Many experts are necessary to bring any building project to realization: structural and mechanical engineers, plumbing and electrical engineers, site engineers, landscape architects, lighting experts--and in the case of a theater, acoustical engineers and stage design engineers.

For collaboration on this project, we selected, with the University's approval, some experts: Goldberg LeMessurier Associates for structure, Delbrook Engineering, Inc, for heating-ventilating and air conditioning, Thompson Engineering Company, for the electrical engineering, Bolt, Beranek and Newman for acoustics, George Izenour (who had already developed a new system for lifting scenery) for stage lighting and special engineering in connection with the stage and convertibility features. The coordination of all the collaborators made it possible to carry out the Architect's functional and aesthetic concept of this theater.

Technical accomplishments are one thing, but every building requires more than this. Architecture is much more than the mere translation of ideas into technical reality. Perhaps the most important consideration of all and the most difficult is the aesthetic environment produced by a structure. In the case of a theater, and in particular this theater on Brattle Street, this was a unique and difficult problem.

As a Guide we had the Building Committee's program which stated in very clear words, what the theater should be:

The Harvard theater should be conceived from the point of view of the audiences which will use it. It should be a building which, as building, will create the sense of excitement and expectation which most existing American theaters so flatly fall to give--"severe, uncomfortable, ill-ventilated, dull undecorated or dustily over-glided barns" as Bob Chapman calls them. It should be, to quote Chapman again: "A magical, delightful, stimulating experience to attend the theater; and this means architecturally, a departure from almost every playhouse in America."

But though the theater must be beautiful, its builders must also remember that the play's the thing. The building should not be so architecturally exciting and excited, as building, that the plays produced in it will be overshadowed by their frame. On the contrary, the auditorium should please the imagination in such a way as to release it, not captivate it. Certain museums and art galleries recently erected as monuments to their architects, not as houses for their contents, make the reminder necessary.

This has been our "Profession de Foil" The building will speak for itself. Only those who use the building, those who pass it every day, those who will come to Cambridge in future years will be the judges of whether the work, the thought, the ingenuity and devotion of so many people to produce this building have been worth while