Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts - Harvard University - Le Corbusier The only building built by Le Corbusier in North America, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard is stands out among the traditional buildings of the surrounding campus. "Despite the controversy over the wisdom of placing a building of such modern design in a traditional location, Le Corbusier felt that a b uilding devoted to the visual arts must be an experience of freedom and unbound creativity. A traditional building for the visual arts would have been a contradiction. The Carpenter Center represents Corbusier's attempt to create a "synthesis of the arts," the union of architecture with painting, sculpture, through his innovative design." The five levels of the b uilding function as open and flexible working spaces for painting, drawing, and sculpture, and the ramp through the heart of the building en courages public circulation and provides views into the studios, making the creative process visible through the building design." (ves.fas.harvard.edu) (ves.fas.harvard.edu)
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Harvard University 24 Quincy Street (at Prescott Street) Cambridge Massachusetts 02138 USA Le Corbusier 1963 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 ondulatoires (windows above left) fromLa from La Tourette;; the brise soleils (below) Tourette 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. For the case study of a precedent building, we were given the Carpenter Center in Harvard, Mass. designed by LeCorbusier. This building is used as a mixed art studio containing studio space and exhibition space.
The shape of the studio spaces is organic and breaks away from the rigid system of organization set up by the structural columns that run through the height of the building. It contains a 2 story central ramp that divides the building and connects it to the two sides of its site. It was designed as a means of circulation for the students, but is rarely used. Made from cast concrete, the score lines from the molds become a façade design. The building breaks the axis of the street and surrounding buildings by rotating itself, thus creating more public space at ground level.
Despite being one of the most prominent buildings on campus, the Carpenter Center is also one of the least well understood. Two weeks ago, I wrote about the need for Harvard to build another Carpenter Center, a building that would get people thinking about architecture—its relevance and its context. Along those lines, I feel that a brief background of the building and self-guided tour of sorts is in order. First, the Carpenter Center was designed by the Frenchman Le Corbusier, one of the most famous architects of the 20th century. Completed in 1963, it was his only building in North America and one of the last of his career (too old to travel at age 75, Le Corbusier never got a chance to see the final product). Le Corbusier saw the Carpenter Center as a means of indoctrinating the United States with his version of Modernism. As a result, the Carpenter
Center is a compilation of the concrete forms and design principles that Le Corbusier established over the course of his career. From Quincy Street there are two possible approaches to the building: up the ramp or down to the main gallery entrance. The ramp was intended to be the centerpiece of the building, taking people directly to its center. Le Corbusier envisioned the ramp as becoming a major campus pathway, with students constantly flowing between Quincy and Prescott Streets. Unfortunately, Le Corbusier did not understand that few students have any need to travel this route (not to mention that they are lazy and would never walk up an inclined ramp just to walk down the other side). The University has done a commendable job in adding the Sert Café and revitalizing the Sert Gallery, giving people a reason to use the ramp more often. Regardless, the ramp provides an impressive experience; a sequence of spatial events defines what Le Corbusier called the promenade architecturale. Try walking up the ramp on a bright day; the dark underside of the building at the top of the ramp provides a beautiful frame for the sunlit buildings that lay beyond. Walking from the Fogg along Quincy Street, look left at the narrow vertical windows along the curved bay of the second-floor sculpture studio. These windows are called ondulatoires, and have an almost religious feel to them; Le Corbusier used them in a monastery near Lyon, France. Standing at the top of the ramp, look up at the brises soleils, angled baffles intended to obscure direct sun while admitting natural light into the building. Le Corbusier was extremely concerned with the path of the sun and studied its angles at different times of day to great length. As a result, you should revisit the building at different times of day to experience the different types of light that Le Corbusier essentially designed into the building. One marked facet of Le Corbusier’s design is the use of concrete pilotis to elevate the building above the ground. The pilotis allow the landscape to extend beneath the building; they also interact with the landscape directly . When a site plan was being drawn up, Le Corbusier asked that all the tree locations be marked with a high level of precision. In the final design, he aligned some of the pilotis with the existing trees. The best example of this can be found near the entrance to main gallery and film archive. Looking back toward the faculty club, one can see two pilotis in perfect alignment with an eerily column-like tree. The pilotis vary in diameter throughout the building, depending on the load they are forced to carry, and in many places are designed to give the building a feeling of freedom. This is most marked at the rear of the building, where 30-foot columns support the large, curved studio bay. The building at this point looks precarious, and indeed it is. According to William LeMessurier, a famous Cambridge structural engineer, if a large truck were to drive through one of the columns, that portion of the building would likely fall to the ground.
The Carpenter Center was not built in its distinct modernist style to simply be different. Instead, Le Corbusier had a philosophical belief that a visual arts building should demonstrate innovation and creativity. A traditional neo-Georgian style visual arts building would almost have been a contradiction. There is a definite relationship between the brick of the surrounding buildings and the concrete and glass of the Carpenter Center. Unlike brick, the light-colored concrete reflects morning sun and captures afternoon shadows, from trees and other elements. The curved surfaces of the concrete compress or elongate these shadows, giving them visual life as the angle of the sun changes. The building can almost be seen as having an inside-out plan, with interpenetrations of exterior and interior through both the design and the use of g lass— both clear, as in the numerous large windows, and distorted, as in the glass blocks of the stairwell. At the center of the building is a cubic volume from which the curved studios spaces are hung on a diagonal axis. There is extensive cantilevering and a reliance on reinforced concrete to create large areas of open space. Unlike traditional structures, which rely on load-bearing walls, the Carpenter Center relies on a grid of load-bearing columns. As a result, each of the five levels of the building is designed to be configurable through movable partitions that extend well short of the expansive ceiling. Undoubtedly, many students have walked past the Carpenter Center numerous times without giving it a second’s notice. They are probably unaware that people travel from around the world just to see the building because of its architectural significance and position in Le Corbusier’s oeuvre. Every time I walk past the building, up its ramp, or down into its lower sections, I take a close look at it. Every time I see something new.
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AD Classics: Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts / Le Corbusier
13 MAR 2011 By Andrew Kroll — Filed under: AD Architecture Classics ,Educational , Cambridge, Concrete,Harvard, Massachusetts
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© emily geoff
The first and only building in the United States designed by the 20th Century master architect Le Corbusier sits among some of the oldest buildings that da te back to before the United States was organized. Completed in 1963, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts is located on Harvard University’s campus. Designed in conjunction with Chilean architectGuillermo Jullian de la Fuentes and Josep Lluis Sert – dean of Harvard’s GSD at the time, the Carpenter Center stands out among the traditional architectural styles of Harvard Yard as a combination of Le Corbusier’s earlier modernist works. More on the Carpenter Center after the break.
© emily geoff
Designed to be home to Harvard’s visual arts, the Carpenter Center houses large open studio spaces for students to work and showcase their art. In addition to being a place for art, the center holds the largest collection of 35mm films in the New E ngland region often holding screenings of independent, international, and silent films. For Corbusier, the Carpenter Center was meant to be the synthesis of the arts where architecture would join with painting, sculpture, photography, and film. Unlike the buildings of Harvard Yard and even those of Corbusier’s earlier works, the Carpenter Center takes on a less than traditional approach to the design and organization of the interior spaces. Rather the Carpenter Center is a mix of Corbusier’s earlier works with the typical beton brut concrete, angled brise soleils that were used in Chandigarh, and ondulatoires [narrow windows] found in La Tourette were implemented into the centers facade system. From first glance, the Carpenter Center appears to be an inverted version of Villa
Savoye embodying the Five Points of Architecture on the exterior of the building rather than within like Villa Savoye.
© emily geoff
Similar to Villa Savoye, Corbusier highlights an architectural promenade that runs through the center of the building that connects the interior studios, galleries, and screening rooms to the public spaces within the building, as well as to the campus. Walking along the centralized ramp, there is a slow ascent through the buildings levels that has a degree of reveal allowing the passerby to peer into the spaces through the separation between the floor plates and the ramp.
© emily geoff
Within the Carpenter Center, Corbusier maintains large open floor plates supported by his iconic pilotis, which allow for students to have open studio environments, in addition to allowing for more flexible configurations when showcasing students work, or h olding film screenings. However, as with some of his earlier projects where Co rbusier imposes curvilinear wall sections to define circulation or the space itself, Corbusier uses the curvilinear wall system to define the interior volume’s boundary as a way in which to accentuate the architectural promenade throughout the building, as well as seamlessly linking the interior spaces through a cyclical spatial organization. Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts is an intensification of his earlier projects that not only incorporate architectural elements from previous projects, but – possibly with the encouragement of Fuentes and Sert – seems to advance Corbusier’s architectural language by testing its limits as to what it could become, rather than just merely accepting its prior successes. The Carpenter Center exemplifies that push and advancement in Corbusier’s work that would influence the modernist aesthetic and future styles.
© emily geoff
Unfortunately, Le Corbusier was never able to see the completed building because of his failing health. However, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts continues to maintain the largest 35mm film collection in the New England region, as well as housing Harvard’s historic film archives. Architect: Le Corbusier Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts Project Year: 1961 – 1963 Photographs: Flickr User: emily geoff References: Galinksy, GreatBuildings
Introduction Le Corbusier's ideas crystallize in grand form on the UN headquarters in New York, developed by Wallace Harrison, but of which Le Corbusier will always claim paternity. Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts can be regarded as the only work of yours truly on American soil , a very unfair compensation for an architect repeatedly propositioned by the United States. In 1913 and fascinated by the images of U.S. industry, Le Corbusier did not succeed in his first trip in 1935, and left with orders to return after his vain attempt to impose a "reconstruction cell" in New York. A determined Le Corbusier tak es the opportunity offered in 1959, thanks to the mediation of Joseph Lluis Sert, who would then follow up the work to construct a building for the Faculty of Arts at Harvard
University. He is aware that it represents his only opportunity to present his experience in a final architectural and plastic synthesis in the U.S. [edit]Situation The Carpenter Center was built in the city of Cambridge, a few meters from the brick buildings of Harvard Yard, between neoclassical Fogg Museum and the Faculty Club, on land located between Prescott and 15th streets and not at all predisposed for a monument that Le Corbusier thought seemed inappropriate at first sight. [edit]Concept Le Corbusier was inspired by all the architectural and plastic themes from 1945 and began some initial investigations like the Domino.
[edit]Project File:Carpente Center 40.jpg First outline of the center and included the ramp
From the outset, Le Corbusier designed Carpenter Center as an architectural promenade that connects the two streets through a volume and uses flexible forms encountered in the study of the painter. In a first outline, designed with the young Chilean architect Guillen Jullian de la Fuente, the model of the ramp of the walk was a spiral. The final version consists of a thin concrete surface in the form of an "S" joining the streets and running through the center of a large site, where passersby can see the studies. [edit]Description The building can be compared with the Millowners Association Building in Ahmedabad, formed of blocks of various heights in an open plan, wrapped in a marquee and accessible by a ramp-sculpture. Carpenter Center explores several solutions designed from the marquee skyscraper in Algiers and used a two-part plan in the form of a "lung" that recalls a figure presented in 1925 in "Urbanisme". [edit]Spaces The Carpenter Center for Visual Arts (CCVA) houses the Department of Visual and Environmental Sert Gallery on the third floor, the Main Gallery at the ground level, and the Harvard Film Archive. • The Sert Gallery at the top of the ramp, features the work of contemporary artists. • The main gallery on the street is home to a variety of exhibits to support the curriculum of the Department.
• The Carpenter Center is also home to the Harvard Film Archive, which leads the public through a unique program of experimental films and rare classics.
According to its role as a center for visual arts, the building embodies a "synthèse des arts majeurs" such as painting, sculpture and architecture. The five levels of the building and the role of flexible work spaces for painting, drawing and sculpture, and the path through the heart of the public construction encourages movement and provides views of the works, making visible the creative process through the design of buildings. The functional similarities of the floors, the free movement of sculptural expression, ambiguities between figure and background, and between mass and space are associated with the Carpenter Center later works: the brise-soleil oblique are similar to those of Chandigarh and the ramp into the building recalls the Millworkers' Association. The ramp allows the inspection of architectural elements of Le Corbusier and the activities of the workshops within the building. [edit]Structure The central nucleus is a cubical volume that ends in curved workshoops at each end of the diagonals. The set is crossed by an S-shaped ramp that rises from one of the streets and descends toward the other. The Carpenter Center boldly breaks with orthogonal geometry of its neo-Georgian environment. File:Carpenter center sistema estruc domino.jpg System structural domino
The layers and levels enter and exit the inner cluster concrete pillars. The pillars support the maximum projections and create interpenetrations fo the exterior and interior, as well as sequences of spaces bound by the incline of the promenade. Le Corbusier used each step of the design process to test new ideas and to purify the old. He used the Carpenter Center to investigate the pillars and beams before establishing a smooth solution of forged and cylindrical pilllars of different sizes in the skeleton structure. The ondulatoires and brise-soleil did not mixed well in the windows, so he decided to separate them. After testing the brise soleil - like airplane wings - on balconies, the architect returned to the solution found in Chandigarh and Ahmedabad,Villa Shodhan, where concrete panels were placed diagonally or perpendicular to the edge of the building, but this time he used windows. Heating
and ventilation were embedded in the floor, which was combined with pivoting vents to allow the passage of air. [edit]Materials Sert, who worked with Le Corbusier 1928 to 1930, helps to answer critics who accuse him of using concrete rather than "crude" but "brutal." By using a rendering smooth surfaces in many parts of the building, claims to have found "the key to the solution for reinforced concrete" In Cambridge, the crystals appear in the third and fifth floors while the brise-soleil did in the fourth
[edit]Elements Carpenter Center of the holes were mainly four types: • Full glass floor to ceiling (pans de verre) • brise-soleil (which were also conceptual relatives of the walls) • ondulatoires (which gave the best definition of a hole, just like a wall in some places discontinuous) • aérateurs courses
aérateur
nm (pour conduit, pièce close) ventilator , (pour le vin) aerator , (pour le gazon) aerator
running (the final version leaves pivoting vertical racks including insects).
Overall this was a grammar of the facade that was the updated version of Le Corbusier by its principle of free facade of the twenties. The idea was that each of the elements to serve a specific function, and that each embody and symbolize the function.
[edit]Drawings
Emplazamiento
Primer esbozo del centro, cuaderno P60. El
carácter de camino de la rampa central ya resulta patente en este dibujo inicial
Plano sótano
Plano primer piso
Plano segundo piso
Plano tercer piso
Sistema estructural dom-ino Rampa y escalera al aire libre Plano cuarto piso
Plano quinto piso
Elevación este
Elevación norte
Elevación oeste
Brise solei lado este
Elevación sur
Modelo conceptual
Dibujo ordenador Pintura anónimo
Pintura anónima
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Review This gravity-defying mass of concrete and glass, built in 1963 to contrast with the now-defunct and more traditional Fogg Art Museum next door, is the only building in North America designed by the French architect Le Corbusier. The open floor plan provides students with five stories of flexible workspace, and the large, outward-facing windows ensure that the creative process is always visible and public. The center regularly holds free lectures and receptions with artists on Thursday evenings. At the top of the ramp, the Sert Gallery plays host to changing exhibits of contemporary works and has a café. The Main Gallery on the
ground floor often showcases work by students and faculty. The Harvard Film Archive downstairs screens films nightly, often accompanied by discussions with the filmmakers.
LE CORBUSIER has vigorously expressed his theory of design in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. However hostile or friendly its reception here may be, it is one of the most important buildings ever constructed at Harvard. The harsh, raw severity of Le Corbusier jars a world conditioned to softer, more comfortable art forms, but it also establishes a conspicuous point of evolution in modern architecture. Into the Visual Arts Center Le Corbusier has brought all the major tenets of this evolution. Since World War II, the integral parts of Le Corbusier design have consisted of pillar foundations, glass walls, sun breaks, roof terraces, and schemes free from orthodox, exterior influences. The Visual Arts Center unites all of these basic factors. The Carpenter Center, Le Corbusier's first building in North America, derives its character from some of the most important of Le Corbusier's designs. The glass walls of the upper levels of the Center evidently appear originally in the Refuge City of the Salvation Army, built in Paris in 1920. The glass blocks which line one wall of the front elevation were used similarly in the Swiss Pavilion of Paris's University City in 1930. And the austere interior, though noticeable in virtually every Le Corbusier work, especially resembles that of the Villa Sarabhai which was erected in 1955. The studios of the center are shielded from direct sunlight by concrete breakers. The exact positioning of these visors is not duplicated in any previous Le Corbusier work but is vaguely similar to those used in the government buildings of Chandigarh, India, and in designs for a proposed construction in Algiers which was never realized. The pedestrian ramp which passes through the center of the building appears in the designs which Le Corbusier submitted for the Palace of the Soviets in 1931, and was previously included in the Savoye Villa of Poissy, France. The interplay of levels which has come to characterize many of Le Corbusier's recent buildings is largely missing from the Visual Arts
Center. The sculptured gracefulness of the Chapel of Ronchamp and the Phillips Pavilion of the Brussels World's Fair finds itself in an abbreviated form in the circular wings of the center and in a distant sort of way in the sweeping slant of its ramp. Le Corbusier is, in outlook, a logician -- his thinking appears in patterns of severe, and consequently cold, equations. And his theories of design follow these patterns of thought. He places emphasis on industrial functionalism in his art and he pleads with architecture to keep pace with a changing industrial society. He describes the need for a technology which will serve vast populations and communities of people with due equality. The solution he finds for that need is in the rawness and the flexibility of concrete and the other austere materials which he seems to believe constitute an absolute return to nature.
discover mathematical proportions in the human body and then to use that knowledge to improve [1]
both the appearance and function of architecture.
The system is based on human
measurements, the double unit, the Fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio. Le Corbusier described it as a "range of harmonious measurements to suit the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and to mechanical things." The Modulor is an anthropometric scale of proportions devised by the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier (1887 –1965).
It was developed as a visual bridge between two incompatible scales, the Imperial system and the Metric system. It is based on the height of an English man with his arm raised. It was used as a system to set out a number of Le Corbusier's buildings and was later codified into two books.
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts In the Carpenter Center the Modulor system was used for the brise-soleil distances, the floor to floor heights, the bay distances and the column thicknesses .
[14]
Le Corbusier conceived that the dimensioning
of the entrance ramp would be "visible essay on the mathematics of the human body ".
The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, completed in 1963, is the only building on the North American continent designed by the famous Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier. Despite the controversy over the wisdom of placing a building of such modern design in a traditional location, Le Corbusier felt that a building devoted to the visual arts must be an experience of freedom and unbound creativity. A traditional building for the visual arts would have been a contradiction. The Carpenter Center represents Corbusier's attempt to create a "synthesis of the a rts," the union of architecture with painting, sculpture, through his innovative design. The building was completed in 1963, made possible by a gift from Alfred St. Vrain Carpenter, and the intent to house the artistic entities of Harvard College under one roof came to fruition in 1968 as the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. The five levels of the building function as open and fl exible working spaces for painting, drawing, and sculpture, and the ramp through the heart of the building encourages public circulation and provides views into the studios, making the creative process visible through the building design. The Sert Gallery, at the top of the ramp, features the work of contemporary artists, and the main gallery at street level hosts a variety of exhibitions supporting the curriculum of the Department. The Carpenter Center is also home to the Harvard Film Archive, which brings to the public a unique program of classic, rare and experimental films.
