CARPENTER - Key Persons
CNC is based in New York and was founded in 1994 by James Carpenter and Davidson Norris and specialises in innovative daylighting systems.
Job Titles:
- Founding Partner
- Partner
- Associate Member of the American Institute of Architects
- Design
James Carpenter was born in Washington DC, USA (1948). For more than 30 years, his work has focused on the exploration of light as a means to bring form to structure and reveal the environment. Exploiting the unique opportunities afforded by the transparency, reflectivity, and structural strength of glass, the work seeks to control the intangible force of light as it affects the spatial and temporal boundaries of architectural spaces. The goal of the work is to animate these transitional spaces and engage the viewers in a rich and complex understanding of their surroundings. The projects are broad-ranging and cross-disciplinary, embracing aspects of fine art, architecture, landscape and engineering in the design of pavilions, buildings, sculptures, curtain walls, skylights and bridges.
In 1991, the American Institute of Architects conferred its Institute Honor Award on James Carpenter as "an artist whose rare, unsurpassed technical expertise and sculptor's sensitivity have moved him to explore and express dramatic interrelationships of glass and light that have become indispensable ingredients of great architecture. With his intuitive understanding of the built environment, he transforms glass into art, forming a union between the transparent and the tangible that respects and enhances architectural design."
As an artist considered to be an innovator in materials technologies, James has worked collaboratively with major architects in the United States and abroad on significant building projects and has received many major architectural and public art commissions. Recently James' work has been recognised with the Villum and Velux Foundation Award in 2010 and The Academy Awards in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008. James was given a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004 and an Honorary Royal Designer for Industry Award by the Royal Society of Arts, London in 2008.
James is an Associate Member of the American Institute of Architects, and an Affiliate Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He is a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, and of the International Society for Glass Technology, the International Solar Energy Society and the Institute for Urban Design.
He has taught and lectured all over the world including at the Lightweight Structures Institute of the University of Stuttgart, Germany, Harvard University (the Eliot Noyes Professorship), MIT, Columbia University and the Royal College of Art, London.
James Carpenter was a partner at C | L until 2018.
He is married with an adult daughter, and lives in New York City.
JCDA is based in New York and was founded in 1979 by James Carpenter.
Luke Lowings MA (RCA) ARB was born in Cambridge, England in 1961. After a Foundation Course in Art and Design in Cambridge he studied Architecture at Kingston Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art graduating with an MA. In London he worked for Richard Rogers + Partners among others, and moved to New York in 1989, where for twelve years he worked as a collaborator in the studio of sculptor James Carpenter, helping to develop the studio into a major influence in architectural-scale glass design. During that period he became a registered architect in the UK and New York State. In 2001 he returned to London, setting up a partnership with James to continue their explorations. Luke became the sole owner of Carpenter | Lowings from early 2018.
For over thirty years, Luke has worked with glass and light, on a diverse range of projects all over the world, from domestic-scale installations to large tension-net façades, bridge designs, and artworks integrated into infrastructure projects. This has produced a unique body of work spanning the disciplines of art, architecture and engineering, always linked by a fascination with the integration of light into the experience of public space. With his studio and in close collaboration with engineers, all aspects of project responsibilities are developed, from design and construction documentation, to fabrication and installation.
Luke‘s work has been widely published in books, journals and magazines across the USA and Europe and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Some awards: a Young Architect's Forum prize from the Architectural League of New York; an FX Design Award for the Light Helix at the Royal Albert Hall; a GSA Award for the ‘Light Ceiling' in Phoenix, Arizona. The Salvation Army Chapel was shortlisted for the Bombay Sapphire Award and the RIBA award for religious architecture 2005. The stair in Hong Kong received a Special Mention in Architizer A+ award and was featured as one of their favoured staircases of 2016 by Dezeen. Carpenter|Lowings was awarded the Lighting Design Award Architect of the Year award in 2017, and Folded Light was awarded the Daylight Project of the Year award at the same ceremony.
Luke has taught at the University of Philadelphia, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Columbia University in New York. He has been a contributor to studio discussions at the Architectural Association and the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, where he has taught diploma thesis for over a decade. He has contributed regularly to the Lighting Design course at KTH in Stockholm and has lectured in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UAE and the USA.
Luke is married with two children and lives in London.
Luke Lowings worked for JCDA for twelve years until he moved back to London in 2001 to set up C | L in co-ownership with James Carpenter.