Customer Reviews

Louis I. Kahn: The Idea of Order

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Klaus-Peter Gast's book provides a geometric analysis of Louis Kahn's buildings, as well as an in-depth analysis of Lou's personal way of building with deep respect for the great architectural periods of the past.The author's geometric drawings/diagrams & text - coupled with brilliant photographs and Lou's drawings - take Louis Kahn's buildings/structures beyond simple tracing and observation:this important book takes us on a fascinating journey through Louis I. Kahn's intelligible and organic geometrical equilibrium, to the structurally ordered whole and the powerful & enigmatic monumentality of Lou's masterpieces.A serious and carefully crafted publication that requires commitment and visual attention.A truly monumental book!

In essence, Louis Kahn was and remains a Beaux Arts architect, or at least a modernist version of one. He was trained in the Beaux Arts method and was especially familiar with the teachings of John F. Harbeson and other American Beaux Arts masters.

Kahn's most common organizational trait was axial and his larger buildings show clear evidence of French-style 'enfilade' planning. This much is clear from Kahn's own drawings. While this book acknowledges these underlying planning geometries, it stretches the basis of its study trying to find the same systems evident in Kahn's elevational treatments.

Although Kahn would have studied Beaux arts proportional systems it is not evident from his own drawings or sketches that he tried to apply these devices or compositional systems in his designs. Indeed his writings suggested that he intuited the results more than constructed them around a geometric framework. Thus portions of the book can only be regarded as the author's speculative attempts to 'discover' Kahn's geometries after the fact rather than present them as a factual statement of the architect's intent.

Still, the book offers a new way to consider Kahn's works. In an age where so much of so-called architecture is no more than capricious form-making, the book is a welcome reminder that discipline and rigour have always been an important part of real design.