Louis Isadore Kahn (bornItze-Leib Schmuilowsky; March 5 [O.S. February 20] 1901 – March 17, 1974) was anEstonian-born American architect[2] based inPhiladelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his ownatelier in 1935. While continuing his private practice, he served as a design critic and professor of architecture atYale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. From 1957 until his death, he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.
Kahn created a style that was monumental and monolithic; his heavy buildings for the most part do not hide their weight, their materials, or the way they are assembled. He was awarded theAIA Gold Medal and theRIBA Gold Medal. At the time of his death, he was considered by some as "America's foremost living architect."[3]
Jesse Oser House, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania (1940)
Louis Kahn, whose original name was Itze-Leib (Leiser-Itze) Schmuilowsky (Schmalowski), was born into a poorJewish family in theRussian Empire (present-day Estonia). His exact birthplace is disputed, but it is widely regarded to beKuressaare,Saaremaa,[4] although some sources mentionPärnu.[5]
He spent his early childhood in Kuressaare on theBaltic Sea island of Saaremaa, then part of theGovernorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire. At the age of three, he saw coals in the stove and was captivated by the light of the coal. He put the coal in hisapron, which caught on fire and burned his face.[6] He carried these scars for the rest of his life.[7]
In 1906, his family emigrated to the United States, as they feared that his father would be recalled into the military during theRusso-Japanese War. His birth year may have been inaccurately recorded in the process of immigration. According to his son's 2003 documentary film, the family could not afford pencils. They made their owncharcoal sticks from burnt twigs so that Louis could earn a little money from drawings.[8] Later he earned money by playing piano to accompany silent movies in theaters. He became anaturalized citizen of the United States on May 15, 1914. His father changed their name to Kahn in 1915.[8]
Kahn excelled in art from a young age, repeatedly winning the annual award for the best watercolor by aPhiladelphia high school student. He was an unenthusiastic and undistinguished student atPhiladelphia Central High School until he took a course in architecture in his senior year, which convinced him to become an architect. He turned down an offer to go to thePennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to study art under a full scholarship, instead working at a variety of jobs to pay his own tuition for a degree in architecture at theUniversity of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts. There, he studied underPaul Philippe Cret in a version of theBeaux-Arts tradition, one that discouraged excessive ornamentation.[9]
In 1928, Kahn made a European tour. He was interested particularly in the medieval walled city ofCarcassonne, France, and the castles of Scotland, rather than any of the strongholds ofclassicism ormodernism.[11] After returning to the United States in 1929, Kahn worked in the offices ofPaul Philippe Cret, his former studio critic at the University of Pennsylvania, and then withZantzinger, Borie and Medary in Philadelphia.[10]
Among the more important of Kahn's early collaborations was one withGeorge Howe.[12] Kahn worked with Howe in the late 1930s on projects for thePhiladelphia Housing Authority and again in 1940, along with German-born architectOscar Stonorov, for the design of housing developments in other parts ofPennsylvania.[13] A formal architectural office partnership between Kahn and Oscar Stonorov began in February 1942 and ended in March 1947, which produced fifty-four documented projects and buildings.[14][15]
Kahn did not arrive at his distinctive architectural style until he was in his fifties. Initially working in a fairly orthodox version of the International Style, he was strongly influenced by a stay as architect-in-residence at theAmerican Academy in Rome during 1950, which marked a turning point in his career. After visiting the ruins of ancient buildings in Italy, Greece, and Egypt, he adopted a back-to-the-basics approach. He developed his own style, as influenced by earlier modern movements, but not limited by their sometimes-dogmatic ideologies. In the 1950s and 1960s, as a consultant architect for the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Kahn developed several plans for the center of Philadelphia that were never executed.[16]
He described this proposal at a lecture given in 1962 at the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado:
In the center of town the streets should become buildings. This should be interplayed with a sense of movement which does not tax local streets for non-local traffic. There should be a system of viaducts which encase an area which can reclaim the local streets for their own use, and it should be made so this viaduct has a ground floor of shops and usable area. A model which I did for the Graham Foundation recently, and which I presented to Mr. Entenza, showed the scheme.[19]
Kahn had three children with three women. With his wife Esther he had a daughter, Sue Ann.[3] WithAnne Tyng, who began her working collaboration and personal relationship with Kahn in 1945, he also had a daughter, Alexandra. When Tyng became pregnant in 1953, to mitigate the scandal, she went to Rome for the birth of their daughter.[24] WithHarriet Pattison, he had a son,Nathaniel Kahn. Anne Tyng was an architect and teacher, while Harriet Pattison was a pioneering landscape architect.[25] Kahn's obituary inThe New York Times, written byPaul Goldberger, mentions only Esther and his daughter by her as survivors.[3]
In 2003, Nathaniel Kahn released a documentary about his father,My Architect: A Son's Journey. TheOscar-nominated film provides views and insights into Kahn's architecture while exploring him personally through his family, friends and colleagues.[26]
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1951–1953), the first significant commission of Louis Kahn. The ceilings, which are three feet (0.9 meters) thick, consist of a grid of triangular openings that draw the eye upward into dimly-lit, three-sided pyramidal spaces. These exposed spaces provide the means for channeling the heating, cooling, and electrical services throughout the galleries.[27]
Richards Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1957–1965), a breakthrough in Kahn's career that helped set new directions for modern architecture with its clear expression of served and servant spaces and its evocation of the architecture of the past.
TheSalk Institute, La Jolla, California (1959–1965) was to be a campus composed of three main clusters: meeting and conference areas, living quarters, and laboratories. Only the laboratory cluster, consisting of two parallel blocks enclosing a water garden, was built. The two laboratory blocks frame a long view of the Pacific Ocean, accentuated by a thin linear fountain that seems to reach for the horizon. It has been named "arguably the defining work" of Kahn.[28]
First Unitarian Church, Rochester, New York (1959–1969), named as one of the greatest religious structures of the twentieth century byPaul Goldberger, thePulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic.[29] Tall, narrow window recesses create an irregular rhythm of shadows on the exterior while four light towers flood the sanctuary walls with indirect, natural light.
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (1967–1972), features repeated bays of cycloid-shaped barrel vaults with light slits along the apex, which bathe the artwork on display in an ever-changing diffuse light.
Arts United Center, Fort Wayne, Indiana (1973), The only building realized of a ten-building Arts Campus vision, Kahn's only theatre and building in the Midwest
Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in Dhaka, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was Kahn's last project, developed 1962 to 1974. Kahn got the design contract with the help ofMuzharul Islam, one of his students atYale University, who worked with him on the project. The Bangladeshi Parliament building is the centerpiece of the national capital complex designed by Kahn, which includes hostels, dining halls, and a hospital. According to Robert McCarter, author ofLouis I. Kahn, "it is one of the twentieth century's greatest architectural monuments, and is without question Kahn's magnum opus."[31]
Louis Kahn's work infused theInternational style with a fastidious, highly personal taste.Isamu Noguchi called him "a philosopher among architects." He was concerned with creating strong formal distinctions betweenserved spaces andservant spaces. What he meant byservant spaces was not spaces for servants, but rather spaces that serve other spaces, such as stairwells, corridors, restrooms, or any other back-of-house function such as storage space or mechanical rooms. His palette of materials tended toward heavily textured brick and bare concrete, the textures often reinforced by juxtaposition to highly refined surfaces such as travertine marble. Kahn argued that brick can be more than the basic building material:
If you think of Brick, you say to Brick, 'What do you want, Brick?' And Brick says to you, 'I like an Arch.' And if you say to Brick, 'Look, arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel over you. What do you think of that, Brick?' Brick says, 'I like an Arch.' And it's important, you see, that you honor the material that you use. ... You can only do it if you honor the brick and glorify the brick instead of shortchanging it.[19]
There's a magic to the project. That the task is daunting makes it worthy of the man it honors, who guided the nation through the Depression, the New Deal and a world war. As for Mr. Kahn, he died in 1974, as he passed alone through New York City's Penn Station. In his briefcase were renderings of the memorial, his last completed plan.[40]
The editorial describes Kahn's plan as:
... simple and elegant. Drawing inspiration from Roosevelt's defense of the Four Freedoms—of speech and religion, and from want and fear—he designed an open 'room and a garden' at the bottom of the island. Trees on either side form a 'V' defining a green space, and leading to a two-walled stone room at the water's edge that frames the United Nations and the rest of the skyline.
A group spearheaded byWilliam J. vanden Heuvel raised over $50 million in public and private funds between 2005 and 2012 to establish the memorial. Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park officially opened to the public on October 24, 2012.
In the 1993 filmIndecent Proposal, character David Murphy (played byWoody Harrelson), referenced Kahn during a lecture to architecture students, attributing the quote "Even a brick wants to be something" to Kahn.
Pulitzer Prize-winning composerLewis Spratlan, with collaborators Jenny Kallick and John Downey (Amherst College, class of 2003), composed the chamber operaArchitect as a character study of Kahn. The premiere recording was due to be released in 2012 by Navona Records.
^Paulus, Karin; Pesti, Olavi (November 23, 2006)."Kus sündis Louis Kahn?" [Where was Louis Kahn born?].EAA Architecture News (in Estonian). Eesti Ekspress. Archived fromthe original on October 3, 2023. RetrievedJanuary 8, 2013.
^Foderaro, Lisa W. (October 17, 2012)."Dedicating Park to Roosevelt and His View of Freedom".The New York Times. RetrievedNovember 14, 2012. The work was commissioned in 1972, and Kahn was carrying his designs for the project when he died.
^Glenn, Lucinda (November 2001)."Library History".Graduate Theological Union. Archived fromthe original on March 5, 2012. RetrievedOctober 30, 2011.
Merrill, Michael (2010).Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out. Baden: Lars Mueller Publishers. p. 240.ISBN978-3-03778-221-7.
Merrill, Michael (2010).Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Baden: Lars Mueller Publishers. p. 240.ISBN978-3-03778-220-0.
Vassella, Alessandro (2013).Louis Kahn: Silence and Light. Zurich: Park Books. pp. 168, 1 Audio–CD.ISBN978-3-906027-18-0.
Solomon, Susan (August 31, 2009).Louis I. Kahn's Jewish Architectur, Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life. Brandeis.ISBN978-1584657880.
Mowla, Qazi Azizul 2007 Kahn's Creation in Dhaka – Re Evaluated, Jahangirnagar Planning Review,(Journal: issn=1728-4198).Vol.5, June 2007, Dhaka, pp. 85–96.
Kohane, Peter (2001). "Louis Kahn's Theory of 'Inspired Ritual' and Architectural Space".Architectural Theory Review.6 (1):87–95.doi:10.1080/13264820109478418.S2CID144340999.
Choudhury, Bayezid Ismail 2014. PhD dissertation at the University of Sydney 'The genesis of Jatio Sangsad Bhaban at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka'
Sully, Nicole (2019). "Architecture from the Ouija Board: Louis Kahn's Roosevelt Memorials and the Posthumous Monuments of Modernism".Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand.29 (1):60–85.doi:10.1080/10331867.2018.1540083.S2CID191998111.
Wurman, Richard Saul, ed. (1986).What will be has always been: the words of Louis I. Kahn. New York: Access Press: Rizzoli.ISBN0847806065.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Harriet Pattison:Our days are like full years : a memoir with letters from Louis Kahn, New Haven : Yale University Press, [2020],ISBN978-0-300-22312-5
Luigi Monzo (Review):Michael Merrill: Louis Kahn. The Importance of a Drawing (2021), in: Journal für Kunstgeschichte, 27.2023/3, pp. 244–256.
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