Architectural Thoughts On: Love
This month, ARCHIPHONIC’s Adam M considers the place of love in architecture and the curious case of Louis Kahn.
February has got me thinking about the concept of ‘love’ in architecture and it wasn’t long until my thoughts were guided to Louis Kahn. Incidentally, he was also born in February so to discuss his controversial life and career is timely.
Born in 1901 in Estonia, Kahn was moved to Philadelphia in 1906. He adopted his new name, Louis Kahn, as part of integrating into a new society. In 1924 he received his degree in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and by 1930, he had married his wife, Esther Israeli. After working for various Philadelphia-based architectural practices, he started his own in 1935. His practice could be summed up by one of his own quotes. “The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of its own, and that this world of its own serves an institution.” The basis of his practice was creating housing for factory workers during World War II and buildings in the 1940s for labour unions.
By 1947 he was teaching at Yale University and he later became a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1957. It was during this period that Kahn evolved his style, following on from his experience of being ‘Architect in Residence’ in Rome. Here he was able to visit many sites across Italy, Greece, and Egypt and the simple methods of representation ultimately influenced him to create the buildings he is most commonly known. This also represented another moment in Kahn’s life: Trenton Bath House.
Built in 1954, the building is neither in Trenton, nor is it a bath house. Instead, it provides an entrance and changing areas for patrons of the outdoor pool. It is often referred to as a showcase of the tools with which Kahn worked his architecture; geometric shapes; basic building materials; maximising natural light; and the relationships between secondary and primary spaces. Art historian Vincent Scully, Jr. said of the building, “The impression becomes inescapable that… architecture began anew.” Kahn described the building as a “generative force” that is recognisable in everything he did thereafter.
The building was not only designed by Louis Kahn, but by his associate architect Anne Tyng. She joined the practice in 1945 and it wasn’t long before the two developed a relationship resulting in a daughter in 1953. They continued to work together until 1964, and she has been described as Kahn’s muse, a critical influence on works of this period, which among others, include Yale Art Gallery. Buckminster Fuller, another influential architect described her as “Kahn’s geometrical strategist.”
It is likely that without Anne Tyng there would not have been the Kahn that we know of today. The controversy surrounding Kahn came from him already having a wife and child, but it seems in Anne he found something missing. The affair remained a secret until his death in 1974 when he suffered a heart attack in Penn Station, Manhattan. His body was unclaimed for four days. One of the children at his funeral happened to be another of his own. After a relationship with Harriet Pattison, a landscape architect at Kahn’s office, the two had a son, Nathaniel Kahn. His documentary My Architect (2003) is a biographical film about his father, that covers the subsequent complex web of family relationships during his life.
Granted, Kahn’s is not a typical love story, but an interesting one all the same. Kahn’s career was diverse, building as far as Bangladesh (National Assembly Building of Bangladesh), as well as iconic works closer to home, like the Salk Institute. If there is one thing to say about the architecture, life and love of Kahn it is that he was uncompromising. No doubt flawed as a person, perhaps it was an unbridled passion and love that he was unable to keep within the realms of architecture. There is a famous quote that sums up Kahn, his life and his attitude. His own words were a manifesto for how he lived and indeed how he presumed others should live.
“You say to a brick, ‘What do you want, brick?’ And brick says to you, ‘I like an arch.’ And you say to brick, ‘Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.’ And then you say: ‘What do you think of that, brick?’ Brick says: ‘I like an arch.’”
Words By Adam M, Archiphonic
