During its two-day meeting the Committee met with faculty, administrators and students and held two private sessions. The report of the Executive Session will include discussion which took place at the breakfast session earlier the same day. An Addendum to this report covers the meetings with various groups from the School.

At the beginning of the Executive Session the Chairman asked the Vice-Chairman and several other New York-based members to form a subcommittee to write a formal Report of the Visiting Committee.

Summary

The consensus of the Committee was that the Graduate School of Design (GSD) requires the achievement of excellence. Members found a lack of ability to fulfill rhetorical objectives, caused by a lack of administrative and academic leadership and evidenced by mediocrity of academic output and apparent student and faculty boredom. Discussion centered on three areas of concern to the Committee:

1. The role of the GSD in America and in the University.

2. The Deanship.

3. The quality of academic achievement.

1. The Role of the GSD.

Several members of the Committee saw that the GSD must undertake a new "missionary" role in determining the relationships of human wants and values to design, just as the School had assumed under Gropius in the '30's and '40's the leadership of an heroic period in architecture. One member stressed that American civilization depends on its cities and saw that the GSD can become a major resource in solving urban problems if it can actually implement its objectives as set forth in the catalog and in the Dean's Report and increase its concern for the socio-economic-political aspects of design.

Another member of the Committee suggested that the field of design must begin to draw from other fields. He proposed that the GSD be incorporated into the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), in a move analogous to the attachment of the Engineering School to FAS as the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics. He saw that the creation of the Division was a result of an intellectual drive in engineering. Design schools, he said, are probing toward human wants and values but are unable to comprehend them. Another member saw that arts and sciences are not necessarily the vehicle for teaching the perception and implementation of these values, but did stress the need for integration of disciplines in the University. He expressed the opinion that the tub-on-its-own-bottom concept is destructive to this integration and pointed to failures of attempted collaborative efforts between the GSD and the Business School in the area of planning. One member suggested that every department in the University, where appropriate, should institute programs in some aspects of urban studies, such as urban sociology and urban economics. The study of potential interaction between GSD and the rest of the University was seen to be dependent on the type of administrative leadership available to the School.

(Assistant's note: This view in favor of great greater interdisciplinary interaction reflected as well student and faculty desire for breadth of curriculum, particularly in Urban Design. In their discussion with the Committee, student and faculty groups seemed to be seeking a balance both between the practical and theoretical aspects of individual department curricula, and between autonomy and integration of the design disciplines represented by the different departments.)

Another member of the Committee expressed a dissenting view about the ability of the GSD to solve the problems of the human condition. He suggested a reversion to the narrower disciplines, resulting in the giving up of City Planning and Urban Design and the teaching only of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. While one member then remarked that the School cannot afford to give up its planning students, another pointed out that they all seem to spend a lot of time at MIT.

The issue of expansion versus contraction within the School was synthesized by one member who saw that the School must address both the public policy question of design and the perception of the individual building as a work of art. He suggested that students are trying to choose between the two extremes, but that the choice is not necessary.

2. The Deanship

The Visiting Committee agreed that Dean Kilbridge deserves the thanks of all for his success in pulling the School out of administrative disorder. One member remarked, however, that a struggling image of the School persists outside the University and he suggested that we cease drawing attention to this aspect of Kilbridge's Deanship. Comparing the Kilbridge administration to a receivership, members suggested that Kilbridge cannot provide continued intellectual leadership and pointed to the need for a new Dean to bring the School to excellence. One member said that the logical head "could possibly be" an architect but that an architect should be hired with the proviso that he can build. Another remarked that an administrative, non-professional Dean could be considered if more powerful department chairmen could be found. Several members saw that the academic qualifications of a Dean are secondary to the need to find someone to stimulate the sense of purpose and mission which the Committee found lacking in both faculty and students, as well as to attract a higher claibre of faculty. It was suggested that students are seeking meaning and self-respect in their profession and that commanding presence in a Dean is preferable to missionary zeal which can cool in the real world. As the architect himself is not the patron, figures from government and business who provide opportunities for the architect may constitute the pool from which to select a Dean. Finally, the Dean must have the stature to bring to the forefront the fact that the urban problem is a major problem of our civilization.