Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Boston: architect, style and history

The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, is the only building Le Corbusier designed primarily in the United States and one of just two he built in the Americas, the other being the Curutchet House in La Plata, Argentina. Harvard set a $1.3 million budget in the mid-1950s to house a new visual arts department, and alumnus Alfred St. Vrain Carpenter's gift helped fund the building that opened in 1962.

the building

Le Corbusier's only U.S. building. Le Corbusier designed the Carpenter Center at his 35 rue de Sèvres studio in Paris, with Chilean architect Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente collaborating on the design. It stands as his sole primary commission built in the United States, though he had earlier contributed to the design of the United Nations Secretariat Building in New York.

Sert's on-site hand. The construction drawings were prepared on-site by the office of Josep Lluís Sert, then dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Sert had trained in Le Corbusier's own atelier and was instrumental in winning him the Harvard commission in the first place.

the style

The Carpenter Center is documented as an example of modern and brutalist architecture, styles associated with Le Corbusier's late career, and its listing on the National Register of Historic Places recognizes it as one of only two buildings he built anywhere in the Americas.

the architect

Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French architect who helped define twentieth-century modernism, designed the Carpenter Center as one of the final built works of his career. Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente collaborated with him on the design, while Josep Lluís Sert — a former member of Le Corbusier's atelier and later dean of Harvard's design school — oversaw the construction plans on-site.

significance

The Carpenter Center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and stands as one of only two buildings Le Corbusier built in the Americas, the other being the Curutchet House in La Plata, Argentina.

nearby

Harvard Union 250 ft · Colonial Revival
Fogg Museum 360 ft · Colonial Revival · 1896
Harvard Art Museums 380 ft · 1895
Sever Hall 500 ft · Romanesque Revival
Old Cambridge Baptist Church 0.1 mi · Gothic Revival · 1867
Harvard Lampoon Building 0.2 mi

All 282 buildings in Boston