 years. But now as these cities begin to re-engage with nature, to create their own, healthy and life-affirming environments, surprisingly (at least to me)  Duany is not cheering, he’s jeering. He seems to equate the new “dogma of environmentalism” (my quotes) with the recent changes at the Harvard GSD, where the old Urban Planning and Design department is giving way to Landscape Urbanism. And so I must ask this, is he just looking for a fight, or is there a constructive dialogue to be had here? —sss

Last April, upon attending a remarkable conference at the Harvard GSD, I predicted that it would be taken over in a coup. I recognized a classic Latin American-style operation. It was clear that the venerable Urban Design program would be eliminated or replaced by Landscape Urbanism. Today, it is possible to confirm that the coup was completed in September—and that it was a strategic masterpiece.

To summarize: The first step was the hiring of Charles Waldheim, who, after long and patient preparation, had circled in from the academic hinterland acquiring “famous victories” at Illinois and Toronto. The second step was the “general strike” of the huge Ecological Urbanism Conference—the one that I attended last April. With some thirty speakers, it was both a remarkable show of force, and simultaneously the casting call for the next faculty.

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