Louis I. Kahn

10.01.2024

Born in 1901 in Estonia on the island of Saaremaa. When Kan was 4 years old, the family moved to Finland and then to the USA. In 1912-20 he studied at the Central High School and the Public School of Art Industry of Philadelphia. He received his architectural education at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania (1920-24).

He worked as an architect at the Draftman and Hoffmin association (1921-25). Since 1925, he led the workshop of the municipal architect J. Molitor.

During a trip to Europe (1928-29) he became acquainted with avant-garde architecture and ideas Modern movement. He was greatly impressed by the works of Le Corbusier. Upon returning, he became involved in issues of urban planning in Philadelphia.

In 1935 he began independent design activities. In 1939 he became an architect-adviser to the authorities in charge of housing construction in the United States. In the 40s he worked in the Howe and Stonor association, with whom his early works were co-authored. The academic education received by Kahn determined the spirit of neoclassicism characteristic of his first projects. However, the architect embodied it in such an original way that critics consider him both a follower of functionalism and the founder of postmodernism. In any case, Kahn significantly enriched the language of architecture of the Modern Movement, in the spirit of which the works of the first half of his life were made.

Participation in the work of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission (1946-52) promoted an urban planning approach to design. This is also separate design for southwest Philadelphia (1951-53), including design for a cathedral, plan for the east side of the city (1951), houses for Philadelphia (co-authored, 1952-53). During this period, projects were completed for the Jefferson Memorial (1948), the Tompkins House (1948), J. Sherman (1950), R. Roberts (1953), de Vore (1955), the Lane School (1953), St. Luke's Hospital in Philadelphia ( 1950), laboratory in Philadelphia (1954).

The milestone works for Kahn’s creativity were Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven (1953) and the American Federation of Labor Building in Philadelphia (1956).

The gallery in New Haven is sometimes presented as a unique interpretation of the late aesthetics of Mies van der Rohe, it uses the large open spaces characteristic of Mies's buildings and the grouping of service rooms along axes of symmetry. But unlike Misa, Kan also uses rounded shapes, and instead of glass surfaces, sealed brick walls. All this completely changes the appearance of the building, the architecture of which belongs to direction of brutalism, characterized by an appeal to neoclassicism and Palladianism.

The architect's creative method is associated with the revival of architectural systems of previous eras. The architect himself talks about the associative generation of his works based on certain buildings of the past (for example, comparing the project of the center of Philadelphia with the Carcassonne Castle), the structures of his works are reminiscent of vast ensembles of classical architecture (Hadrian’s Villa) and medieval monasteries, primarily fundamentally different from the Modern movement of plastic architectural form. The origins of his work can be found in Bulle, Ledoux in the spirit of the “French Academy”.

The formation of his method was influenced not only by his education in the traditions of the School of Fine Arts, but also by his internship at the American Academy in Rome (1952). So, European community center in Irenton (1954) reminiscent of Roman baths.

In the 50s, the architect became interested in structuralism and completed several projects in this vein. This is a project Washington University Libraries (1956), so-called City Hall in Philadelphia (1953), City Hall Project in Philadelphia (City Tower, 1957). A unique symbol of the structuralist approach and individual concepts was A. Richards Research Center Medical Laboratory Building at the University of Pennsylvania (1957-61), which brought Kahn wide fame.

The use of symmetrical solutions gives his finds the character of associations with historical objects. These are projects Adler House (1955-59), Bath House (1956), Morris House (1958), Goldenberg House (1959), Fleischer House (1959), Shapiro House in Chestnut Hill (1959-61), Uniate Church in Rochester (1959), dormitories at Brune Mawr College in Pennsylvania (1960), Tribune Review building (1961).

The originality of the interpretation of spatial language is expressed in the well-known Esherick House project (1959-63). In the plastic design of the facades, echoes of structuralist hobbies are felt. The geometric pattern of the windows contrasts with the smooth, undivided surfaces.

Further work on the development of the concept of form is expressed by Kahn in the complication and improvement of the forms of the building structure, which was already evident in dormitory Brun Maur. Thus, he came up with a scheme that was actively used in his later works - “a building within a building.” Kahn first used this scheme in the project US consulate in Luanda (1959-61). The architect most clearly embodied his program, to which he attached great importance, in J. Salk Research Center in La Jolla, California (1959-65).

A whole range of innovations in the development of form is demonstrated by Kahn in National Assembly complex in Dhaka (1965-74) and especially in its main building (1964).

Here he widely uses spatial structures of his own invention, which he calls “courtyard”, “gallery”, “square”, etc. The entire complex was designed using symmetrical structures, reminiscent of classicist forms. In general, this is a group of structural elements of various types, although the entire composition has an axis of symmetry. The main building is built on four axes and resembles a temple.

The temple archetype underlies F. Exter in New Hampshire, in which his contemporaries saw “the most terrible building in the world” (1965-71). Here the architect uses circular openings for internal visual-spatial communication within fortress-like walls. Based on this technique campus complex in Ahmedabad (completed 1972).

The architect's later works were mainly large public buildings, the compositions of which were complex and saturated with an abundance of inventions in the field of form. These are offices, clubs, museums. The structure of the complexes is dominated by form, which often does not allow one to imagine the degree of division of the internal space. This Ensemble in Islamabad, Philadelphia Pocon Arts Center (1972-74), Kimbell Museum of Art (1972-74), Olivetti Building (1966-69), which has a clear structuralist appearance, Martyrs Memorial (1972), Yale Center for British Art (1969-74), Fort Wayne Theater and Arts Center (1974). Center and Convent of the Dominican Congregation (1963-68), Palace of Congresses in Venice and etc.

Throughout almost his entire life, Kahn performed urban planning sketches and designs for Philadelphia and its center (30th, 1952, 1956-57, 1961), designing a kind of “Radiant City” in the center, which he called the Rational City. The idea is based on the separation, as in historical cities, of pedestrian and vehicular traffic. In one of the projects for cars entering the peculiar “harbours” of rivers and highways, Kahn created “Dock” in the spirit of structuralism. This is a grandiose monumental structure (1956), consisting of a garage surrounded by eighteen-story administrative towers. Of interest complex composition of East Market Street (1961).

The creative style of Kahn's buildings, which stands alone in the architecture of the 20th century, is closely related to the monumentalist traditions of the American school, the spirit of which he expresses. His buildings had a great influence on the formation of the architecture of the post-functionalist period and the architecture of the 20th century in general.

In the 60s, a wave of mass protests swept across developed capitalist countries against the established system of social relations and against bourgeois socio-political institutions. The so-called “new left” movement - the action of non-proletarian sections of the population under left-radical slogans - reached its culmination in the “May events” of 1968 in France and in the student riots that shook American universities. Associated with this movement was an abstract humanistic criticism of the “exorbitant systematization” of bourgeois civilization with its desire for conformity. The deathly emasculation and dehumanization of bourgeois rationalism were opposed by nihilistic slogans, such as, for example, the principle of the “great refusal”, the total negation of the existing, put forward by G. Marcuse. Public moods, colored by pessimism, corrosive skepticism, and a craving for denial, had a noticeable influence on all manifestations of the culture of capitalist countries. They also touched upon architecture.

The phase of the “new movement”, which unfolded in the late 60s and early 70s, was increasingly influenced by nihilistic tendencies. Attempts to revive the “movement” by instilling lost humanistic principles faded away in an atmosphere of disbelief. Utopian thinking, suppressed by the sarcasms of dystopias, no longer served as a support for the illusions that fuel creativity. The beginning of this stage is usually associated with the ideas of the generation of adherents of the “new architecture”, which came to the fore in the 60s and, to one degree or another, was associated with the rebellious youth of the decade, with the “new left” and their pseudo-radicalism, with the pessimistic bourgeois intelligentsia. The real embodiment of these ideas belongs, for the most part, to architects who, by the end of the 60s, were between 40 and 50 years old, that is, not the youth themselves, according to those who believed that they accepted their position.

The ruler of the thoughts of the creatively active layer of the profession at the beginning of the last phase of the development of “new architecture” turned out to be a man and not at all young - Louis Kahn (1901 1074), who for some time became the “prophet of the young.” A skilled but undistinguished architect, in 1947 he became a professor at Yale University, and since 1957 a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Communication with young people awakened his creative energy, directing him to explore the original foundations of architecture. The development of theoretical thinking gave an unexpectedly strong impetus to creativity. Kahn came to the true flowering of his talent already on the threshold of his sixtieth birthday.

The pessimistic misanthropy that was so obvious in the ideas and work of many architects of the 60s was alien to Kahn. He maintained faith in the eternal power of human creativity. Irreconcilable to compromise, banality and falsehood, openly disdaining generally accepted stereotypes, he at the same time affirmed “old-fashioned” humanistic values. It seemed that Kahn personified the highest ethical level of the profession, that his work revived on a real basis the ideal to which the “new architecture” came through utopia.

In Kahn's works, architecture again acquired visible weight. The crudely sharp forms of his works (a property that allowed critics to classify Kahn as a neo-brutalist) are full of restrained force. In accordance with the academic tradition, for which Kahn is full of respect, he opposed the canonical technique of “new architecture” - the flow of spaces - with the rigid articulation of parts of the building. In the structures of its massive buildings, as in living organisms, symmetry prevails - not absolute, but partially broken by the complexity of life functions.

For each functional process, Kahn identifies “its own” space, and for each space - its own source of natural lighting. The University of Pennsylvania Medical Laboratory Building (1957-1961) remains the most significant implementation of his creative ideas. A group of interconnected vertical volumes - transparent towers housing laboratories and massive shafts of engineering equipment - are reduced to an impressively dramatic composition. However, this resemblance to a bush of medieval towers in some town in Italy (in San Gimignano, for example) was least of all determined by an orientation toward picturesque spectacle. The divisions of volume with scrupulous consistency follow the organization of systems of functions performed by humans and their technical support. And in the composition, Kahn’s striving for timeless values, for the deep layers of European cultural traditions is palpable. It's easy to sense Kahn's many influences - his work reflects the searches of Ledoux, Le Corbusier, F. L. Wright.

Kahn became popular to a certain extent due to the superficial similarity of his buildings to the deliberately rough style that appealed to young people. However, he was even more attractive due to the combination of unconventional thinking with the desire to restore continuity with the cultural values of the past. It could seem like an island of stability in an unstable world where all ideals and values were in doubt. He returned to the idea of the indissolubility of the ethical and aesthetic, which lay at the foundation of the utopias of the “new architecture”.

Among those who tried to follow the path outlined by Kahn, perhaps the greatest success fell to the share of Gerhard Coleman (b. 1915) and Noel McKinnell (b. 1935) working together, who created the new City Hall in Boston, USA (1969). . The starting point for them was a return to utopias of life-building. The architects saw their task as “organizing a management process so filled with meaning that this process itself becomes monumental, involving all citizens of the city.” The architects tried to realize this dream in a building-sculpture, a building-symbol. It has acquired large, bold outlines; its plastic richness can truly compete with sculptural plasticity. The rhythmic themes of the composition are artistically developed.

The monotonous syncopate rhythm of the building’s crown, which is formed by the three upper floors, is interrupted by the large, decisively protruding volumes of the mayor’s office and the meeting room (a trace of the architects’ appeal to the experience of Le Corbusier, his buildings in Chandigarh and the La Tourette monastery in Eva). Kol Men and McKean sang sought to establish a connection with the environment of the historical city, relying on the traditional tripartite division of volume and the choice of materials (light concrete, natural stone, brick). But the relationship between the town hall building and its environment is a relationship between object and background, common to “new architecture” since its inception. The inclined surface of the square has been turned into an amphitheater rising from the building, the embodiment of the idea of a city forum. However, the hope that the population would be involved in governance processes through the very form of the building-monument remained within the boundaries of the utopian thinking that gave birth to it. The form was not filled with the reality of social content, did not serve, and in itself could not serve as a matrix for the development of social relations that change the routine functioning of the bureaucratic machine.

However, the optimism of the creators of Boston City Hall is by no means characteristic of the new generation. Much more often, his works reflected the confusion, even the tragedy of the perception of the world and a peculiar duality of thinking, in which rationalism was combined with a skeptical distrust of the realities of existence, and a craving for experiment with the desire to find connections with the culture of the past. This “third generation” was fascinated by the possibilities of modern technology and sometimes resorted to deliberate dramatization of the manschneria that ensures the functioning of modern buildings, turning the building into something like the set of a science fiction film; at the same time, it turned to “architecture without architects,” not recognized as a profession, in order to find in its primitive models the patterns of systems that have a “natural” connection with life.

As was already the case at the early stage of development of the “new architecture,” the unifying principle for the “third generation” was negation - now the negation not of academicism, but of orthodox functionalism. He was charged with the desire to establish rationality in a situation that was chaotic in its essence; Functionalism was reproached for the fact that, in its desire for a mechanical modeling of reality, it reduced the complexity of life to a hierarchy of functions, rejecting everything that did not fit into simple schemes. The subordination of everything to dismembering analysis, the “mania for sorting things into linguistic categories”53, during which supports, walls and coverings were clearly separated from each other, buildings from the ground, traffic flows from pedestrian paths, forced the “first generation” to sacrifice ambiguity and richness life, so believed the new theorists.

Louis Isidore Kahn

The name Kahn became widely known in the late 1950s. His work is marked by a desire for significance in figurative content and the affirmation of humanistic values. The architect's concept, which opens the way to creativity beyond associations with what already exists, beyond imitation, and the organic combination in one person of a thinker and an artist, a theorist and a major practitioner, appeal to Western architectural youth. Kahn's popularity was facilitated by his talent as a teacher who knows how to establish contact with any audience.

Louis Isidore Kahn was born on the island of Ezel (Saaremaa) in Estonia on February 20, 1901. As a six-year-old child, Louis moved to the United States with his parents and since 1906 lived in Philadelphia. Possessing extraordinary abilities in drawing and music, he entered the architecture department of the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1923. Music, although it did not become Kahn’s profession, accompanied his entire life. In his theoretical statements, Kahn often resorted to comparisons of architectural creativity with the work of composers. Kahn's teacher at the university was Paul Crete, a representative of the Parisian Ecole de Beaux Arts, for whom Kahn continued to work after graduation.

The beginning of his creative biography was not promising. His exposure to the "avant-garde" architecture of Europe during a trip he made in 1928-1929 undermined his faith in the omnipotence of the doctrines of classicism. He was especially impressed by the works of Le Corbusier. And Kahn joined the functionalists.

This is how he himself recalled that time:

“My first architectural school followed the rules of the Parisian Ecole de Beaux Arts. But, having finished it and then returning from Europe, I found myself in the midst of our economic crisis. There was no work then. A typical remark for those years was that it was difficult to get money to build a bookshelf.

I began to work under the influence of the European school and only twenty years later was I able to find my own style, developing it when I was commissioned to do a project for the Yale University Art Museum.

I understand well the meaning of the word "order". This order in architecture is present everywhere, including in ancient architecture. The understanding of this order came to me in a new meaning. I want to show with an example what, as I understand it, architecture is based on. I was given the task of creating an outdoor swimming pool, where the division into male and female parts was observed very strictly. The first thought was to put a control post in the center and make many partitions. And I worked on this for months before I realized the difference between architecture and playing architecture. And then I invented a room-column, into the open side of which there was a wall delimiting the spaces. The supports and columns also became service rooms.

Working on a small object - a swimming pool - led me to the theory that service rooms and serviced spaces should be separated. This division became the basis of all my plans."

However, during the years of the economic crisis, Kan was unable to find real use for his strength. For decades, Kahn worked as an assistant and co-author of mediocre architects, only occasionally independently completing not very large orders. Until the 1950s, nothing he did rose above the average professional level.

A turning point in Kahn’s life comes when he, already an elderly man - forty-seven years old - becomes a teacher at Yale University. Communication with students and the desire to give them comprehensive answers induce his thoughts and force him to reject established ideas. He strives to comprehend the original foundations of architecture, penetrate into its essence, and develop a comprehensive theoretical concept of architecture.

Kahn's development as a teacher and theorist gave a powerful impetus to his work. It allowed him to break away from routine, from combinations of already known elements and achieve a new quality in his buildings. This new thing was perceived especially brightly against the backdrop of the epigone architecture of the late 1950s, which was wasting the legacy of functionalism.

In Kahn's works at the turn of the 1960s, such lost means as the visible expression of massiveness and weight of structures, the use of texture and color contrasts naturally inherent in building materials, symmetry, and balance in the organization of volume and space are returned to architecture.

In Western Europe, the “physicality” and “materiality” of architecture were revived by Le Corbusier, Aalto, and the Smithsons. Kahn did not imitate them, he searched for his own path, trying to find the general laws of architecture, not subject to not only fashion, but also style. The lessons of the academic school, the study of the monuments of Ancient Egypt and antiquity, together with the experience of rationalist architecture, served as material for Kahn’s theoretical constructions.

There is no consistent philosophical system at the heart of Louis Kahn's worldview. However, unlike the pessimistic misanthropy of many architectural theorists of the modern West, Kahn believed in the eternal creative ability of man, his ineradicable need to assert himself in creativity. He also believed in the objectivity of the laws of nature - creativity seems to him like a revelation, the implementation of already existing laws.

Kahn called the general pattern of the structural construction of an object “form” and said that he imagined it as the implementation of the laws of nature, as something preceding specific work on the project, since the interrelation of elements is determined by form. Kahn sought to reduce the functions of structures to certain general types, eternally existing “institutions” of human society (it is no coincidence that he often returned to the idea of fundamental unity at all times of the “institution of learning”). This approach determined the breadth of views on phenomena, allowing one to see the new in the familiar, but it also limited the range of possible applications of the concept - its breadth turned out to be excessive for many specific tasks.

Kahn attached particular importance to the organization of light. Light for him is the most important structural means of forming space, an indispensable condition for the perception of its properties.

Classical architecture evoked deep respect from Kahn as a manifestation of man’s ability to comprehend the laws of the world and embody them in certain specific conditions. But the idea of imitating forms created in the past was alien to him.

In the modern bourgeois world, turbulent and fragmented, Kahn managed to maintain faith in the existence of comprehensive laws of creativity. But, having renounced the opportunistic and random, he also broke with the concreteness of social reality. He reduced any task to the abstractions of “human institutions.”

The first significant implementations of Kahn's concept were the buildings of the Yale University Art Museum in New Haven (1951-1953) and the American Federation of Medical Professionals in Philadelphia (1954-1956). Here Kahn's desire for balance in his compositions and their tangible weight was evident. Kahn even somewhat exaggerated the massiveness and large plasticity of the structures and effectively used contrasts of materials. He did not avoid symmetry, but he also used its partial violation as a powerful method of emotional influence.

Kahn became widely known for the building of medical laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1957-1961). A clear division of volume, based on a logical division of spaces, made it possible to create exceptional plastic tension in an unusual composition. This work, in which Louis Kahn achieved an undeniable originality, marks the beginning of a period of creative maturity that began at the age of sixty.

In subsequent years, Kahn, with feverish work, seemed to be trying to make up for lost time. He simultaneously creates projects for a number of large objects, including the government center complex in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan, the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, the Palace of Congresses in Venice, the art college in Philadelphia, and the Salk Biological Institute in San Diego (USA).

Here's what Kahn had to say about the latest project:

“The buildings of the John Salk Institute, the inventor of the polio vaccine in San Diego, have another solution. The service premises here are grouped into technical floors, alternating with the floors of the main service premises. The height of the technical floors is sufficient to allow walking on them. Their space is determined by the shape of the structure. Much attention was paid here to achieving harmony between the old and new buildings.

The Salk Institute sits on the upper rim of the canyon. Below is the ocean. The laboratories are separated from the building where the meeting room is located. The program set by Salk was laconic. He said: “I would like to invite Picasso to my laboratory - otherwise scientists become technicians in biology. Science must serve art, since it finds what exists, while art creates what did not exist before it.”

In the offices, I tried to create an atmosphere of intimacy and comfort, which is symbolized by carpets and smoky pipes. Everything in laboratories is rational and sterile.

The material was monolithic concrete. The joints of the wooden formwork panels were such that the concrete was squeezed outward - instead of a tight seam. This idea comes from the idea that the seam is the beginning of the ornament. But the exterior decoration of the volumes where the offices are located is made of teak wood. This should highlight the special spirit of these premises.”

The concept of the master seems to be receiving increasingly diversified expression. New projects have been tackled broadly and holistically. However, much of them gives the impression of being far-fetched. Monumentality, developing into a self-sufficient quality, is overwhelming.

In order to preserve the harmony and logic of the concept in the inharmonious and illogical bourgeois world, Kahn turns it into a kind of closed system. And this isolation bears fruit, pushing towards creative abstractions. The naturalness of Kahn’s “early” works is gone, works that could truly seem to embody the conscious laws of nature and human activity.

“The composer writes down notes in order to hear sounds,” wrote the architect. – In architecture, rhythm is created so that the music of correspondences between light and space is born. The symbols of music and architecture are therefore very close.

I believe that architecture is a smart way to organize space. It must be created in such a way that the structure and space appear in itself. The choice of design should take into account the organization of light. The structure of service premises should complement the structure of those served. One is rough, brutal, the other is openwork, full of light.”

Louis Isidore Kahn(Louis Isadore Kahn, February 20, 1901 - March 17, 1974) - American architect of Jewish origin, one of the authors of the urban plan for Philadelphia.

Biography

Louis Kahn was born in Estonia, moved with his parents to the United States in 1905, graduated from the College of Art and Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (1920) and the architectural department of the School of Fine Arts (1925). Professor at Yale (1947-1957) and Pennsylvania (1957-1974) universities. His work had a significant influence on shaping the face of American architecture in the mid-twentieth century.

Selected projects and buildings

Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven (1951-1953);
American Federation of Medical Professionals in Philadelphia (1954-1956);
Trenton, New Jersey, USA Jewish Community Center building, 1954-1959.
Institute for Biological Research in San Diego, California, USA (San Diego, California, USA), 1959-1966.
Olivetti plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA), 1960s.
Administrative buildings and educational buildings in the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh, (Dacca, Bangladesh), 1962.
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India, 1962.
Project of the synagogue of the Mikveh Israel congregation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA), 1961-1970. Unrealized.
Phillips Exeter Academy Library Building, Exeter, New Hampshire, 1965-1971.
Reconstruction of the Hurva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel (Jerusalem, Israel), 1968.
"Memorial to Six Millions", Manhattan, New York, USA (Manhattan, New York, USA), 1967-1969.
Beth El Synagogue in Chappaqua, New York, 1966-1972.
Wolfson Center on the premises of Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (Tel-Aviv, Israel). Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Transport Engineers.
Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut), 1969-1974.
Palace of Congresses in Venice;
College of Art in Philadelphia;

He worked as an architect at the Draftman and Hoffmin association (1921-25). Since 1925, he led the workshop of the municipal architect J. Molitor.

The milestone works for Kahn’s creativity were Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven (1953) and the American Federation of Labor Building in Philadelphia (1956).

A whole range of innovations in the development of form is demonstrated by Kahn in National Assembly complex in Dhaka (1965-74) and especially in its main building (1964).