Born in Estonia in 1901, Louis Isidore Kahn was to become one of the United States' most important architects of the post-war period, alongside the Modern masters Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Although renowned for a number of seminal modern works, he came to question many of the precepts of the Modern Movement. In particular, he questioned the ability of the International Style of Modernism to house the social spaces required by the latter half of the 20th century. In 1947, Kahn was appointed Professor at Yale University. He was to continue teaching throughout his architectural career, influencing a younger generation of architects along the way. His teaching enabled him to further develop his own concepts and to inform his ever-evolving definition of design. Kahn was drawn to investigate monumentality in architecture, creating buildings out of heavy, solid materials and forms and incorporating vivid plays of light, in complete contrast to the lightweight glass and steel structures being created elsewhere by his peers. This monumentality was also imbued with his concern for the ritual of human experience. His career, although extending to just over 20 years, was a rich and varied one, where he continually readdressed the issues of light, mass, structure and materials. Following a predominantly chronological order, this monograph identifies major themes and examines key works according to these themes. A comprehensive list of projects by Kahn spanning his lifetime and drawn from the Louis I. Kahn Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Archives is also included, listing over 231 projects, at least 30 of which were previously unattributed.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The considerable beauty of Robert McCarter's book about Louis Kahn, one of the titans of modern archtitecture, is akin to a Kahn building: squarish, monumental, monkish yet passionate and cunningly designed. The layout is exemplary, the straightforward chronological account of Kahn's career interspersed with conceptual histories of each of his important buildings, from the Yale Art Gallery to the Salk Institute to the National Capital of Bangladesh. The light splashes off the bright, thick pages in a way that would delight the master, and he would approve the clarity of the text and illustrations. Though the ample passages of Kahn's own prose are more poetical than McCarter's, in his soberly scholarly way, he's intellectually lively too, alert to Kahn's influences, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Buckminster Fuller, Barnett Newman to Noguchi. Fascinatingly, he traces the conceptual development of each major project--Kahn's masterpiece, La Jolla's Salk Institute, derives from the Acropolis plinth, Diocletian's palace, Hadrian's villa, the Alhambra, medieval monasteries, Renaissance churches, and Piranesi's plan to rebuild the ancient Roman Campus Martius (which also inspired the Bangladesh masterpiece). With exhilarated admiration, McCarter explains how Kahn coated the Salk project's concrete forms with polyurethane for perfect smoothness, added travertine stone and pozzuolana in the old Roman fashion to fashion textures and warm the tones, and fulfilled the master's ambition to fufill the material's potential: "Concrete really wants to be granite, but it can't manage." Wonderfully, McCarter provides computer renditions of masterpieces Kahn never created, including the stunning Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem, which was to echo Wright's Johnson Wax Building. He gives a sense of Kahn the man, in his lifelong lover's quarrel with Wright and his hatred of the automobile. For a still deeper portrait, see Kahn's son's brilliant documentary My Architect. No serious student of modern architecture can afford to be without this landmark book, a great teaching tool about one of the great teachers of the 20th century. --Tim Appelo
About the Author
Robert McCarter is a practicing architect and Professor at the University of Florida, where he was Director of the School of Architecture from 1991-2001. He has written for numerous international publications and is author of the comprehensive monograph Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect as well as Unity Temple and Fallingwater in the Architecture in Detail series and Louis I Kahn, all by Phaidon Press. He's also the author of William Morgan: Selected and Recent Work 1961-2001. Author's Residence: Newberry, Florida
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Second Masterpiece for McCarter-- can he do it again?,
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This review is from: Louis I Kahn (Hardcover)
This book on Kahn is essentially a "sequel" to McCarter's incredible book on Wright. McCarter traces the details of Kahn's projects and often uncovers little-known but important works. Like the book on Wright, this book focuses on the unfolding of Kahn's architectural philosphy through his career via a study of his built and unbuilt works. This discussion is immersed in the details of each project.
An unfair review of McCarer's previous book overlooked the fact that the lush descriptions and details are essential to grasping the architectual ideas and philosophy. I doubt the reviewer had the patience to work through the entire book. Often you need to study a floor-plan, then return to McCarter's text, then study it again to really understand McCarter is telling you. Thus this book is interactive; you must engage it as thoroughly as it engages you. Yay, the floor plans are larger! My only criticism is that McCarter should have kept the layout the same as the Wright book. Pages lacking page numbers, references to photos far from the photos themselves, sideways text (???) on chapter headings, image subtitles far from the images themselves, and "backtracking" to give overviews of a project all create confusion. Therefore I disagree with the amazon reviewer, I find the content to be wonderful, but the layout poor, unlike Kahn's works. I see many mentions of Le Corbusier. Perhaps another project for McCarter? I would buy it in a second.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A FANTASTIC BOOK,
By
This review is from: Louis I Kahn (Hardcover)
IT IS A FANTASTIC BOOK AND DEFINATELY HAVE TO BE A PIECE OF THE KAHN FAN'S LIBRARY.
NICE TYPO AND BINDING. GOOD PICTURES AND TEXT - INCLUDING 3D RECONSTRUCTIONS OF THE UNBUILT MASTERPIECES. MY ONLY NEGATIVE OBSERVATION ABOUT THE BOOK THAT IT IS NOT THE BOOK FOR THOSE WHO INTERESTED ABOUT THE PRIVATE HOUSES OF KAHN -THEY ARE ALMOST COMPLETELY MISSING.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
great analysis and resource but....,
By
This review is from: Louis I Kahn (Hardcover)
great analysis and resource but redrawn CAD version of orgininal drawings somehow reduces clarity and meaning of 2D drawing set (line weight and landscape should be better redrawn)
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