The graduate school of architecture at Harvard, at this time, was under the direction of Walter Gropius, former director of the Bauhaus, who had arrived in the United States in 1937. This was a transitional time for the study of architecture and design at the school. The curriculum had changed radically as Gropius invited other former Bauhaus instructors to join the faculty. Wu's classmates and instructors Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen and Philip Johnson would achieve fame for their subsequent groundbreaking modern work in New Canaan, Connecticut as members of the "Harvard Five." Other noted classmates included I. M. Pei, Paul Rudolph and Edward Larrabee Barnes.
