1. LOUIS I KAHN
• His life
• Development as an
architect
• Noted works
2. INTRODUCTION
•Louis Isadore Kahn was born in 1901 on the
Baltic island of Osel, Estonia.
•At the age of four, Kahn moved with his family
to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
•The family couldn't even afford pencils but
made their own charcoal sticks from burnt
twigs so that Louis could earn a little money
from drawings and later by playing piano to
accompany silent movies.
•Kahn attended public schools and
supplemented his education with art classes
at the local industrial Art school, where he
focused on drawing and he continued until his
high school.
•Kahn earned his bachelor’s degree from
Pennsylvania University in 1924. He closely
studied under Paul Philippe Cret, an architect
trained under École des Beaux Arts.
3. •After graduating from Penn in the spring
of 1924, Kahn went on to work for
Philadelphia City Architect, John Molitor.
Working primarily as a draftsman, Kahn was
involved on a number of civic designs After
graduating from Penn in the spring of
1924, Kahn went on to work for
Philadelphia City Architect, John Molitor.
Working primarily as a draftsman, Kahn was
involved on a number of civic designs
•There is possibilities that educational
model of École des Beaux Arts that Thomas
Eakins – and later Paul Cret at the
University of Pennsylvania – had an impact
on Kahn both as a professor and as an
architect.
•In 1928, Kahn made a European tour and
took a particular interest in the medieval
walled city of Carcassonne, France and the
castles of Scotland rather than any of
the strongholds
of classicism or modernism.
• From 1957 until his death, he was a
professor of architecture at the School of
Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mussollini’s foro, Italico
4. DEVELOPEMENT AS AN ARCHITECT
Kahn’s formation took place before the modern architecture
had established a firm hold in us. He was rigorously trained
in Beaux-arts system and therefore was aware with the
classical grammar, with devices of axial organization and an
attitude to design which took it for granted that one should
consult tradition for support.
He certainly realized the need for the change which better
accommodated the needs and the means of times. He seemed
to particularly learn lessons from Sullian and Wright and
later from Meis Wan-Der Rohe.
When Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoy was published around the
world in 1929, Vincent Scully wrote, “suddenly one could no
longer look at buildings that were symmetrical, massive,
heavy; one could no longer use the classical order in which
Kahn had been trained, because now architecture had to be
thin, taut, light, asymmetrical, stretched out to pure idea.”
Suddenly, in 1929, Kahn found himself at an intersection of
two divergent architectural perspectives.
5. He was a slow developer, and his designs of
houses in forties were unexceptional extensions
to International Style.
A stay at the American Academy in Rome in the
early 1950s marked a turning point in Kahn's
career. The back-to-the-basics approach adopted
after visiting the ruins of ancient buildings in
Italy, Greece, and Egypt helped him to develop his
own style of architecture.
Influenced by ancient ruins, Kahn's style tends
to the monumental and monolithic; his heavy
buildings do not hide their weight, their
materials, or the way they are assembled.
Louis Kahn's works are considered as
MONUMENTAL beyond modernism. Famous for his
meticulous built works, his provocative unbuilt
proposals, and his teaching, Kahn was one of the
most influential architects of the 20th century.
Kahn’s architecture was based on social vision.
For he believed there to be archetypal patterns
of social relationship that it was the business of
architecture to uncover and celebrate. A good
plan would be the one which would found the
central meaning.
6. Oser house
(1940-1942)
He believed that any architectural
problem had an ‘essential’ meaning which
far transcended a mere functional
diagram.
A good design is one where the ‘form’,
the underlying meaning, was coherently
expressed through all the parts.
The idealistic position with regards to
spiritual roots of both social and
aesthetic realms motivated hi major
designs in 60’s and led him to clarify a
simple set of type forms based on primary
geometry.
One is struck with the consistency of
plans, with primary meaning of institution
is expressed in central space and
secondary space tends to be set out as a
fringe around the primary generator.
These designs are inspired by symbolic
and cosmological geometry, mandalas,
and ancient ruins.
Like Wright, Kahn believed in ‘cause
conservative’, invoking the elemental law
and order in all great architecture. He
was able to achieve this spirit not by
copying past but by probing the
underlying principles and attempting to
universalize them
For Kahn the aim of architecture doesn’t
change, only the means.
Eherik house
(1959-61)
7. YALE ART GALLERY (1951-1953)
One of his famous structures and the first
significant commission, the Yale University Art
Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut was designed
when he was a visiting critic at the Yale School of
Architecture as the first of three art museums to
be designed and built.
• While walking along the bordering street of the
campus, the building’s blank walls stand out
against the neo-Gothic background of the
university. He responded to the many levels and
textures of an electric urban environment with
a subtle, inward looking design.
• The building is a masterpiece of simplicity of
form and light, a sleek, four-story box with
elegantly austere glass and gray concrete
cinder-block walls divided by a central elevator
bank and circular stairwell. But the building's
blank walls mark a radical break with the neo-
Gothic context of the university. Kahn's critics
called this a "brutalist" gesture.
.
8. The plan suggests that the entire
building is a displaced box whose core
elements lock the composition in
place. If the core elements were
removed, the geometry of the building
would collapse to an originating
square.
• The interior space seemed to evoke an entirely
different world from the brash mass-produced
environment of standardized panels and
suspended ceilings. The effects of the light
falling over the weave of a diagrid ceiling and the
elegant and bare concrete supports.
• As is apparent in this structure, Kahn typically
tended toward heavily textured brick and bare
concrete, which he wonderfully juxtaposes
against more refined and pristine surfaces, like
the exterior that took over the Miesian glass and
steel ; giving new irregularity and softness while
the side walls and interior were evocative of
Wright.
• At the rear garden terrace, the continuous paving
courses parallel to the rear fenestration denote this
shift. The virtual shift of the upper terrace uncovers
the ground, allowing us to ascend from the lower
terrace via the double run of exterior stairs.
• The commission brought about Kahn’s discovery of
structure, materials, and perhaps most important, the
power of the forms he was capable of creating.
• The Yale Art Centre served to catalyze many of his
basic ideas and beliefs about architecture.
9. • The hollow concrete tetrahedral space-frame allows for the
omission of ductwork while also reducing the standard requirements
regarding floor-to-floor height. His interest in pushing the
boundaries with technology led him to design this waffle-slab that
served as the floor of one room and just as functionally became the
ceiling of another.
• The front door is found in a recessed corner that is defined by an
absent rectangle following the pattern of the glass fenestration.
Kahn invoked a Miesian vision of glass with the recessed wall,
reflected on the opaque white curtains behind the fenestration. He
dematerialised the wall through which we enter.
10. Sketch by Louis Kahn of the
Palazzo Vecchio, No.2, Florence,
Italy 1950, drawn just before
he designed the Yale Art
Gallery.
this building is also known for
the structural innovations.
The stair was contained in a.
Tcylindrical volume and rose
through a series of triangular
change in direction, hinting on
the distinction of function
and circulation.
11. SALK INSTITUTE (1959-1965)
The Salk Institute was conceived in 1960. Jonas Salk,
who founded the polio vaccine, approached Louis I.
Kahn to be the architect for a biomedical research
institute.
Salk’s humanitarian vision “that medical research
does not belong entirely to medicine or the physical
science. It belongs to population,” intrigued Kahn to
believe his client could understand his architectural
envisions and endeavours. The Salk Institute began as
a collaborative vision shared between the architect
and the client.
The three main clusters were planned that expresses
the form of the Salk Institute – the laboratory, the
meeting place [the meeting house], and, the living
place [the village].
12. There are three phases in the design development of the Salk Institute, which from the very
beginning have included the ‘activities’ of laboratory, meeting place, and residence. The three
phases are evident of three different configurations of these activities.
First phase:
Laboratories were clustered in four
towers with its services and utilities
separated at its proximity.
Residences were clustered inwardly
focusing on courtyards.
A rectilinear meeting complex of lecture
halls and auditorium were joined
linearly by an ambulatory.
Second phase:
Four, “two-storey laboratory blocks
were arranged around a pair of garden
courts, with a central alley for service
and air intake to the two central
blocks.”
Residences were arranged as sixteen
pavilions along the contours of the
ridge. Meeting Place clustered in a
rather centralized manner.
13. Final phase:
Two six-story laboratory blocks with five
‘porticos of studies’ facing a central
plaza were implemented.
Residences remained arranged by contour
of the ridge with “seven different types of
two-storey buildings equipped with ample
porches and balconies lined both sides of
a narrow pedestrian street.”
Meeting Place was still centrally
arranged, but “the square theatre of the
earlier plan has been replaced by a
classical, fan-shaped proscenium… which
introduces visitors to the complex.”
As suggested by Wiseman, Kahn spent time
at India and Pakistan during the
development of Salk Institute, most
probably “had seen examples of Mughal
gardens that employed water elements may
have been the source for the channel and
the fountain at the institute.”
These defined activities of inflexible program tend to
concentrate around a flexible program of an open
‘courtyard’ space in Kahn’s design to allow for
‘breathing.’ Kahn has reflected such Islamic
architecture representations into the Salk Institute,
following Luis Barragán,s advice to discard the idea
of a garden and leave the courtyard to be a plaza,
creating ‘a facade to the sky, which the cosmos is
brought into the courtyard that acts as the infinite
void to represent forever.
14. NATIONAL ASSEMBLY,DHAKA (1962-1974)
Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building)
in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is perhaps the most important building
designed by Kahn. Kahn got the design contract with the help
of Muzharul Islam, his student at Yale University, who worked
with him on the project. It is the centrepiece of the national
capital complex designed by Kahn that includes hostels, dining
halls, and a hospital.
Kahn and his team also considered the placement of the
structures within the cardinal (directional) points. Eventually
they decided to shift the Prayer Hall east, to face toward
Mecca.
Kahn felt strongly that the structures he designed for this
site should not just stand for the political nature of the
National Assembly’s activities but also for their spiritual
nature.
Once the design was complete, Kahn and his team began to plan
the construction phase of the project. Kahn worked with his
long-time colleague August Komendant, structural engineer.
15. Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Building
of Bangladesh in Dhaka is an extraordinary example of
modern architecture being transcribed as a part of
Bengali vernacular architecture.
The project was designed in two
phases. The first phase included the
National Assembly Building, a prayer
hall, and dormitories. With the
expectation that eight hundred more
acres would be acquired, the complete
master plan included courtrooms, a
hospital, a museum, schools, and low-
and high-income residential areas.
16. •With this project, Kahn first focused on the
National Assembly Building itself, which was to
include a two-hundred-seat chamber for the
legislature to convene in, a prayer hall, a dining
hall, and numerous offices. He started his design
process with rough sketches of a large square
structure with four corner towers. Then he went
on to make rough sketches of the entire site,
including secondary structures, such as
dormitories and hostels, to the east and west of
the National Assembly Building.
•After he finalized his concept for the National
Assembly Building, Kahn reconsidered the Prayer
Hall. Originally, this space was not to be
significant in size or scale. But the more Kahn
thought about the nature of the space (designated
for prayer and reflection), the more strongly he
felt that it should be a significant part of the
design. Kahn decided that the Prayer Hall should
serve as the main entrance for the National
Assembly Building
17. The National Assembly Building sits as a massive entity in the
Bengali desert; there are eight halls that are concentrically
aligned around the parliamentary grand chamber, which is not only
a metaphor for placing the new democratic government at the
heart of the building.
It also is part of Kahn’s design objectives to optimize spatial
configurations where the supporting programs (offices, hotels for
parliamentary officials, and a restaurant) project out of the
center volume.
The entire complex is fabricated out of poured in place concrete
with inlaid white marble, which is not only a modernist statement
of power and presence, but is more of a testament to the local
materials and values.
The sheer mass of the monumentally scaled National Assembly and
the artificial lake surrounding the building act as a natural
insulator and cooling system that also begin to create interesting
spatial and lighting conditions.
Construction was held up in 1971 by war, as East Pakistan
(Bangladesh) sought independence from West Pakistan.
Many feared that the site would be bombed during the
conflict, but enemy pilots bypassed the site, thinking it
was an ancient ruin.
19. I.I.M. AHEMADABAD
(1962-1974)
While Louis Kahn was
designing the National
Assembly Building in
Bangladesh in 1962, he was
approached by Balkrishna
Doshi, to design the 60 acre
campus for the Indian
Institute of Management in
Ahmadabad, India.
20. •At IIM Kahn created an austere set of geometrically
organised buildings that form shaded courts. These
courts vary in size to provide a variety of settings and
experiences.
•While monumental in a homely way, the sequential
experience provides by moving through the buildings and
the subsequent opening and closing of vistas give a
humane scale to the complex.
•kahn’s use of brick had an impact on India as did his
orchestration of a composition of open spaces and
buildings.
• The large façade omissions are abstracted patterns found
within the Indian culture that were positioned to act as light
wells and a natural cooling system protecting the interior
from India’s harsh desert climate.
• Even though the porous, geometric façade acts as filters for
sunlight and ventilation, the porosity allowed for the
creation of new spaces of gathering for the students and
faculty to come together.
• The architect created a deep zone of transition between the
outer edge and the interiors, to allow fir shaded porticoes
and walkways. The colossal cylinders of baked brick and
concrete had quality of roman ruins.
21. For Kahn, the design of the institute was more than
just efficient spatial planning of the classrooms; he
began to question the design of the educational
infrastructure where the classroom was just the first
phase of learning for the students.
Kahn’s inquisitive and even critical view at the methods
of the educational system influenced his design to no
longer singularly focus on the classroom as the
center of academic thought.
He implemented the same
techniques in the Indian
Institute of Management
as he had done in
National Asebmbly,
Dhaka such that he
incorporated local
materials (brick
and concrete) and large
geometrical façade
extractions as homage to
Indian vernacular
architecture.
22. PHILIP EXETER LIBRARY (1965-1972)
The project to build a new and larger library began in 1950
and progressed slowly for several years. By the mid-1960s,
O'Connor & Kilham, the architectural firm that had been
chosen to design the new library and had drafted plans
with traditional architecture. Richard Day arrived as the
new principal of the academy at that point, and found their
design to be unsatisfactory. He dismissed them, declaring
his intention to hire "the very best contemporary architect
in the world to design our library“.
The school's building committee was tasked with finding a
new architect. Influential members of the committee became
interested in Louis Kahn at an early stage, but they
interviewed several other prominent architects as well,
including Paul Rudolph, I. M. Pei, Philip Johnson and Edward
Larrabee Barnes. Kahn's prospects received a boost
when Jonas Salk, whose son had attended Exeter, called
Armstrong and invited him to visit the Salk Institute in
California, which Kahn had recently built to widespread
acclaim. Kahn was awarded the commission for the library in
November 1965.
The Phillips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S.,
with 160,000 volumes on nine levels and a shelf capacity of 250,000
volumes, is the largest secondary school library in the world.
23. Its facade is primarily brick with teak wood
panels at most windows marking the location
of a pair of wooden carrels. The bricks
are load-bearing; that is, the weight of the
outer portion of the building is carried by
the bricks themselves, not by a hidden steel
frame. Kahn calls this fact to the viewer's
attention by making the brick piers noticeably
thicker at the bottom where they have more
weight to bear. The windows are
correspondingly wider toward the top where
the piers are thinner
Another arcade circles the building on the ground floor. Kahn disliked the
idea of a building that was dominated by its entrance, so he concealed the
main entrance to the library behind this arcade. Visitors unfamiliar with the
library tend to wander around its edges before locating the two
entrances, to be found on either side of a glass-walled projection into the
recessed arcade that otherwise fills the first bay of the ground-floor
story
24. KIMBELL ART MUSEUM
(1966-1972)
The Kimbell Art Museum has been admired, studied
and emulated by architects and museum specialists
ever since it opened 30 years ago
It is the unique manner in which
Louis Kahn introduced natural light
within the Museum. At the Kimbell,
natural light enters the space
through a 2½-foot slit at the apex
of Kahn’s distinctive vaulted
ceilings. The light strikes a
suspended convex, perforated-
aluminium “natural light fixture”, in
the words of Kahn that prevents
direct light from entering the space.
As the light reflects onto the cool,
curved concrete, it retains what
Kahn called the “silver” quality of
Texas light
25. But then, as the light bounces off the
travertine walls and oak floor, it warms
up and seamlessly blends with the warm
light from the incandescent lamps
suspended along the outer edge of the
natural light fixtures. Through this
unique design, Kahn avoided many of the
pitfalls inherent in a museum gallery
where a primary source of illumination is
natural light.
Kahn stays very close to ruins and
subordinates the glass. There is a glass
wall but it is hidden by trees. Inside there
are roman round vaults which have been
deformed to diffused the light.
26. RICHARDS MEDICAL LIBRARY
(1957-1962)
Subtle combination of linear and particulate,
which also created external harbours of
space around exterior.
The geometry, use of space and circulation
suggest Kahn’s influence by Wright’s Larkin
building.
The structural system of pre cast concrete suggests that Kahn attempted to show the
building was put together by connections and joints.
It had a direct, tactile character in the use of brick panel and concrete beams.
The principle difficulty arose due to lack of sun protection on exterior facade and a certain
lack of function ability.
27. FIRST
UNITARIAN
CHURCH
According to Goldhagen, the First Unitarian Church of Rochester
was "the first building Kahn built that gave an indication of his
mature style".
Vincent Scully, in his Modern Architecture and Other Essays,
similarly says "the experience of designing the church at Rochester
seems to have brought Kahn to a confident maturity and confirmed
him in his method of design."
The early stage
drawings were
called as ‘form’
drawings by
Louis I Kahn.
