The White Whale: A Stranger in Harvard — Le Corbusier, Josep Lluís Sert, and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

The White Whale: A Stranger at Harvard reflects the spirit of Harvard Worldwide Week by revealing the international networks behind a building that today appears inseparable from Harvard.

The Carpenter Center is the product of an extraordinary movement of people and ideas across borders. Le Corbusier brought the international language of European modernism to Cambridge. Josep Lluís Sert arrived in the United States through a very different trajectory: political upheaval and exile eventually brought him to Harvard, where he would play an influential role in architectural

education and in the transformation of the University's built environment.

Their collaboration demonstrates that Harvard's identity has never been created solely within Harvard. It has also been shaped by migration, displacement, collaboration, international exchange, and the circulation of ideas.

Using one building as a case study, the event invites the Harvard community to consider a much larger question:

How does the arrival of people and ideas from elsewhere change an institution - and eventually become part of its identity?

Maria Iglesias Alperi (Architect, PhD Candidate in Art History, Complutense University of Madrid -UCM- / Real Colegio Complutense at Harvard)