Sketchbook
Closing a Gate, Creating a Space
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A View from the Window
This is a sketch of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts from the window of the Harvard Art Museums. The Carpenter Center, Le Corbusier’s only North American building, is home to the art studios at the college. The architecture of the Carpenter Center itself holds artistic value. Moreover, the view of the Carpenter Center through the window has much in common with a painting hanging in a museum. The window frame parallels the picture frame, capturing an image within. The window, like a painting, is a rectangle of light, shape, and color that interrupts the dark wall of the museum. And, with the busy area at the bottom and open space where the sky fills the frame to the top, the view from the window could easily have been a conscious composition. The Carpenter Center, or at least this view of it, hangs on display at the museum like a picture or painting.
The Qube
The exterior, on the other hand, is relatively plain and aesthetically simple. Aside from the columns that elevate it from the ground, the only shapes in the facades are rectangles, from the form of the building to the windows to the bricks themselves. Unlike the multi-colored interior, the facade is primarily red and white. The facade’s austere simplicity contrasts with the interior’s playfulness.
Unfinished: Winthrop Under Construction
The second category finds close parallels in architecture. An “unfinished” aesthetic is not uncommon in modern and contemporary buildings. Even on Harvard’s campus, for example, Mather House trumpets rather than conceals its construction, its unfinished look characteristic of Brutalist architectural style.
