Assault on the Ecole: Student Campaigns against the Beaux Arts, 1925–1950

Abstract

Students played a significant part in the growing influence of modernism at American design schools between the First and Second World Wars. At several universities, students led a spirited campaign to replace beaux arts teaching methods with a curriculum based on modernist principles. This essay focuses on the University of California, Berkeley, where activist students advanced their cause by meeting with top university administrators and by publishing a magazine critical of their program. The students’ desire for modernism was fueled not only by aesthetic trends in the design profession, but from their involvement in leftist political and social movements that swept campuses in the 1930s. For many students, modernism offered a set of tools for improving the lives of Americans during the Great Depression. The student activity at Berkeley ultimately led to a gradual shift away from beaux arts methods at the school and it hastened a search for a modernist architect to take over the design program.

The architectural design studio as a learning environment: a qualitative exploration of architecture design student learning experiences in design studios from first- through fourth-yea

“…Students later rose up against the École system because of the emergence of the modern movement. This student uprising in conjunction with the rise of the modern movement in architecture became a catalyst for the abandonment of the Beaux-Arts system (Littmann, 2000). The architect Walter Gropius was a prominent German leader of the modern movement (an architecture movement in the 20 th century) that started in 1925 (Fitch, 1960;Nerdinger, 1985), and within the modern movement, the Bauhaus, established by Henri Van de Velde, arose (Frampton, 1985).…”

Flowing Through Space

“…Demonstrating a perpetual requirement to adapt and evolve (Westfall, 2008), the discipline is continually challenged from an increasingly wide range of pressures. Architectural education has received influence from the Old world (Barnstone, 2008;Maulsby, 2009), the New world (Caruso, 2008;Littmann, 2000) and from Australasia (Askland and Australia, 2012;Luscombe, 1995;Roudavski, 2011). Higher education has had to weather development in, construction methods (Altheide, 1989;Berry and Moss, 2008;Carey, 1992), aesthetic and philosophical sensibilities (Brady, 1996;Gül, 2011;Weismehl, 1967) and to Y.…”

The Fair that Never Was

“…Even in California, the palace coup was still some years off. 6 Maybeck's proposals likely never saw the light of day and, in any case, the still-unofficial fair would soon have official imagery-part of the backroom dealing typical of politics in the period, and part of what would stimulate further architectural agitation. W. P. Day and George Kelham published their proposal for the fair on the shoals site in May 1934 in the San Francisco Chronicle.…”