Le Corbusier's design for the Carpenter Center: a documentary analysis of design media in architecture

Abstract

Architects depend on drawing and other forms of design media as fundamental tools in design. Through media architects discover and consider design issues, speculate as to their resolution, generate form, evaluate what has been proposed and communicate conclusions. In the absence of rigorous or reliable accounts of a design process, media can be analysed to reconstruct a long, complex and otherwise undocumented chronology of ideas, methods and circumstances that informed the conception and development of a project. With analysis and interpretation, design media are also a ‘window’ onto the motives, methods and techniques that are the mechanics of an otherwise obscure creative process. Given the primary role of media to processes of design, design thinking and form generation, significant questions of method and intention should be raised. Like many tools, design media impart content and points of view that actively influence the conceptual imagination and formal vocabularies of architects. How and to what extent do media conventions distort and influence the synthetic and critical abilities of architects? How and to what extent are conceptual opportunities created or, conversely, limitations imposed? Does built form reflect those opportunities and limitations? What impact might this knowledge have on the teaching of media, the practice of design and criticism of architecture? In consideration of these questions, this paper documents and critically examines the role of design media through a case study of Le Corbusier's schematic design for the Carpenter Center at Harvard (1963). Within the project and its design process are patterns of media choice and application illustrative of Le Corbusier's design methods, representative of his intentions and influential on the form of the building. Both building and design media are critically examined for correspondence between architectural principles and values important to the architect, media conventions and procedures fundamental to his design process, and formal structures and properties in the completed building.