Louis Kahn: monumental and timeless architecture

Louis Kahn

Among the greatest architects of the XXth century, Louis Kahn makes his own path, as it happens for every major personality of all time. Despite today his legacy and awards are doubless, he never caught up the fame of the main Modern Movement leaders such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. Why ? 

Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky was born in 1901 in a small Estonian village that earlier in his life he left, with his family, moving to the United States where he became a US citizen in 1916 and definitively changed his name in Louis Kahn. He settled down in Philadelphia and held strong ties with this city, in fact he graduated there at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania in 1924, he took his very first jobs, and in 1935 he founded his own atelier at 1510 Walnut Street, besides his architectural career will properly start up only from 50s, at mature age. The journey in the Mediterranean sea and the time he spent at the American Academy in Rome, between 1950 and 1951, definitively impressed his way to be an architect. In Egyptian, Greek and Roman ruins, Kahn found the true inspiration for his job. The sense of symmetry, order, magnificence and strength that he felt facing the pyramids, the Greek temples and Roman building heritage made him understand that the meaning of the architecture was to be found in its timelessness, in its way of being eternal monument. In order to meet this principle, Kahn chose primary geometrical shapes and used simple and “immortal” materials, such as rustic bricks, rough concrete, travertine.

Kahn's sketches 

It appears clearly then how Kahn’s monumental and massive architecture was at the time faraway from the Modern Movement principles, made of lightness, glass and functionality. “Form follows function” the slogan associated with the International Style was reversed by Kahn: the function follows the form because the form has its primary role of conveying a sense of balance that is apart from the activity hosted inside. Thus it happens that stairs and isles are shaped into circles and triangles, as well as the geometrical coffered ceilings where sometimes the artificial lighting system is set or, more often, the natural light passes through, giving back interior spaces with an extraordinary intimate privacy, nearly sacred. The Yale University Art Gallery 1951/53 and the British Art Center 1969/74, both in New Haven (Connecticut) where Kahn had been teaching at Yale University, are perfect examples of what just said.

Yale Art Gallery

Yale Art Gallery interiors: coffered ceiling and light system

Yale Art Gallery stairwell

British Art Center interiors

British Art Center coffered ceilings

British Art Center natural light through ceiling

British Art Center stairwell

According to Frank O.Gehry, Kahn was a “breath of fresh air” from the arid functionalism that was the trend during those years. Besides Gehry for his training is surely as much as the antithesis of the International Style, it is not biased stating that Louis Kahn made his own distinctive style working outside the Modern Movement, and his architecture are modern yet eternal, like the Roman ruins that he desperately fell in love with.

Tomorrow’s City Hall Philadelphia

Whilst working for the Yale University Art Galley project, Kahn were also designing the City Tower for the Tomorrow’s City Hall Philadelphia 1952/57, unrealized building that however signed the development in Kahn’s thought towards serial macrostructures, honored with the later designs for the Kimbel Art Museum 1966/72 in Forth Worth (Texas) and the National Assembly Building in Bangladesh 1962/83 completed after his death. 

Kimbel Art Museum

Kimbel Art museum interiors and natural light

In fact, particularly in these two projects was also quite decisive the collaboration with two women, first the architect Anne Griswold Tyng, who teamed up for the City Tower project as well as for the Yale University Art Gallery and, about ten years later Harriet Pattinson, landscape architect who brought green in Kahn’s architectures, as for the Kimbel Art Museum. Kahn, who has been married for his entire life with Esther Virginia Israeli who gave him a daughter, Sue Ann, actually had three families with three women. In fact he had a second daughter, Alexandra, from the love affair with Anne Tyng and also a son, Nathaniel,from Harriet Pattinson. In a time when being a single mother was more than a scandal, both women spent their life privately and never stopped loving Kahn. 

Kahn and his son Nathaniel

Even though the three families had been living in the same city, they had never met before his funeral. On March the 17th 1974, at the age of 73, Louis Kahn died of a heart attack in a men's restroom in Pennsylvania Station in New York. He had just returned from a work trip and he went unidentified for three days because he had crossed out the home address on his passport. His partner Harriet loved to think that the reason was that he had finally decided to leave his wife and move with her and their son Nathaniel, but nobody will ever know. Twenty-five years later though, the three children finally met, now adults, thanks to the movie that the son desired to shoot about his father’s life. My Architect, nominated at Oscar 2004 as best documentary, tells a son’s journey discovering Louis Kahn’s masterpieces around the world. The architect died when Nathaniel was only 11 years old, therefore this was the way for him to get to know this father, eventually the man behind the myth, by means of visiting all the most famous places that he had designed and interviewing Kahn’s friends, collegues and people who had known him or heard about his jobs.

Nathaniel Kahn speach: Scenes from "My Architect"

http://www.ted.com/talks/nathaniel_kahn_on_my_architect.html

Movie dvd cover

Everyone agreed that “Lou” was extraordinary charismatic, an eccentric artist, genial, stubborn, but also generous and warm-hearted, apparently unable to give enough love to his loved ones though. Completely devoted to his job, where he conveyed an absolute personal involvement, he used to discharge there all his unsolved private problems. His way of honoring materials where often a sign of loyalty, because he wanted that every single component function was clear. When something changed, instead of getting rid of it Kahn celebrated it, instead of hiding difficulties, he magnified them to take possession of them. The extensive use of rough concrete can remind of his disfigured face. When he was a child, a fire accident seared his face and he carried these scars for the rest of his life, never trying to hide them. Kahn’s soul is in his most famous architectures and his spirituality, beyond being Jewish, is really tangible only visiting the spaces he designed.

Louis Kahn scares

Rough concrete

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, commissioned in 1959 at La Jolla, California on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, perfectly illustrates these concepts. The large inner courtyard, which incredibly evokes the majesty of a cathedral, was initially thought filled with trees, but later, on the advice of the Mexican architect Luis Barragan, Kahn chose to leave it bare. Coated with travertine, it is cut along its length by a thin channel of water that crosses the courtyard and then reach a series of tanks below. The strong horizontality of this airy space and the verticality of the Study Towers, adjacent to the courtyard and symmetrically arranged with walls at 45 degree angles facing spectacular views, evoke in the visitors a feeling of balance, an absolute and timeless space very fascinating. The signs of formwork used for the casting of concrete are deliberately visible, however the surfaces appear elegantly with, at some points as for the Study Towers, Teak wood panels are added.

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

The last stop of Nathaniel's journey was the National Assembly of Bangladesh, Houses of Parliament and the final as well as the larger project Kahn had designed, completed nine years after his death. It took 25 years to finish the work executed entirely by hand, and in 1971 during the war of independence from Pakistan, the building was saved from the bombing because mistaken for an ancient ruin. Accepting the challenge of creating the institute for democracy in that country made Kahn a myth and earned him the immense gratitude among the people, interviewed by Nathaniel during the shooting for the documentary who still remember him with affection. The main feature of the building is the monumental presence of the huge masses of concrete, that once again seek their ideal expression in perfectly geometric shapes: circle, half circle, square and triangle. For the building of the Assembly, Kahn chose a red brick produced by a local factory, and he has also used the local indigenous techniques for technical equipment.

National Assembly of Bangladesh exterior views

National Assembly of Bangladesh interior views

The legacy left by Louis Kahn is not negligible. Although as mentioned, he had never shared the formal canons of the International Style, in retrospect we can certainly agree on how his projects have in fact significantly influenced his contemporaries and especially the post-modern developments in the following decades. Robert Venturi was his pupil; Tadao Ando owes him, at least in part, the use of exposed concrete and the role of light defining stereometric spaces; High Tech 60s architecture by Renzo Piano, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers found definitely inspiration in the testing of macrostructures that Kahn proposed with the City Tower project.

Tracing an individual and, we can say, philosophical path, that in the purity of shapes and materials researches the solemnity and the essence of architecture, the works of Louis Kahn really appear as timeless masterpieces, and make him one of the great masters of the twentieth century architecture.

Louis Kahn