A FRIEND of mine in Adams House told me about a recurring dream she has. The House seems to become the last refuge of a disaster wrecked earth. It quickly fills up with refugees from distant places--like Dunster House. Cots appear in the dining room, strange faces lean against the walls in the underground tunnels. The pick of Widener's collection is transported to the House, and quickly overflows the House library, forming stacks in the entryways. She attributes the dream to exam period, but I'll bet that plenty of Harvard administrators have lately ben having the same fantasy, only on a larger scale.

The Class of '77 will walk into a Harvard which is experiencing the worst growing pains it has had for quite a while--pains which are the symptoms of long standing problems in the Harvard community. And for the first time since 1949, when Lamont Library was completed, the headache and stomach upset of construction will be felt in Harvard Yard.

The two major construction projects underway now in the Yard are probably the last buildings that will be built there for some time. They represent the most concentrated modernization effort the Yard has seen since the early 1930s, when both Wigglesworth Hall and Memorial Church were under construction.

In the North Yard, Hunt Hall, long an architectural curiosity, and recently the home of the Vis Stud Department and the Graduate School of Design, has been demolished to make way for Canaday Hall, a new freshman dorm. At the other end of the Yard, bulldozers and dynamite are digging a 40-foot trench that will become, hopefully by the spring of 1975, the Pusey Library, an addition to Widener.

Construction has been started this summer in order to minimize the disruption in the Yard during the fall term. Library construction began on June 18, the day following Commencement. The most annoying aspect of the Pusey work will be blasting to remove rock from the bottom layers of the excavation. Blasting will begin in August, and should be finished by late September, around registration time, Bob Burbank, project supervisor for Buildings and Grounds, predicted.

Noise from the two sites will jackhammer at the ears of Yard residents for some time. The structural frame of the dorm will be going up during the Fall, and will hopefully be completed by the first frost, so that inside work can be done during the winter. Canaday will be ready for occupancy in the Fall of 1974 of all goes well, but he Pusey site will be an obstacle to anyone walking through the Yard until April 1975.

The new library, designed by Cambridge architects Hugh Stubbins and Associates, was designed to have minimum architectural impact on the Yard. It is in the open field which had served as passageway between the Widener-Memorial Church quadrangle and the Union, and will appear to terrestials as a nine-foot high plateau, its roof covered by grass, shrubs, and a walkway.

A grassy surrounding mound will block it from view, and underground passages will link it with other parts of the library complex. The $8 million structure will have three levels, most of which will be underground. A small courtyard will break the plateau near one corner.

Pusey is part of an overall contingency plan for library expansion. It will house overflow from widener, Houghton and Lamont, the surrounding libraries. The University Archives, the map collection, and the theater collection will be among Pusey's two million volumes. Its first phase is scheduled top be in operation by Spring, 1975, but the size of the library can be doubled by the construction at some later date of phase two, which involves underground expansion.

IF SPACE is still needed for books, plans call for the demolition of 17 Quincy Street, the President's House, which is now used as office space for the Corporation, and the erection of an above-ground library on the site.

President Bok has said that this decision will not have to be made until 1975 or 1980, and the Administration is gambling that Pusey will solve all library problems. By 1980, Bok has said, "we hope that new technology in the area of minituarizing archives will have made further expansion of the library unnecessary."

Designers claim that the structure will look more foliated than the barren space that it replaces. Critics say that the compromise between unobtrusiveness and some degree of exposure to light and air for those who will use the library has resulted in a building which is neither inconspicuous nor aesthetically pleasing. In any case, the undergraduates who will carefully avoid the construction site will not be permitted inside once Pusey is finished. Everyone except graduate students, Faculty, and those who need to use special collections will be turned away from the library.

The Canaday Hall project was motivated by a different kind of overcrowding. In October 1971, President Bok announced a plan by which the University would move from a 4:1 ratio of men to women to a 2.5:1 ratio, substantially adding to Radcliffe enrollment while keeping Harvard class size fairly stable. Beginning with the Class of 1976, Radcliffe enrollment was to be increased from 315 a class, to about 450, and Harvard class size dropped from 1200 to about 1150. The Bok plan, in sum therefore, called for an increase of about 10 undergraduates a year. In fact, Harvard Admissions has been loath to trim a full 50 men from the Harvard class, and the entering class of 1977 will have 1175 men and 475 women, closely matching the 2.5:1 ratio.

Because the ratio improvement is being carried out through an increase in overall enrollment, the University was faced with an immediate need for housing. Harvard's response was to purchase the Hotel Continental, on Garden Street. Half of the hotel's space was renovated, and turned into an addition to the Radcliffe Houses in order to accommodate the initial increase of about 100 students. This year, the entire hotel will be used by undergraduates, in order to accommodate the second increase.

Plans were drawn up for new construction to accommodate further increases, and to house displaced undergraduates when the Continental is converted to graduate student housing for next year. Presidents Bok and Horner both fovored construction at the Radcliffe Quad. With the final decision on the merger of Radcliffe and Harvard coming close, it was felt that not enough attention and money was being devoted to the Radcliffe Houses. Construction was seen as a device to upgrade the Radcliffe Quadrangle, and partially offset the emphasis placed on Harvard by prior decisions about housing and classroom facilities.