Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University 1963

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University. Le Corbusier acknowledged his desire to make Carpenter Center, his only work in North America, a didactic statement of principle. The building reads as a revisionist history of many of his basic ideas. Le Corbusier's late interest in natural forms and forces is evident in the Carpenter Center. The windows derive from a three-part system of glazing, brise-soleil, and ventilating panels developed by him for India to architecturally control climate. Some critics interpret the building as an organic metaphor, seeing the two curved studios as lungs or ventricles on either side of the central circulation system of ramp and stair. To make Carpenter Center consonant with the advanced technological culture of America, Le Corbusier adopted purist elements to correct what he considered any artificial primitivism. He abandoned the rough, flawed skin of béton brut for the machined, polished look associated with his early architecture.