The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard was designed by Le Corbusier with Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente. Josep Lluís Sert's office drew the on-site construction plans. Alfred St. Vrain Carpenter and Helen Bundy Carpenter donated $1.5 million, and the building was finished in 1962.
The compact, roughly cylindrical mass is concrete with glass windows and a brise-soleil. An S-shaped third-floor ramp is cantilevered from a central core, and the two halves are arranged like a pinwheel. Ondulatoires line the studio's curved exterior. The article gives no dimensions.
Le Corbusier declined the opening invitation because of poor health and never saw the building. It joined the National Register of Historic Places on April 20, 1978. It houses Harvard's Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, and pedestrians can walk through it.
Comments