The Fisher House designed by Louis Kahn in Hatboro, Pennsylvania from 1960-1967 consists of two cubes overlapping at a 45 degree angle, situated on a hill overlooking a small river. One cube contains the living room while the other contains the bedrooms. Prospect and refuge are created by the overlapping cubes, with a view of the river from the back and a view of the street from the front. Kahn incorporated the idea of served and servant spaces, containing the kitchen in its own single-story cube to separate it from the main living areas.

1. Hatboro, Pennsylvania
Louis Kahn
FisherHouse
(1960-1967)
“what is marvelous about a room is that the light through the window of that room belongs to the room.
And the sun somehow doesn’t realize how wonderful it is until after a room is made.”

2. The Fisher House is the simplest expression of two cubes touching at an angle as if by accident, like dice thrown on a table.
Kahn's idea to create two cubes, one for the space, which means the living room and the other as the space with the bedrooms.served serving
“A great building must being with the unmeasurable, must go through mesurable means when it is being designed
and in the end must be unmeasurable.”

3. Conceived as two cubes, one rotated 45 degrees and overlapping the other,
Fisher House is situated on a hill overlooking a small river in Hatboro, PA.
The housing volumes were overlapped and rotated to accomodate both a
view to the river and a facade to the street that runs on a northwest

4. Winds approach Fisher House predominently from thenorthwestand the
southwest, with a slight wind coming up from the river.
Prospect and refuge arise from informal courts generated by the overlapping
house volumes. Refuge is created at the front of the house, emerging from the
cubes and a shed enclosing around the approach.Prospectexists at the back of
the house, looking out onto the trees and river.
Although Fisher House was built before there were many neighbours on the
land, most of theviews are focused out from the back of the house onto the
landscape, or out the front of the house towards the street and arrival.

5. At the dwelling scale, Kahn incorporates more cubes. One cube exists outside
the overlapping two, a shed helping to frame the approach and entrance. The
other cube exists inside another, hosting the kitchen.
Kahn was responsible for the idea of served and servant spaces. He never let
the servant spaces intrude upon the served, thus he contained the kitchen in it’s
own single storey volume in a double height space.

6. Servant Served Circulation Entrance Program GrainPublic Private

7. Kahn was interested in monumentality and the effect of thick walls. In the
Fisher House, he maintained the thickness of the stone foundation walls in the
wooden structures of the rst and second oor. He achieved this by recessing
windows and inhabitabing spaces in the wall.

8. Kahn had desired for all the Fisher House to be
built out of stone, but due to nancial consider-
ations, only the foundation and replace was able
to be constructed in this material Structural Grid Interior natural wood detailing Provision of natural light

11. Mostasim Billah
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