Joseph Hudnut and the unlikely beginnings of post-modern urbanism at the Harvard Bauhaus

Between 1937 and 1952, from his post at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius successfully promoted a modernist urbanism based on the principles of CIAM (the Congres Internationaux dʹArchitecture Moderne). With the help of his Harvard students and colleagues, especially Martin Wagner (Berlinʹs city planning director during the Weimar Republic), Gropiusʹ approach to urban design played a key part in shaping the post-war American landscape. In an unlikely twist, Joseph Hudnut, dean of the Graduate School of Design, who had brought Gropius there, became a fierce opponent of Gropiusʹ plans for the modern city. Though he lost the battle he fought with Gropius for the direction of city planning, Hudnut did plant the seeds of a new post-modern urbanism that took root two decades later.