Louis Kahn, born in 1901, was an American vastly known for his works as an architect. Alongside being an architect, he was an artist, teacher and to a certain extent a philosopher, some might label him as poet and one of the great thinkers of his time. Charles E. Dagit, Jr says ‘His was a genius that profoundly changed the course of architecture worldwide’. (Louis I. Kahn: Architect, 2013, page xi). Louis Kahn’s legacy began from an early age where in high school his teachers immediately noticed Louis developing on his drawings and placed him in courses that nurtured his skills.
He progressed his education and talent into architectural studies and received full funding to the University Of Pennsylvania, graduating 1924. He started to work as a senior designer, draughtsman for City of Philadelphia’s architect John Molitor for the Sesquicentennial International Exposition. Through this experience he later established his own practise in 1935, after working in several firms in Philadelphia.
Though ongoing his private practice, he worked as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947, attaining full professorship in 1948, later on in 1957 he became a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania until his death in 1974. ‘Louis I. Kahn was perhaps the most international revered American architect of the mid to late twentieth century’ Charles E. Dagit, Jr. (2013, page xi. ). Some of his achievements involve been awarded the ‘AIA Gold Medal and the ‘RIBA Gold Medal. The works of Louis Kahn are measured as remarkable as beyond modernism.
The way Kahn would design building is to a standard where his heavy dense buildings would not hide their weight in terms of mass construction, neither they would hide from the way it was assembled and would openly show use of material. This, Kahn invented himself, is a way elegance that was monumental and monolithic. An example of this use of principal is the symbolic monument to the government of Bangladesh, The National Assembly building in Dhaka, completed 1982 could be classed as one of Kahns most recognized and prominent work. Image 1)
Its use of ingenuous symbolic geometries reminds everyone the roots of architecture. In a journal/review, William JR Curtis mentions the building has ‘distinct sources of vision from Classical antiquity to Buddhist stupas are bonded and transformed to express powerful concepts of modernity and nationhood in an emerging post-colonial state’ (http:// www. architectural-review. com). Furthermore, one of Kahn’s early projects, which is one of his most celebrated and renowned, include the Yale University Art Gallery.
This structure is his first momentous commission and was built in New Haven, Connecticut between 1951 and 1953, designed whilst he was a design critic at the Yale School of Architecture. This design has been admired for its beauty, light and its artless geometry, simply from its open use of materials. This modernist building is constructed of steel, concrete, masonry and glass that offer the facade of the building a solid windowless wall. (Image 2) Kahn came to be correlated and measured by many as part of the leaders of modernist architects, amongst the likes of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe in an extent of just two decades.
Although Kahn did not disembark at this unique style until the early 50s, nevertheless his death at age of 73, he became known for conjoining modernism with the influence and formality of ancient monuments. Modernist is a term applied to a particular individual that is associated with the period in the 20th century the modern movement or ‘modernisation’. Modernisation is an adjustment era of implementing pioneering means or qualities of contemporary establishments.
Modernism aimed to settle, the fundamental complications in society at the point of the 20th century through rastic ‘modernisation’ of society, sustained by innovative technological developments. Form and Function are important aspects when coming about to these innovative developments or modern architecture but a more imperative modernist term, especially in the period of the 1950s is Flexibility. The definition of flexibility is the ability to be easily modified or to change and to compromise. The term flexibility when relating to buildings is a phrase used against the presumption that all parts of a building should be destined for specific uses’.
A. Forty (Words and Buildings- A Vocabulary, 2004, page 142). OA. Forty mentions a quote by Alan Colquhoun (1977) that further describes the idea behind flexibility, he says ‘the philosophy behind the notion of flexibility is that the requirements of modern life are so complex and changeable that any attempt on the part of the designer to anticipate them results in a building which is unsuited to its function and represents, as it were, a ‘false consciousness’ of the society in which he operates’. A. Forty, 2004 page 143). One of the significant Louis Kahn’s modern breakthroughs that would be against this philosophy was the Richards Medical Research Laboratories, which is situated in the University of Pennsylvania. The university commissioned Kahn to build the towers that started 1957 and completed in 1961, which by then the term flexibility was amongst the proverbs of criticisms in architecture.
Some of the significance of the research labs is almost summed up in Louis Kahn’s quote, in which he discusses the essence of the building’s functionality and how it breaks the tradition of flexibility within the building and by creating building solely fit for its purpose. “The Medical Research Building at the University of Pennsylvania is conceived in recognition of the realization that science laboratories are studios and that the air to breathe should be away from the air to throw away…. y solution was to create three great stacks of studios and attach to them tall service towers which would include animal quarters, mains to carry water, gas and vacuum lines, as well as ducts to breathe in the air from ‘nostrils’ placed low in the building and exhaust it out through stacks high above the roof…. This design, an outcome of the consideration of the unique use of its spaces and how they are served characterizes what it is for. ” Louis I.
Kahn (from Heinz Ronner, with S. Jhaveri and A. Vasella, Louis I. Kahn: Complete Works 1935-74. p111, 114. ) cite : attained from http://www. greatbuildings. com, visited 6 july 2015. The laboratory consists of six interconnected tower structures from which that is made from bricked walled shafts, contiguous to the glass walled lab spaces (see image 4). ‘… that science laboratories are studios and that the air to breathe should be away from the air to throw away.. by this Kahn’s achievements of the impressive bricked cladding shafts that compris service pipes and ducts in which use the air supply from the outside to supply the occupants on the inside. Louis Kahn also mentions the outcome of the design and how it served characterizes what it is for, the small research labs were made in such a way to reassure small team interface.
… The separation of the whole complex into working, meeting and living sectors seem to have released Kahn from the compulsive need to reduce the laboratory space to an ideal form’. K. Frampton, Modern Architecture – a Critical History, Part 2, chapter 27 Page 245). In terms of the significance of these labs in relation to his other similar projects differ in terms of concepts. According to K. Frampton (in Modern Architecture-A Critical History, Page 245) the final version of Salk Institute Laboratories, designed by Louis Kahn in 1965 for client Jonas Salk, led Kahn to accept a solution for which provided a ‘whole full-height service floor under each laboratory’.
This generated a much more ‘flexible space’ than that generally would in Richards labs. The way Kahn would openly appreciate the use of materials is evident in most of his buildings, in terms of texture or capability of the material as the Yale Art Gallery uses its concrete and glass to create a windowless facade, where as in the Salk Institute would use the concrete to create a ‘warm glow to the building -(Adelyn Perez. AD Classics: Salk Institute / Louis Kahn). The significance of Richards Medical Labs was resultant from Louis Kahn’s refined complex exposes of precast concrete frame system and the articulation of mechanical equipment (such as shafts), by this enclosing system allowed Kahn to create space without the interference of interior structural columns which allowed maximum lighting because of its large windows (image 4).
Kahn’s buildings, such as the Yale Art Gallery, expressively impacted those confronted them due to his design and wisdom of space and light which worked through the building, similar to Richards medical labs as he combined visual captivating spaces that differed under the renewing light during different intervals of the day.
The implication of his works abled Kahn to explore the notions he had about renovating the concept of modern architecture that to him required the ‘monumental and spiritual essences of prehistoric buildings. From the ideas discussed above, about his works and in relation to his Medical Labs in Philadelphia to modernism as a whole, it is evident that Kahn was successful in his hopes of reinventing architecture.