Le Corbusier Center Opens In February

The $1.75 million visual arts center, designed by Le Corbusier, will be opened for limited use in February, four months behind schedule. Detailed plans for the center, financed by the $82 million Program for Harvard College, are being completed by the committee for the practice of visual arts.

Three Faculty members interested in the relation of the undergraduate to the new center have been added to the committee: Reuben A. Brower, professor of English; Jerome S. Bruner, professor of Psychology; and Seymour Slive, professor of Fine Arts, who will meet with the committee although he is currently on leave.

The present architectural sciences courses will serve as the basis for the new center. This spring sophomores and juniors majoring in architecture will take their required courses Arch Sci 21 and 31 ("Visual Conception" and "Design Fundamentals") in the center.

Grants from University

Both seminar courses will be conducted by Mirko Basaldella, lecturer on Design, and will be held in the large areas on the third level designed for workshops and studios. There are at present no definite plans for using the center except for workshop seminars.

The Center will receive grants of money from the University, and possibly from agencies of the government, to spend as it desires. Part of this money may be used to finance art programs operating in the Houses.

The committee is also offering for the first time a special course, Visual Communications 105, taught by noted University Professor I. A. Richards. The course takes advantage of the center's unique adaptation to the visual arts and the research of many professors in the fields of linguistics, perception, education, and anthropology.

Additional plans for the building, whose construction was delayed by several labor strikes, center around its "dramatic solution" to the problems of architectural appreciation in the United States. Le Corbusier controlled lighting in the center especially for studio purposes. Each level is designed as an open space that can be subdivided by movable partitions or cabinets. The center will contain a lecture hall seating 180 students.