Diagram and Architecture. Spatial Syntax in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

The design process for the CCVA begins with two phrases that Le Corbusier writes during his first visit to the site in 1959. Only five months later the first drawings appear. Hence the relationship of the building with the syntax, if this is understood as the search for the order and the relationships in space. The syntax is observed here from the first literary images up to the definition of the form, in which schematic architectural models are used, but also cut-out areas required by the program, which are disposed in different ways on a site plan. In addition to his persistent interest in various types of movement, this methodology can also be seen in other projects where Le Corbusier also makes use of functional diagrams, or as he calls them: "diagrammes a bulles ". The same kind of diagram was used later by Bill Hillier in a method for analyzing architecture that he called the "space syntax". This method, in addition to analyzing the order and the relationship of spaces, can help to understand their permeability with respect to public space. As a building crossed by a public path, and as design process that starts with literary images, it becomes relevant to see it through its spatial syntax.