CARPENTER CENTRE FOR VISUAL ARTS - LE CORBUSIER

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.• The horizontal window – The façade can be cut along its entire length to allow rooms to be lit equally.

LE CORBUSIER’S DRAWINGS

DESCRIPTIONThe 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.

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

RAMPS• 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.

• 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

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.

THANK YOU!

SUBMITTED BY:KIRANJIT KAURSHALINI 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