Whatnot at Harvard

Harvard has a new tree, sans root, fruit or leaf. Overnight it sprang to its full height of 27 feet in the new graduate-center quadrangle. Walter Gropius, famed professor in Harvard's department of architecture, designed the center and commissioned the tree from Richard Lippold, a Manhattan sculptor. Constructed of steel rods, it is intended to represent nothing less than "the world."

The tree moved one alumnus to send a bit of protesting doggerel to the Harvard Crimson:

I think that I shall never see A poem weird as a world tree A tree to brighten every meal With fragrant boughs of stainless

steel . . .

Of all the thoughts of Mr. Gropius, This cosmic hatrack is the dopius.

Lippold was moved to give an earnest explanation of his brainchild: "The center of this construction is actually designed around a sphere. The 'transparency' of the sphere gives opportunity to visualize such inner tensions as activate all aspects of earthly life: personal, social and international. Out of these inner relationships, the bursting of stem and branches from this 'World-Seed' resolved the whole conception into a treelike form, suggesting continuing growth. Thus, this piece is really a 'World-Tree,' its four branches reaching to the four main points of the compass, its trunk in the earth and its extremities still growing, unconcluded, in space. It is related also to those objects in our modern landscape, like antennae, which make the quickest communication with all points of the earth; and it is based on the steel technology of our time as surely as were the pyramids in the age of stone, or totem poles in a culture of wood construction. The shining radiance of the steel and the upward-growing forms are full of hope and faith . . ."

As for practical advice: "The piece would enjoy an annual polishing with Bon Ami cleanser, probably as a rite at the vernal equinox, and it will not resent being inhabited by one or two contemplative beings. Enjoy it!"

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