Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: David N. Fixler
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Louis Kahn, Modern monumentality, Conservation of modern architecture.
Louis I. Kahn fascinate us all with his passion for Mediterranean culture. Precisely at the moment when the centre of the dominant culture moved from Europe to North America, he was able to immerse himself in the Roman brick structures of the great classical buildings, interpreting the timeless forms of antiquity. When the glass curtain of the bureaucratic International Style became trivialized, he turned to the archaic sources of architecture to discover light, matter and desire, in the pyramids of Gis. or in the ruins of the Caracalla Baths. Kahn is a unique case in the history of 20th-century architecture: he introduced the question of monumentality, a matter heretical to the Modern Movement, and emphasized the value of permanence, and the tectonic character and materiality of constructive elements. He was able to read History creatively, interpreting the permanent value of the monuments for the community and rescuing their public sense of place. Posing questions such as “what do you want, brick?” or “does the inside of a column contain a promise?”, he produced an impressive body of work and a doctrine with originality, often appearing philosophical, poetic or even mystical. Moving away from dogmas, but never losing the functional and constructive sense of modulation, he broke the systematic use of fluid space and reintroduced a sense of ritual and the value of solemnity, while achieving the most suggestive syntheses between modernity and tradition, as Otávio Paz recognized, between the use of technique and memory.
Published:
2018-06-01
Editorial
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Louis I. Kahn fascinate us all with his passion for Mediterranean culture. Precisely at the moment when the center of the dominant culture moved from Europe to North America, he was able to immerse himself in the Roman brick structures of the great classical buildings, interpreting the timeless forms of antiquity. When the glass curtain of the bureaucratic International Style became trivialized, he turned to the archaic sources of architecture to discover light, matter and desire, in the pyramids of Gis. or in the ruins of the Caracalla Baths. Kahn is a unique case in the history of...
Introduction
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The late architect and historian Stanford Anderson once remarked that authenticity is the third rail of architectural debate — a place to venture at one’s peril. Notwithstanding, any architectural intervention demands that we engage and understand what is essential — authentic — in the original to its creator, those for whom it was created and all those all who experience it — to ensure fidelity to the character and integrity of the original work. Louis I. Kahn was one of a handful of truly significant architects of the last 75 years, and arguably the one who (with Le Corbusier) will...
Essays
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In the quest to save recent-past, mid-century modern buildings, it is important to recognize how symbolic and commercial considerations influence the likelihood that some buildings are preserved while other buildings are demolished. Simply put, why does one building survive and another not? This article compares two of Louis I. Kahn’s projects — one a commercial building and the other institutional. The comparison examines how various dynamics facilitate or hinder the preservation of modern buildings. Further analysis considers steps that preservation-minded individuals and organizations...
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The Trenton Bath House complex holds an important place in Louis I. Kahn’s oeuvre. As he stated: “The world discovered me after I designed the Richards Laboratories building, but I discovered myself after designing that little concrete bath house in Trenton”1. Given its significance, a thoughtful restoration that allowed the buildings to remain in active use was imperative. Because the complex embodies in miniature many of the theoretical and practical considerations that accompany the work of Kahn and other modern-era architects, the process, outcome, and projected future of the...
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Louis I. Kahn’s Richards Laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania are a paradoxical building. At the same time that they perhaps represent the epitome of Kahn's literal expression of structure and material hierarchy, servant and served spaces and the role of mechanical systems in determining architectural form, these powerful ideas never came together programmatically to enable a fully functional, complete work of architecture. This paper describes the quest to solve the functional conundrum and technical shortcomings of Richards, to bring the architecture and program closer...
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In 2013 the Salk Institute for Biological Studies partnered with the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) to commence development of a conservation program for the long-term care of the teak window walls. Phase 1 of the program included preliminary historic research and an assessment of significance, surveys and investigative inspection openings, wood and fungus identification, and analyses of past surface treatments. Guidelines were then developed based on three treatment approaches, ranging from in situ cleaning and treatment, to selective repairs, and finally in-kind replacement of teak...
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Louis I. Kahn's attitude toward materials was expressed in his documented preference to allow exterior wood siding to be left unfinished and weather to a silver grey. Influenced by vernacular architecture of the American rural landscape, this natural treatment has proved a challenge for stewards, as exposure to the elements is gradually destructive. Like many works of the Modern Movement that retain their original siding, Kahn’s wood-clad structures stand at a critical crossroads where the architect’s intent and retention of fabric converge. A selected group of Kahn’s residential works...
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The Yale Center for British Art was designed by acclaimed American architect Louis I. Kahn to house a collection of British art on the campus of Yale University. The Center, Kahn’s third and final museum building, was designed between 1970 and 1974 and opened its doors to the public in 1977. By 2002 it was evident that the building was fast approaching a crossroads: finishes had reached the end of their lives, program space was in desperate demand, patron amenities and life safety measures no longer met contemporary standards and, worst of all, infrastructural systems strained to sustain...
Documentation Issues
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Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (IIMA), is under an ongoing conservation project to preserve, restore and upgrade the built fabric of the iconic and modern heritage structures designed by Louis I. Kahn, in India. These include eighteen dormitory buildings and the main complex (the school) housing four faculty blocks, the classroom complex and the Vikram Sarabhai library building. The project entails carrying out a detailed study of the cultural significance of the buildings, conducting surveys for preparation of as-built drawings, building condition mapping and assessment,...
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This paper surveys the historical urban infrastructure and architecture of the School of Mechanical Engineering at Tel-Aviv University, designed by one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, Louis I. Kahn. The paper describes the monumental architecture of the building, which hints subtly to the qualities and complexity of the internal spaces. The structure is the only building ever erected in Israel by Kahn, and became an architectural icon, presenting the best in the Brutalist architectural style to be found in Tel-Aviv-Yafo, alongside other outstanding structures from the...
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At the end of the spring of 1943, the German forces were finally defeated in Northern Tunisia and had to leave the country. This allowed the French protectorate to take power and in the years that followed, thanks to massive American economic aid, undertake a very important project of architectural construction and reconstruction. All of Tunisia was involved but the four main cities (Tunis, Bizerte, Sousse and Sfax), whose populations were expanding, saw entire parts of themselves reconstructed. Today, a unique experience of modernity still remains in the tissue of all these cities, but...
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So much of modern architecture’s early history depended on a handful of courageous pioneers. One of the first Modern Movement buildings in England was the achievement of an unlikely trio — a plywood salesman and his psychotherapist wife, and a Canadian part-time journalist turned architect. This article and the accompanying text by Magnus Englund tell the extraordinary story of the Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead, London – their origins and heyday, the linked program of furniture design, their declining postwar fortunes and ruination, and then their recent and remarkable rescue and...
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The Isokon Furniture Company was never commercially successful, yet its legacy has stubbornly refused to die and disappear. Even today, this radical collection of plywood furniture is manufactured and used. The main reason is of course the names associated with it: Jack Pritchard, Wells Coates, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy and – more recently – Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby. The genius little Isokon Penguin Donkey, first designed by the Austrian émigré architect Egon Riss in 1939 and marketed by publisher Allen Lane’s then new imprint Penguin Books, is particularly...
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The Modern Movement in architecture, in so far as any such movement can be defined, was predicated on the idea that architecture had to change to reflect the radical technological advances that had occurred during the century preceding its formulation, and also to reflect the changing social needs that those advances had generated. Architecture, it was felt, had ossified and lost vitality as a result of not recognizing those changes. A century has now passed since the Modern Movement first formulated this program, and technical advances and the social changes they induce have of course...
Interviews
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In February 2018, Ana Tostões interviewed David Brownlee, pioneer researcher on Louis I. Kahn and an historian of modern architecture and professor of the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania, in order to debate Kahn’s realm of ideas and their contemporary significance. David Brownlee was guest curator of the exhibition Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992), and is co-author of the homonymous book (with David G. De Long, New York, 1991, translated into four other languages) that stands as the first worldwide comprehensive...
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In February 2018, Ana Tostões interviewed William Whitaker, curator and collections manager of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, where the Louis I. Kahn Collection is hosted, in order to debate the importance of documentation for the preservation of Kahn’s legacy. William Whitaker was curatorial consultant of the exhibition Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture (Vitra Design Museum, 2012) and is the co-author of The Houses of Louis I. Kahn (with George Marcus, 2013), the first comprehensive publication on the architect’s house designs. The...
News
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Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture is a consequent review and historic summary of Louis I. Kahn’s life, 20 years after the last exhibition about him1. This exhibition, compiling the main works and research projects of Kahn, is a full experience that allows the public to get to know the life of one of the most important American architects of the 20th century2. The starting point of the exhibition is a chronological list of projects (1926-1974) of Kahn, entailing his works as a design consultant, unbuilt and constructed projects as well as urban plans, publications and exhibition...
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The degradation of plastic building components — and claddings in particular — is an increasing challenge in heritage buildings. Research and the development of appropriate strategies for the architectural conservation, restoration and replacement of synthetic building components is still in its infancy. This was reason enough to stage a one-day international seminar, Plastics in Modern Movement Buildings. Conservation and (Re-)design of Synthetic Building Components focusing on the exterior applications in the building envelope and as prefabricated elements. The seminar took place on...
