Harvard Graduate Center

The Harvard Graduate Center, also known as "the Gropius Complex" (including Harkness Commons), was commissioned of The Architects Collaborative by Harvard University in 1948. The first modern building on the campus, it was also the first endorsement of the modern style by a major university and was seen in the national and architectural presses as a turning point in the acceptance of the aesthetic in the U.S.

The Architects Collaborative (TAC), a modernist firm headed by Walter Gropius and seven younger architects, was a bold choice for the typically traditional university. Though it cannot be said that Gropius was the sole designer, those that held strongly to his ideals collaboratively designed Harkness Commons.

Coming from the Bauhaus, Gropius had been a pioneering innovator of educational architecture and many of his hallmarks can be seen years later in Harkness Commons. The physical Gropius hallmarks – large windows, flowing rooms, floating facades on raised pilotis – are all present here.