Louis Kahn

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Salk Institute, La Jolla, California

Louis Isadore Kahn (February 20, 1901 or 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.

1 Life
2 Important works
3 Timeline of Works
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Life

Louis Kahn, whose original name was Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky (Schmalowski), was born in Kuressaare on the Estonian island of Saaremaa, then part of the Russian Empire. His actual birth year may have been inaccurately recorded when, 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 (France), rather than any of the strongholds of classicism or modernism. In 1925–1926 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". While widely known for his spaces' poetic sensibilities, Kahn also worked closely with engineers and contractors on his buildings. The results were often technically innovative and highly refined. His work was highly influential among 'high tech' architects of the late 20th century (i.e. Renzo Piano and Norman Foster) in addition to those who hewed more closely to his heavier, more monumental style (Tadao Ando, for example).

Memorial park in his honor at 11th & Pine Sreets in Philadelphia.

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.

[edit] Important works

Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban, Dhaka hosts the national parliament of Bangladesh

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1951–1953), 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, (1957–1965), 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, (1959–1965), divided into work and contemplative spaces suffused with light and the ocean
Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, New Hampshire, (1965–1972), awarded the Twenty-Five year award by the American Institute of Architects
Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in Dhaka, Bangladesh (1962–1974), considered to be his masterpiece and one of the great monuments of International Modernism
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, (1967–1972)
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, (1969–1974)
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in India