Carpenter Center, at Cambridge

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Date - 1961 to 1964 timeline
Building Type - university art center
Construction System - reinforced cast-in-place concrete masonry
Climate - temperate
Context - urban campus
Style - Modern
Notes full name - "Carpenter Visual Arts Center" at Harvard University.

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Harvard University24 Quincy Street (at Prescott Street)
CambridgeMassachusetts 02138
USA

The Carpenter Center is Le Corbusier's only building in North America, and one of the last to be completed during his lifetime. Its wonderful collection of concrete forms bring together many of the design principles and devices from Le Corbusier's earlier works: the ondulatoires (windows above left) from La Tourette; the brise soleils (below) originally from the Marseille unité d'habitation but angled later in Chandigarh (but here with glass for the Massachusetts climate); and the original Five Points from the 1920s 'accentuated in a new way: as if the Villa Savoye had been exploded inside out, with ramp and curved partitions extending into the environment.' The ramp and architectural promenade is particularly strong at the Carpenter Center.

'At the heart is a cubic volume from which curved studios pull away from one another on the diagonal. The whole is cut through by an S-shaped ramp which rises from one street and descends towards the other... The layers and levels swing out and back from the grid of concrete pilotis within, making the most of cantilevering to create interpenetrations of exterior and interior, as well as a sequence of spatial events linked by the promenade architecturale of the ramp.'
William J.R. Curtis in Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms