How Le Corbusier Designed the Carpenter Center in Howards.

1. CARPENTER CENTRE FOR VISUAL
ARTS

2. INTRODUCTION
• The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University,
in Cambridge, Massachusetts is the building built by Le Corbusier in
the United
States.
• The allotted space on site was quite small, so the completed building
presents
itself as a compact, roughly cylindrical mass bisected by an S-shaped
ramp on the
third floor.
• 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 England 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.
S-shaped
ramp
As the carpenter centre was the only building of Le Corbusier in America, he felt it should be a
synthesis of his architectural principals and therefore incorporated his Five Points into the design
of the building:
• Pilotis – The replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns that
bears the
load of the structure is the basis of the new aesthetic.
• Roof gardens – The flat roof can be utilized for a domestic purpose while also providing
essential
protection to the concrete roof.
• The free designing of the ground plan – The absence of
supporting walls means that the house is unrestrained in its internal usage.
• The free design of façade – By separating the exterior of the building
from its structural function the façade becomes free.

3. LE CORBUSIER’S DRAWINGS

4. 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.
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.
 From the outset, Le Corbusier designed Carpenter Center as an architectural promenade that
connects the two streets through a volume and uses flexible forms.
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 holding film screenings.
Also, Corbusier imposes curvilinear wall sections to define circulation or the space itself. He
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.

5. 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.
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 ramp allows the inspection of architectural elements of Le Corbusier and the activities of
the
workshops within the building.
SPACES

6. RAMP
S
• Le Corbusier's earliest design showed a much more pronounced ramp that further separated
the
two parts of the central mass. However, the early design created the problem of too much
disruption
of the central mass.
• This problem was reconciled by using a pinwheel effect so that in the finally executed design,
the two
halves meet at a vertical core that houses an elevator.
• The concrete ramp is cantilevered from this central spine and stands atop a few pilotis.
• The landing at the top of the ramp is located in the core of the building and leads to various
studios
and exhibition spaces seen through glass windows and doors, providing views into the
building's
instructional and displaying functions without interrupting the activities in progress.
• On the ramp from Quincy street just before entering the building, one sees grids of square and
rectangles of the windows, brise-soleils, and studio spaces, rather than the curves of the two
halves of
the building.

7. • The central nucleus is a cubical volume that ends in curved workshops 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.
• The layers and levels enter and exit the inner cluster concrete pillars.
• The pillars support the maximum projections and create interpenetrations for 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 pillars 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.
STRUCTURE

8. 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.
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 (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.

9. THANK YOU!
SUBMITTED BY:
KIRANJIT KAUR
SHALINI SINGH
3RD YEAR
SECTION B
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_Center_for_the_Visual_Arts
• http://www.archdaily.com/119384/ad-classics-carpenter-center-for-the-visual-arts-le-
corbusier/
• http://en.wikiarquitectura.com/index.php/Carpenter_Center_for_the_Visual_Arts