Symmetrical, Geometric, Impactful.
You see the designs of Louis Kahn and you will probably have a rush of different emotions.
He is an architect whose works are adored and admired by millions of people around the
world.
But is the legacy of an architect just his buildings, or does he leave something more
behind.
Louis Kahn lived a very complicated life, a life that came to a very tragic end.
His story is not just the story of an architect, it’s a story of a student, a teacher, a
husband, a father and more importantly a man who loved his work more than anything in this
world, sometimes maybe too much.
Welcome to Blessedarch and today on this channel we are exploring the life and designs of Louis
Isadora Kahn.
Now many of you might not know this but Louis Kahn was not his real name.
Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky, as he was called at birth, was born into a poor Jewish family
in 1901, in Estonia which at that time was part of the Russian Empire.
Kahn’s father served in the Russian Army as a paymaster but also possessed talents
as an artist and designer in reverse glass painting.
Now if you have seen the images of Louis Kahn, you must have noticed that he had scars on
his face, he got them when he was young.
At the age of three, he saw coals in the stove and was captivated by the light that they
emitted.
He took a coal and put it in his apron, which caught on fire and burned his face.
He carried these scars for the rest of his life.
His father at that time thought it would have been better if he had died.
But his mother said he would grow up to be great because of it.
Makes you wonder, could she see something all along.
In 1906, as the Russo Japanese War was taking place, his family emigrated to the United
States, as they feared that his father would be recalled into the military.
Now moving away from your home is never easy and his poor when they made the shift.
From an early age, Lou displayed a gift for drawing, but since art supplies were costly
his family gave him burnt twigs and matches to draw with.
He used to sell these drawings earning money for the family.
Soon as the years went on he finally became a naturalized citizen of the United States,
and since they now needed to properly fit into this country, his father officially changed
his name to Kahn in 1915.
His obvious talent for art prompted his teachers to enroll him in competitions for gifted students
throughout his schooling.
As the years went on, Lou got better and better at drawing, and you might wonder if he was
soo good at art, how did he end up becoming an architect.
At his high school he attended a course on Architecture.
This course taught him about the buildings and designs of ancient Greek, Egyptian and
roman architecture.
He was fascinated and had found his path.
Despite winning a full art scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, heinstead
chose to work a variety of jobs so that he could pay his tuition and pursue a degree
in Architecture.
And that is exactly what he did and in 1924 graduated as a full fledged architect.
This is the Salk Lake Institute.
It is one of the most important and celebrated works of Louis Kahn.
Notice the symmetry, notice how the huge volumes give way to the negative space and to the
world beyond.
Notice the play of light, the play of forms.
Louis Kahn is still remembered and his works studied, because his structures have the ability
to move you, they have the ability to both be imposing and grand and yet have a delicate
play with light and natural elements.
This design style of his is what he is remembered for, but this style is not what he started
with.
When lou graduated in 1924, he was just a fresh young mind, still exploring, still trying
to figure out what he wanted to build, but more importantly how he wanted to build it.
From 1924 to 1950, he explored a lot in his career.
After getting 4 years of experience as a draftsman and taking a year off to tour Europe, in 1929
he started working with Paul Phillipe Cret, who had been his mentor while he was studying.
He later also partnered with George Howe and then Oscar Stonov.
But a lot of these designs remained largely unbuilt.
During this time he also met the woman the woman he was going to spend the rest of his
life with Esther Virgina Israeli.
She was a research assistant and administrator for a neurologist.
In 1930, they got married and Lou moved into the home of his in-laws.
And 10 years later, they welcomed their daughter Su Anne into the world.
Up until 1950 Lou did not create a lot of buildings.
Some of his commissions that he got during this time that actually went on to be built
were the Jersey Homesteads Cooperative Development, in, New Jersey , the Jesse Oser House , the
Phillip Q. Roche House and the Morton and Lenore Weiss House, all in Pennsylvania.
But as I said before, you look at these buildings, and Louis Kahn would never be the name that
will come to your mind.
The style is just so different.
But all that is about to change.
There was one event that changed the course of his life and design style forever.
You see During these time he was very much influenced by the international style and
the works of Le Corbusier.
But even within these inspirations He was still trying to find himself, he wanted to
explore, he wanted to know what his style was, every stroke of his pencil at that time
was a question and then in the year 1950 everything changed, when he finally found his answers.
In the year 1950 Lou was offered a residence position at the American Academy of Rome for
6 months and he jumped at the opportunity.
Now while in Rome, he took out the time to travel across Europe.
This was his second tour on the continent but this time, something moved him.
After visiting the ruins of ancient buildings in Italy, Greece, and Egypt, he was struck
by their beauty and form.
He rediscovered what countless architects had discovered when they came face to face
with these monuments.
He had sketched them before, but this time he was especially affected by the way the
Mediterranean light played upon the haunting, silent, and monumental forms.
Lou knew he had finally found what he was looking for.
Modern buildings that had the feel and presence of ancient ruins.
He wanted to create.
Timlessness.
He wanted to create Monumentality.
And this began the renaissance of Louis Kahn, the architect whose work the world came to
respect and adore.
While he was in Rome, he received the commission to design the extension to the Yale University
art Gallery.
When he came back, he finally set out to create the first building of his new found architectural
style.
Completed in 1953, the building was revolutionary in terms of American museum architecture.
Situated amidst collegiate Gothic structures, the museum—constructed out of brick, concrete,
steel, and glass—presented a windowless facade to the street and featured open interiors
with flexibly partitioned galleries.
A honeycomb-like tetrahedral concrete ceiling contained air ducts and light fixtures in
an ingenious arrangement.
It was a beautiful composition But amazing as it was it still wasn’t refined.
He still had his international style inspirations, but you can see with this building that they
were evolving.
If this project got the wheels of his style turning, the next put them at full speed.
Finally Lou got the project that made it clear to him what his style was and what he will
pursue for the rest of his life.
But before we can discuss about that building, we need to discuss a bit of his complicated
personal life.
So as I told you Lou had a wife and a daughter.
But in 1945 he met a young graduate called Anne Griswold Tyng.
She had studied architecture at the Harvard graduate school of design and had joined Lou’s
office.
Working in close proximity, Lou and Anne became involved with each other.
Years went by and then Anne became pregnant.
She went to Rome so that she could give birth to their daughter, away from the prying eyes
of people and so in 1954 she welcomed their daughter Alexandra into the world.
And yes if you are wondering, Lou was still married to Esther at the time.
Infact he remained married to Ester till the end of his life.
The reason I brought this part of his life up because the next project, the one that
solidified his style was one that he completed with Anne.
Around that time Lou had got the commission to design a bath house in Trenton.
After Anne came birth, she came to the US and the two of them together worked on this
new project.
From a design perspective, the bath house actually appears as a simple cruciform—four
square concrete block rooms or areas, surrounding an open atrium.
Each of the rooms is topped by a simple, wooden rectangular pyramid.
At the corner of each room there is a large, open rectangular column that supports the
roof. and it was in this building that he first articulated his notion of spaces serving
and spaces served.
Kahn often spoke of this project as a turning point in his design philosophy, "From this
came a generative force which is recognizable in every building which I have done since."
Anne Tyng recalled that Lou used to say, that even though the world discovered him through
the Richard building, which was his next project, but he discovered himself when he built the
concrete bath house in Trenton.
Richard Building, as Lou said, was one that truly showed to the world what he had to offer.
In the year 1957 to 62 Kahn designed and built the Richards Laboratories at the university
of Pennsylvania.
This building even though it was plagued with functional issues became a mecca for architects,
who came to study its austere and imposing duct towers; the abstract, rhythmic interplay
of its glass, brick, and concrete facade; and the elegant articulation of its spaces.
The world could now see what he had to offer.
And so with this new building made, he started to get a plethora of commissions.
Everybody wanted a building designed by him.
His next project was probably one that people consider one of his masterpieces, I am ofcourse
talking about the salk lake institute.
We talked about it before in the video, but now lets take a moment to full appreciate
this project.
In 1959, he got the commission to create this scientific facility commissioned by Jonas
Salk who wanted to create the most beautiful and stimulating research center in the world,
attracting the most brilliant and creative minds.
Kahn’s powerful sequence of twin structures is skillfully oriented to avoid the glare
and winds of the hot coastal climate, while framing spectacular views of the distant ocean
below.
A lot of people consider this to be the greatest masterpiece by Lou.
In the year 1962, he got the commission for IIM in Ahmedabad.
A lot of you might already be acquainted with this building.
One made of exposed bricks with these giant arches, that filled the space with playful
light.
The reason I love this project is not just because it’s great but because it actually
got Lou together with B. V Doshi.
This was the project that he was working on in his final days.
The day before he passed away he was in India.
He had finished some work on the project, Lou had dinner with BV Doshi and his family.
The next day he went back to the United States.
After he landed he went to the Penn Station in Manhatten to commute and it was right there
that it happened.
Lou Kahn died of a heart attack at the restroom at that very station.
A sudden and tragic death ending the life of what some might say an architectural legend.
Infact just before his death he was called America’s foremost living architect.
But the tragedy was not just how he died, but what happened after his death.
On his passport, the home address had been crossed off, and no one knew who to contact.
He lay there in the morgue for 3 days and then the police were finally able to get a
hold of someone, and tell them Louis I Kahn was dead.
Louis Kahn left behind not just his beautiful buildings but a plethora of knowledge on what
it means to be an architect and finding your style.
The IIM was essentially finished by the time he passed but it was officially inaugurated
after his death.
But His last project, his magnum Opus was one that he never saw to completion, the Parliament
of Bangladesh.
Lou had got the commission in 1961 and he worked on this project util he passed.
When he started the project, it was for a different country, it was east Pakistan, but
by the time the project was over it was welcomed into a brand new independent country, Bangladesh.
It is a sight to behold.
A project that truly captures the essence of his design style.
With all these projects coming his way and after getting all of these accolades and awards,
one would think Lou was doing well financially towards the end of his life.
He was not.
What a lot of people, even the ones close to him, did not know about him at the time
was that Louis Kahn was quite broke towards the end of his life.
He spent all of his money trying to build the structures that he loved with all his
heart.
As for his families.
There was one last twist in the story that I did not tell you about.
In the year 1958, a year after the Richards Building, Louis was getting a lot of bigger
projects that required focus on landscape and site planning.
Lou had split up with Anne by this time.
He then met Harriet Pattison, who was a landscape architect.
Together they worked on projects like the Kimbell Art Museum and Four Freedoms Park
on Roosevelt Island.
They too got romantically involved with each other.
And in the year 1962, together they had a son called Nathaniel Kahn.
Lou was officially married to Esther till the end of his life.
And If you are wondering if the three women knew about each other, they did.
But they never really interacted.
His funeral was where all of them met for the first time.
Nathaniel Kahn grew up to be a film maker and he created a film called My Architect.
He never got to know his father very well, so in that film he explored who he was as
an architect, a student, a teacher, a husband and even a father.
It’s a really moving story I would recommend you all to watch.
Louis Kahn had sacrificed everything in the pursuit of architecture.
And At the end when all is said and done, it was work that he considered his greatest
accomplishment.
I want to read out a letter he wrote to Anne Tyng before making the bath house.
Dearest Annie I must build one of the greatest buildins of this time.
You must help me build this particular building.
I doubt if I can do it without you.
Just think how low architecture has gotten down.
We Annie, you and I are going to show them the way.
All my Love Lou.
Hey guys.
I hope you liked that documentary on Louis Kahn, if you did please let me know in the
comments below.
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