[3] Le Corbusier designed it with the collaboration of Chilean architect Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente at his 35 rue de Sèvres studio; the on-site preparation of the construction plans was handled by the office of Josep Lluís Sert, then dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Originally, the committee had recommended that the building be designed by "a first rate American architect" who would be in the company of Charles Bulfinch and Walter Gropius, among others.

Delayed due to scheduling and payment conflicts, Le Corbusier eventually accepted and made his first of two visits to Cambridge in 1959.

[7] Because the Carpenter Center was to be his only building in America, Le Corbusier felt it should be a synthesis of his architectural principles and therefore incorporated his Five Points into its design.

[10] The allotted space was quite small, so the completed building presents itself as a compact, roughly cylindrical mass bisected by an S-shaped ramp on the third floor.

This problem auditorium reconciled by using a pinwheel effect so that in the finally executed design, the two halves meet at a vertical core that houses an elevator.