This is a Presentation prepared by me for 6th Sem B.Arch assignment for Contemporary Architecture. The SlideShare includes his life, Awards, Building Techniques, Quotes & Works of Louis Isadore Kahn

1. LOUIS ISADORE KAHN
P R E S E N T A T I O N B Y ,
N A B A D E E P K A K A T I
B . A R C H S E M 6
R O L L N O . – 0 1 2

3. SALK INSTITUTE
CALIFORNIA
SYMMETRY

4.  Real Name - Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky
 Born on - February 20th, 1901, Estonia
 Breath last - March 17th, 1974, in a men’s restroom due to a
heart attack, Manhattan.
Louis Kahn was one of the United States' greatest 20th century
architects, known for combining Modernism with the weight and dignity of
ancient monuments.
LOUIS ISADORE KAHN

5. LOUIS ISADORE KAHN
#Louis I Kahn was an American architect based in
Philadelphia.
#After working in various capacities for several firms
in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935.
#While continuing his private practice, he served as a
design critic and professor of architecture at Yale
School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957.
#From 1957 until his death, he was a professor of
architecture at the School of Design at the
University of Pennsylvania.
LOUIS KAHN IN FRONT OF CITY TOWER MODEL

6. LOUIS ISADORE KAHN
#Kahn created a style that was monumental and monolithic; his
heavy buildings for the most part do not hide their weight,
their materials, or the way they are assembled.
#Kahn was one of the most influential architects of the
twentieth century.
# At the time of his death he was considered by some as
"America's foremost living architect”.
#Kahn’s design has been celebrated not only for its beauty,
geometry, and light, but also for its structural and engineering
innovations.

7. “even
a
brick
wants
to
be
something”
SHER-E-BANGLA, DHAKA

8. - AWARDS & HONOURS -
#Kahn was elected in the American Institute of Architects in 1953.
#He was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and
Letters in 1964.
#He was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal in 1964.
#In 1965 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an
Associate Academician.
#He was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences in 1968 and awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the highest
award given by the AIA, in 1971, and the Royal Gold Medal by the
Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), in 1972.

9. BUILDING TECHNIQUES
#Known for his ability to create monumental architecture that responded to the human scale.
#Concerned with creating strong formal distinctions between served and servant spaces.
#His palette of materials tended toward heavily textured brick and bare concrete, the
textures often reinforced to highly refined surfaces such as travertine marble.
IIM, AHMEDABAD

10. #Kahn was able to make the concrete material of the
building look both solid and airy. He used sunlight and
water bodies to create a truly special building.
#He was famous for combining modernism with the
weight and dignity of ancient monuments.
#All of Kahn’s building share a common solidity and
heaviness.
#Their weightless looking structures were mostly made
of glass and metal.
BUILDING TECHNIQUES
PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY LIBRARY

11. “Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities,
integration, love.”
- FAMOUS QUOTES -
“Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.”
“A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable
means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.”
Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the
column became.

12. - FAMOUS WORKS -
# Kimbell Art Museum, Texas
# Yale University Art Gallery, New Heaven
# Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, New York
# Salk Lake Institute for Biological Studies, California
# Sher-e-Bangla, Dhaka
# Fisher House, Pennsylvania
# Margaret Esherick House

13. 1. KIMBEL ART MUSEUM, TEXAS
“The Kimbell Art Museum's 1972 building, designed by Louis I. Kahn, is widely regarded as
one of the outstanding architectural achievements of the modern era.”
The Kimbell Art Museum’s original building, designed by Louis I.
Kahn and opened to the public for the first time in 1972, has become
a mecca of modern architecture. Kahn designed a building in which
“light is the theme.” Natural light enters through narrow plexiglass
skylights along the top of cycloid barrel vaults and is diffused by wing-
shaped pierced-aluminum reflectors that hang below, giving a silvery
gleam to the smooth concrete of the vault surfaces and providing a
perfect, subtly fluctuating illumination for the works of art.

14. 1. KIMBEL ART MUSEUM, TEXAS
The main (west) facade of the building consists of three 100-foot bays,
each fronted by an open, barrel-vaulted portico, with the central, entrance
bay recessed and glazed. The porticos express on the exterior the light-
filled vaulted spaces that are the defining feature of the interior, which are
five deep behind each of the side porticos and three deep behind the
central one. Additionally, three courtyards punctuate the interior space.
Though thoroughly modern in its lack of ornament or
revivalist detail, the building suggests the grand arches
and vaults of Roman architecture, a source of inspiration
that Kahn himself acknowledged. The principal materials
are concrete, travertine, and white oak.

15. 2. SHER-E-BANGLA, DHAKA
The government complex in today Dhaka,
Bangladesh, was Kahn's greatest and most
demanding commission. At the time he received it,
Pakistan consisted of a western part with Islamabad
as capital, and eastern part with Dhaka as capital.
The center of the complex is the National Assembly Building, structured axially around a
central point. The plenary hall is surrounded by a generous walkway. Around it are grouped
eight building elements. The Muslim prayer hall to the south is the only one that diverges from
the general axis and faces Mecca. Along the water, residences and office buildings form a V-
shape. The pool was created by the local technique of "dig and mound." Buildings were erected
on the excavated earth to protect them from the flooding that regularly plagues the country.

16. 2. SHER-E-BANGLA, DHAKA
In 1971, East Pakistan declared its
independence and was renamed
Bangladesh. Today, the complex is
one of the few remaining open spaces
in the city and as such is very popular
with the local population. Here, Kahn's
formal vocabulary, his complex spatial
compositions and his choreographic
mastery of light reached its climax.
Hence, Kahn's expressive architecture
became the symbol of a young nation.

17. MORE WORKS
Franklin D. Roosevelt Park
FISCHER HOUSE
YALE ART GALLERY
PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY LIBRARY
MARGARET ESHERICK HOUSE T H A N K Y O U