New Buildings Meant to Foster Interaction Between Disciplines

In the past few years, more and more of the University's building projects have been planned with the intent of fostering interdisciplinary cooperation.

From the two-year-old Barker Center to the proposed Knafel Center, the Fairbanks to the Shorenstein and the recently announced centers for genomics and proteomics, Harvard is in the vanguard of a movement using architecture to enhance research.

"The research centers provide the thing that interests faculty, which is research," says David A. Zewinski '76, associate dean for physical resources and planning in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). "The departments are more based on undergraduate and graduate education--not necessarily the items that most excite faculty."

The great experiment, as tested by the Barker Center, seems to be working according to those who use it most.

"It's just bumping into people and also having somewhere to eat," says K. Anthony Appiah, professor of Afro-American Studies and philosophy.

Appiah says the motivation for research centers comes from within the teaching staff, not the administration.

"[The push is] coming from the faculty. It is not being imposed upon us by the administration," he says.

He says interdisciplinary interaction is sometimes the only way to answer questions raised by research.

"Disciplines are ways of shaping thinking and creating people that have a shared set of knowledge and references about questions that interest people in the world. Those questions don't take much notice of departmental constraints," Appiah says.

"[Faculty] are following the questions," he says.

The much-discussed Knafel Center, still in the planning stages, would be Harvard's most ambitious attempt to foster interdisciplinary cooperation, containing half a dozen such research groups.

The Center has spent much of the year mired in development difficulties and discussions with the community over the location, size and design of the facility. In addition to the Government Department and some social science departments, the center may hold the Davis Center for Russian Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Fairbanks Center for East Asian Research.

The project's architect, Harry Cobb '47, has been working on the allocation of space for the various departments and research groups, according to Mary H. Power, Harvard's director of community relations for Cambridge.

Following completion of these discussions between Cobb and the departments, further design details will be unveiled within a few months.