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

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.