Louis Kahn
Louis Isadore Kahn (
February 20, 1901/1902 –
March 17,
1974) was a world-renowned
architect who practiced in
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. He later served as a professor of
architecture at the
University of Pennsylvania and at
Yale University.
Kahn (whose original surname was Schmalowski) was born in
Kuressaare on the
Estonian island of
Saaremaa, then part of the Russian Empire. In 1905 his
Jewish family immigrated to the
United States, fearing that his father would be recalled into the military during the
Russo-Japanese War. He was raised in
Philadelphia and became a
naturalized citizen on
May 15,
1914.
He trained in a rigorous
Beaux-Arts tradition, with its emphasis on drawing, at the
University of Pennsylvania. After completing his Master's degree in 1924, Kahn made a European tour and settled in the medieval walled city of
Carcassonne, rather than any of the strongholds of
classicism or
modernism. In 1925â€"1926 the
bowtie-sporting Kahn served as Chief Designer for the
Sesquicentennial Exposition. From 1947 he spent a decade teaching at Yale, where his influence was paramount, then moved to Penn. His prominent apprentices include
Moshe Safdie and
Robert Venturi.
He died of a heart attack in a bathroom in
Pennsylvania Station in
New York City. He was not identified for three days, as he had crossed out the home address on his passport. He had just returned from a work trip to India, and despite his long career, he was deeply in debt at death.
Louis Kahn's work infused
International style with a fastidious, highly personal taste, a poetry of light. His few projects reflect his deep personal involvement with each.
Isamu Noguchi called him "a philosopher among architects".
Kahn had three different families with three different women: his wife, Esther;
Anne Tyng, a co-worker; and Harriet Pattison. His obituary in the
New York Times, written by
Paul Goldberger, famously mentions only Esther and his daughter by her as survivors. But in 2003, Kahn's son with Pattison, Nathaniel Kahn, released an
Oscar-nominated biographical documentary about his father, titled
My Architect: A Son's Journey, which gives glimpses of the architecture while focusing on talking to the people who knew him: family, friends and colleagues. It includes interviews with renowned architect contemporaries such as
B. V. Doshi,
Frank Gehry,
Philip Johnson,
I. M. Pei, and
Robert A. M. Stern, but also an insider's view of Kahn's unusual family arrangements.
The unusual manner of his death is used as a point of departure and a metaphor for Kahn's "nomadic" life in the film. There is a memorial park in his honor at 11th & Pine Sreets in
Philadelphia.
*
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1951â€"1953), the first significant commission of Louis Kahn and his first masterpiece, replete with technical innovations, like a floor slab system giving access to mechanical systems, and a somewhat '
brutalist' shock to Yale's neo-Gothic context
* Richards Medical Research Laboratories,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, (1957â€"1965), regarding which Kahn said, "No space you can devise can satisfy these requirements. I thought what they should have was a corner for thought, in a word, a studio instead of slices of space"
* Jonas
Salk Institute,
La Jolla, California, (1959â€"1965), divided into work and contemplative spaces suffused with light and the ocean
*
Phillips Exeter Academy Library,
Exeter, New Hampshire, (1965â€"1972), awarded the Twenty-Five year award by the
American Institute of Architects*
Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in
Dhaka,
Bangladesh (1962â€"1974), considered to be his masterpiece and one of the great monuments of International Modernism
*
Kimbell Art Museum,
Fort Worth, Texas, (1967â€"1972)
*
Yale Center for British Art,
New Haven, Connecticut, (1969â€"1974)
*
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in India
All dates refer to the year work commenced
*1951 -
Yale University Art Gallery*1954 -
Trenton Bath House*1957 -
Richards Medical Center*1959 -
Salk Institute*1959 -
Esherick House*1959 -
First Unitarian Church of Rochester*1960 -
Erdman Hall Dormitories*1960 -
Norman Fisher House*1963 -
Institute of Public Administration*1962 -
National Assembly Building, Dhaka, Bangladesh*1967 -
Exeter Library*1967 -
Kimbell Art Museum*1969 -
Yale Center for British Art*
The Trenton Bath House of Louis Kahn*
A Site About Louis Kahn's Bath House*
Great Buildings on-line, with links*
Factsheet*
Honoring Kahn at his centennial, with photographs*
Drawings for the Kimbell Art Museum, Beaux-Arts training as applied to Modernism
*
My Architect, biographical movie (
IMDb, 2003)
*
The Louis Kahn Archive, University of Pennsylvania*
Space is the place, a personal collection of photographs taken at various Kahn buildings]
*
Yale University Art Gallery - Louis I. Kahn building, information from the Yale University Art Gallery on the renovations being done to highlight Kahn's original intentions for the YUAG building.]
