Symmetrical, Geometric, Impactful. You see the designs of Louis Kahn and you will probably have a rush of different emotions. He's an architect whose works are adored and admired by millions of people around the world. But is the legacy of an architect just his buildings or does he leave something more behind?
Louis Kahn lived a very complicated life. A life that came to a very tragic end. His story is not just the story of an architect, it's a story of a student, a teacher, a husband, a father and more importantly a man who loved his work more than anything in the world.
Sometimes maybe too much. Welcome to Bless Dark and today on this channel we are exploring the life and designs of Louis Isadora Kahn. Now many of you might not know this but Louis Kahn was not his real name. Itzelayb Shmulowski as he was called at birth was born into a poor Jewish family in 1901 in a Estonia, which at that time was part of the Russian Empire.
Kahn's father served in the Russian army as a paymaster but also possessed talents as an artist and designer in reverse glass painting. Now if you have seen the images of Louis Kahn, you must have noticed that he had scars on his face. He got them when he was young.
At the age of 3, he saw coals in the stove and was captivated by the light that they emitted. He took a coal and put it in his apron, which caught on fire and burned his face. He carried these scars for the rest of his life. His father at that time thought it would have been better if he had died.
But his mother said he would grow up to be great because of it. Makes you wonder, could she see something all along? In 1906, as the Russo-Japanese War was taking place, his family emigrated to the United States, as they feared that his father would be recalled into the military.
Now moving away from your home is never easy, and his family was poor when they made the shift. From an early age, Lou displayed a gift for drawing. But since art supplies were costly, his family gave him burnt twigs and matches to draw with.
He used to sell these drawings, earning money for the family. Soon as the years went on, he finally became a naturalized citizen of the United States. And since they now needed to properly fit into this country, his father officially changed his name to Khan in 1915. His obvious talent for art prompted his teachers to enroll him in competitions for gifted students throughout his schooling.
As the years went on, Lou got better and better at drawing. And you might wonder, if he was so good at art, how did he end up becoming an architect? At his high school, he attended a course on architecture.
This course taught him about the buildings and designs of ancient Greek, Egyptian and Roman architecture. He was fascinated and had found his path. Despite winning a full art scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, he instead chose to work a variety of jobs so that he could pay his tuition and pursue a degree in architecture.
And that is exactly what he did and in 1924, he graduated as a full-fledged architect. This is the Salt Lake Institute. It is one of the most important and celebrated works of Lewis Kahn. Notice the symmetry, notice how the huge volumes give way to the negative space and to the world beyond.
Notice the play of light, the play of forms. Lewis Kahn is still remembered and his work studied because his structures have the ability to move you. They have this tendency to be both imposing and grand and yet have a delicate...
play with light and natural elements. This design style of his is what he is remembered for but this style is not what he started with. When Lou graduated in 1924, He was just a fresh young mind, still exploring, still trying to figure out what he wanted to build, but more importantly, how he wanted to build it. From 1924 to 1950, he explored a lot in his career.
After getting 4 years of experience as a draftsman and taking a year off to tour Europe, in 1929, he started working with Paul Philippe Gret, who had been his mentor while he was studying. He later also partnered with George Howe and then Oscar Stonel. But a lot of his designs remained largely unbuilt. During these years, he also met the woman that he was going to spend the rest of his life with, Esther Virginia Israeli.
She was a research assistant and an administrator for a neurologist. In 1930, they got married and Lou moved into the home of his in-laws. And 10 years later, They welcomed their daughter, Sue Ann, into the world. Up until 1950, Lou did not create a lot of buildings.
Some of his commissions that he got during this time that actually went on to be built were the Jersey Homestead Cooperative Development in New Jersey, the Jesse Osser House, the Philip Q. Roche House, and the Morton Lenore Weiss House, all in Pennsylvania. But as I said before, you look at these buildings and Louis Kahn would never be the name that would come to your mind. The style is just so different. But all that is about to change. There was one event that changed the course of his life and his design style forever.
You see, during these years, he was very much influenced by the international style and the works of Le Corbusier. But even within these inspirations, he was still trying to find himself. He wanted to explore. He wanted to know what his style was. Every stroke of his pencil at that time was a question.
And then in the year 1950, everything changed when he finally found his answers. In the year 1950, Lou was offered a residence position at the American Academy of Rome for six months and he jumped at the opportunity. Now while in Rome, he took out the time to travel across Europe.
This was his second tour on the continent but this time, something moved him. After visiting the ruins of ancient buildings in Italy, Greece and Egypt, he was struck by their beauty and form. He rediscovered what countless architects had discovered when they came face to face with these monuments. He had sketched these structures before but this time he was specially affected by the way the Mediterranean light played upon the haunting, silent and monumental forms.
Lou knew he had finally found what he was looking for. Modern buildings that had the feel and presence of ancient ruins. He wanted to create a new world.
timelessness. He wanted to create monumentality and this began the renaissance of Louis Kahn, the architect whose work the world came to respect and adore. When he was in Rome, he received the commission to design the extension to the Yale University Art Gallery. When he came back, he finally set out to create the first building of his newfound architectural style. Completed in 1953, the building was revolutionary in terms of American museum architecture.
Situated among gothic structures, this museum, which was constructed out of brick, concrete, steel and glass, presented a windowless facade to the street and featured open interiors with flexible partition galleries. A honeycomb-like tetrahedral concrete ceiling contained air ducts and light fixtures in an ingenious arrangement. It was a beautiful composition, but amazing as it was, it still wasn't refined. He still had his international style inspirations, but you can see with this building, they were evolving.
If this project got the wheels of his style turning, the next one put them at full speed. Finally, Lou got the project that made it clear to him what his style was and what he will pursue. for the rest of his life.
But before we can discuss that building, we need to discuss a bit of his complicated personal life. So, as I told you, Lou had a wife and a daughter. But in 1945, he met a young graduate called Anne Griswold-Thing.
She had studied architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and had joined Lou's office. Working in close proximity, Lou and Anne became involved with each other. Years went by and then Anne became pregnant.
She went to Rome so that she could give birth to their daughter, away from the prying eyes of people. And so in 1954, she welcomed their daughter, Alexandria, into the world. And yes, if you're wondering, Lou was still married to Esther at this time.
In fact, he remained married to her till the end of his life. The reason I brought this part of his life up, because the next project, the one that solidified his style, was one that he completed with Anne. Around that time, Lou had got the commission to design a bath house in Trenton. After Anne gave birth, she came back to the US and the two of them together worked on this new project.
From a design perspective, the bath house actually appears as a simple cruciform. Four square concrete block rooms or areas surrounding an open atrium. Each of the rooms is topped by a simple wooden rectangular pyramid. At the corner of each room there's a large open rectangular column that supports the roof and it was in this building that he first articulated his notion and ideas of how spaces should be.
Kahn often spoke of this project as a turning point in his design philosophy. From this came a generative force which is recognizable in every building which I have done since. And Ting recalled that Lu used to say that even though the world discovered him through the Richard Building which was his next project.
But he discovered himself when he built the Concrete Bath House in Trenton. Richard Building as Lou said was one that truly showed the world what he had to offer. In the year 1957-62, Kahn designed and built the Richards Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania.
The building, even though it was plagued with functional issues, became a mecca for architects who came to study its austere and imposing duct towers, the abstract rhythmic interplay of glass, brick, and concrete facade, and the elegant articulation of the building's walls. its spaces. The world could now see what he had to offer.
And so with this new building made, he started to get a plethora of commissions. Everybody wanted a building designed by him. His next project was probably one that people consider to be one of his masterpieces. I'm of course talking about the Salt Lake Institute.
We discussed it a little bit earlier in this video. But now, let's take a moment to fully appreciate this project. In 1959, he got the commission to create the scientific facility commissioned by Jonas Salk, who wanted to create the most beautiful and stimulating research center in the world, attracting the most brilliant and creative minds. Kahn's powerful sequence of twin structures is skillfully oriented to avoid the glare and winds of the hot coastal climate while framing spectacular views of the distant ocean below. A lot of people consider this to be the greatest masterpiece by Lou.
In the year 1962, he got the commission for IIM Ahmedabad. A lot of you might already be acquainted with this building. One made of exposed brick with these giant arches that fill the space with playful light. The reason I love this project is not just because it's great, but because It actually got Lou together with B.V. Doshi.
This was the project that he was working on in his final days. The day before he passed away, he was in India. He had finished some work on the site and then went on to have dinner with B.V. Doshi and his family. The next day, he came back to the United States.
After he landed, he went to the Penn Station in Manhattan to commute. And it was right there that... Lou Kahn died of a heart attack at the restroom at that very station. A sudden and tragic death, ending the life of what some might say an architectural legend.
In fact, just before his death, he was called America's foremost living architect. But the tragedy was not just how he died, but what happened after his death. On his passport, the home address had been crossed off and no one knew who to contact.
He lay there in the mob for three days and then finally the police were able to get a hold of someone and tell them Louis Icahn was dead. Louis Kahn left behind not just his beautiful buildings but a plethora of knowledge on what it means to be an architect and finding your style. The IIM was essentially finished by the time he passed but it was officially inaugurated after. his death.
But his last project, his magnum opus was the one that he never saw to completion. The Parliament of Bangladesh. Lu had got the commission in 1961 and he had worked on this project until he passed away.
When he started the project, it was for a different country, it was for East Pakistan. But by the time the project was over, it was welcomed into a brand new independent country, Bangladesh. It is a sight to behold, a project that truly captures the essence of his design style.
With all these projects coming his way and after getting all of these accolades and awards, one would think that Lou was doing well financially towards the end of his life. life. He was not.
What a lot of people, even the ones close to him, did not know about him at the time was that Louis Kahn was quite broke towards the end of his life. He spent all of his money trying to build the structures that he loved with all his heart. As for his families, there was one last twist in the story that I did not tell you about.
In the year 1958, a year after the Richards building, Lou was getting a lot of bigger projects. and required focus on landscape and site planning. Lou had split up with Anne by this time. He then met Harriet Patterson who was a landscape architect. Together they worked on projects like the Kimbell Art Museum and the Fall Freedom Park on Roosevelt Island.
They two got romantically involved with each other and in the year 1962 together they had a son called Nathaniel Kahn. Lou was officially married to Esther till the end of his life. And if you're wondering if the three women knew about each other, they did.
But they never really interacted. His funeral was where all of them came together for the first time. Nathaniel Kahn, Lou's only son, grew up to be a filmmaker.
And he created a film called My Architect. He never got to know his father very well. So in that film, he explored who he was as an architect, a student, a teacher.
a husband and even a father. It's a really moving story and I would really recommend you all to watch. Louis Kahn had sacrificed everything in the pursuit of architecture and at the end when all is said and done it was work that he considered his greatest accomplishment.
I want to read out a letter he wrote to Anne Ting before making the bathhouse. Dearest Annie, I must build one of the greatest buildings of this city. this time.
You must help me build this particular building. I doubt if I can do it without you. Just think how low architecture has gotten down. We and you and I are going to show them the way.
All my love, Lou Hey guys, I hope you liked that documentary on Louis Kahn. If you did, please let me know in the comments below. There are more documentaries on this channel about architects, so do give them a watch and also subscribe to BlessDark.
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