In a World Tour of Midcentury Moderns, This Book Is the Final Stop

During the Spanish Civil War, the pioneering Catalan modernist architect Josep Lluís Sert moved from Barcelona to Paris and then, in 1939, immigrated to the United States. He became dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he worked for nearly fifteen years, relaunching his practice in 1955 in Cambridge. Around 1957, Harvard offered Sert a parcel of land near the Cambridge campus to build a house for himself. On this urban American site, he created a midcentury version of the traditional courtyard  houses common to parts of Spain and North Africa. At its heart, a hidden courtyard provides an outdoor room connected to the main living space at one end and the bedroom wing at the other—slim circulation spaces sit to each side.