Book Description
The first in-depth biographical study of the brilliant but elusive architect who fundamentally redefined twentieth-century architecture.
Now ranked with Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, Louis I. Kahn brought a reverence for history back into modern architecture while translating it into a uniquely contemporary idiom. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with colleagues, coworkers, clients, and family members—and illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs—this book documents the uniquely American rise of a poor immigrant to the pinnacle of the international architectural world. It illuminates the richly diverse personal relationships Kahn had with such clients as Jonas Salk and Paul Mellon, and the romantic entanglements that mystified even those closest to him. While celebrating the genius of Kahn's art, the book provides an invaluable portrait of the man who created it. 200 color illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Highly recommended for any college-level collection concentrating on architectural history........2007-08-09
The biography of architect Louis I. Kahn, whose work is now ranked with Frank Lloyd Wright and other notables, represents the first in-depth survey of an architect whose works redefined 20th century architecture, and uses over a hundred interviews with colleagues, clients and family members to reveal Kahn's life, influences, and his sudden emergence as a notable architect. Illustrated with many previously unpublished photos documenting the rise of this poor immigrant, and including extensive family documents from archives, LOUIS I. KAHN: BEYOND TIME AND STYLE surveys his personal relationships, clients, and the extent of his genius. Highly recommended for any college-level collection concentrating on architectural history.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
A Brilliant Architect Newly Appreciated.......2007-05-16
Everyone knows that books can be turned into movies. Less frequently are buildings turned into movies, but that was part of the appeal of the unique 2003 documentary _My Architect_ by Nathaniel Kahn, about his architect father Louis I. Kahn, whom the son did not know well except through his buildings. The film was an introduction for many people to Kahn's architectural work, but other architects had held Kahn in high esteem. The film showed why, and now Carter Wiseman, an architecture critic and teacher, has written an accessible and handsome biography, _Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style: A Life in Architecture_ (Norton). The documentary excited the curiosity of many who will now want to look at Kahn's life and works in more detail, and while Wiseman's book does not have the personal quest of the film, it does an exceptional job of explaining the life of an enigmatic figure whose importance in architecture is, over thirty years after his death, increasingly well appreciated. Many rank Kahn as second in importance to twentieth century architecture only to Frank Lloyd Wright himself.
Kahn came with his family from 1901 in Russian-controlled Estonia, moving to Philadelphia in 1906 when he was five. He quickly showed skill in drawing, and got into a public art school for talented youths, then to the University of Pennsylvania to study architecture. In 1930 he married Esther Israeli, a scholar pursuing her masters in psychology. They would remain supportively married for 44 years until his death, but he had many affairs and children by two other women by whom he had children (one of whom was the documentary filmmaker Nathaniel) and with whom he maintained a type of family life. The problem in his relationships was not that he was promiscuous, but that his devotions were simply not marital; his widow said that "his first love was architecture and everything else came second." Like so many other artists with peculiar private lives, however, he is best judged simply on his art. That art is surprising and humane. Wiseman's book has scores of photographs of Kahn's most important works. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, has a gorgeous courtyard encompassing a view of the Pacific, flanked by study towers for the researchers, each of which has a view of the ocean. The Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is an astonishing huge crystal of cubes and cylinders that emerges from a moat, with an interior of Piranesi-style complexity that obliges members of parliament to interact with staffs and public. The Phillips Exeter Academy Library is ostensibly a solid masonry cube on the outside, but with huge circular concrete facades inside, a celebration of circular and cubic geometry that allows a public space with vantages for anyone to see what others are doing in the building.
What is wonderful about one building after another is that the brutalism associated with massive poured concrete is lightened and humanized; these are sensitive, even poetic, works, with none of the oppressiveness of modernism. Wiseman quotes David Rinehart, Kahn's friend and fellow architect: "For Lou, every building was a temple. Salk was a temple for science. Dhaka was a temple for government. Exeter was a temple for learning." Kahn may have been Jewish, but he was never observant of religious custom. His buildings, however, show an intense spirituality; viewing even pictures of them, it is easy to understand how people entering them have feelings of awe as if they are entering cathedrals. Wiseman's portrait of the man and the buildings is a welcome tribute to a twentieth century master.
A superb study of a master architect.......2007-04-04
This book far exceeded my expectations. I am generally not a fan of Wiseman's writings, as in the past he has judged my own mentor (a figure treated more positively in this book too) very harshly. Neither here nor there, other than to say I was skeptical about this book when I picked it up.
But I have to admit it's great. Wiseman's biography of one of America's greatest architects is balanced, entertaining, and packed with astute judgments. Louis Kahn had a convoluted family life (maintaining several families at once, hidden from each other), and even his professional relationships were unusual in their combination of intimacy and distance. Wiseman brings Kahn's architectural accomplishment to life in the context of this personal complexity.
The book is well illustrated and the photographs support Wiseman's discussion - Kahn's development of a new architectural language beyond International Style modernism. And Wiseman is excellent in describing the importance of Kahn's role as an educator. This book is a great introduction to a figure of towering accomplishment, and if Wiseman does not capture all the complexity of such an enigmatic figure, he is as close as anyone has come in writing.
Average customer rating:
- The book on Kahn
- great analysis and resource but....
- A Second Masterpiece for McCarter-- can he do it again?
- Louis Khan - Visionary
- A FANTASTIC BOOK
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Louis I Kahn
Robert McCarter
Manufacturer: Phaidon Press
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ASIN: 0714840459 |
Amazon.com
The considerable beauty of Robert McCarter's book about Louis Kahn, one of the titans of modern archtitecture, is akin to a Kahn building: squarish, monumental, monkish yet passionate and cunningly designed. The layout is exemplary, the straightforward chronological account of Kahn's career interspersed with conceptual histories of each of his important buildings, from the Yale Art Gallery to the Salk Institute to the National Capital of Bangladesh. The light splashes off the bright, thick pages in a way that would delight the master, and he would approve the clarity of the text and illustrations. Though the ample passages of Kahn's own prose are more poetical than McCarter's, in his soberly scholarly way, he's intellectually lively too, alert to Kahn's influences, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Buckminster Fuller, Barnett Newman to Noguchi. Fascinatingly, he traces the conceptual development of each major project--Kahn's masterpiece, La Jolla's Salk Institute, derives from the Acropolis plinth, Diocletian's palace, Hadrian's villa, the Alhambra, medieval monasteries, Renaissance churches, and Piranesi's plan to rebuild the ancient Roman Campus Martius (which also inspired the Bangladesh masterpiece). With exhilarated admiration, McCarter explains how Kahn coated the Salk project's concrete forms with polyurethane for perfect smoothness, added travertine stone and pozzuolana in the old Roman fashion to fashion textures and warm the tones, and fulfilled the master's ambition to fufill the material's potential: "Concrete really wants to be granite, but it can't manage." Wonderfully, McCarter provides computer renditions of masterpieces Kahn never created, including the stunning Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem, which was to echo Wright's Johnson Wax Building. He gives a sense of Kahn the man, in his lifelong lover's quarrel with Wright and his hatred of the automobile. For a still deeper portrait, see Kahn's son's brilliant documentary My Architect. No serious student of modern architecture can afford to be without this landmark book, a great teaching tool about one of the great teachers of the 20th century. --Tim Appelo
Book Description
Born in Estonia in 1901, Louis Isidore Kahn was to become one of the United States' most important architects of the post-war period, alongside the Modern masters Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Although renowned for a number of seminal modern works, he came to question many of the precepts of the Modern Movement. In particular, he questioned the ability of the International Style of Modernism to house the social spaces required by the latter half of the century.
In 1947 Kahn was appointed Professor at Yale University. He was to continue teaching throughout his architectural career, influencing a younger generation of architects along the way. His teaching enabled him to further develop his own concepts and to inform his ever-evolving definition of design. He was drawn to investigate monumentality in architecture, creating buildings out of heavy, solid materials and forms and incorporating vivid plays of light, in complete contrast to the lightweight glass and steel structures being created elsewhere by his peers. This monumentality was also imbued with his concern for the ritual of human experience. His career, although extending to just over twenty years, was a rich and varied one, where he continually readdressed the issues of light, mass, structure, monumentality, geometry and materials.
This monograph follows a predominantly chronological order, identifying major themes and examining key works according to these themes. Each building is illustrated with dynamic photographs that convey the spirit of Kahn's work, followed by a concept development portfolio that documents inspirations and early plans through to the finished work. An appendix at the back book features a selection of Kahn's own writings; there is also a comprehensive list of projects by Kahn spanning his lifetime and drawn from the Louis I Kahn Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Archives, listing over 231 projects, of which at least 30 were previously unattributed.
Customer Reviews:
The book on Kahn.......2007-10-02
If you are to have just one book on Kahn, and anyone seriously interested in architecture ought to have at least one, this is the one.
great analysis and resource but...........2005-12-13
great analysis and resource but redrawn CAD version of orgininal drawings somehow reduces clarity and meaning of 2D drawing set (line weight and landscape should be better redrawn)
A Second Masterpiece for McCarter-- can he do it again?.......2005-10-11
This book on Kahn is essentially a "sequel" to McCarter's incredible book on Wright. McCarter traces the details of Kahn's projects and often uncovers little-known but important works. Like the book on Wright, this book focuses on the unfolding of Kahn's architectural philosphy through his career via a study of his built and unbuilt works. This discussion is immersed in the details of each project.
An unfair review of McCarer's previous book overlooked the fact that the lush descriptions and details are essential to grasping the architectual ideas and philosophy. I doubt the reviewer had the patience to work through the entire book. Often you need to study a floor-plan, then return to McCarter's text, then study it again to really understand McCarter is telling you. Thus this book is interactive; you must engage it as thoroughly as it engages you.
Yay, the floor plans are larger! My only criticism is that McCarter should have kept the layout the same as the Wright book. Pages lacking page numbers, references to photos far from the photos themselves, sideways text (???) on chapter headings, image subtitles far from the images themselves, and "backtracking" to give overviews of a project all create confusion. Therefore I disagree with the amazon reviewer, I find the content to be wonderful, but the layout poor, unlike Kahn's works.
I see many mentions of Le Corbusier. Perhaps another project for McCarter? I would buy it in a second.
Louis Khan - Visionary .......2005-08-10
I purchased this book after watching "My Architect", a moving documentary by the illegitimate son of Louis Khan who was on a voyage of discovery - finding out who this man was who was his father. He travelled to many of the most famous pieces of architecture that Louis created and met many characters who had known his father and who had insights for him. As a result of this I was keen to get a book with a record of the amazing buildings he created. This book gives a good mix of information, architectural plans and drawings and then photos of his more famous buildings. As is usually the case with Phaidon productions it was beautifully put together and good value for money. I would thoroughly recommend it.
A FANTASTIC BOOK.......2005-08-02
IT IS A FANTASTIC BOOK AND DEFINATELY HAVE TO BE A PIECE OF THE KAHN FAN'S LIBRARY.
NICE TYPO AND BINDING. GOOD PICTURES AND TEXT - INCLUDING 3D RECONSTRUCTIONS OF THE UNBUILT MASTERPIECES.
MY ONLY NEGATIVE OBSERVATION ABOUT THE BOOK THAT IT IS NOT THE BOOK FOR THOSE WHO INTERESTED ABOUT THE PRIVATE HOUSES OF KAHN -THEY ARE ALMOST COMPLETELY MISSING.
Book Description
The late bloomer...
Though Louis Isidore Kahn (1901-1974) started his career late in his life, the few projects he was able to undertake were realized to perfection. With the Jonas Salk Institute in La Jolla, California (1959-1965) Kahn created a workspace with superb functional and aesthetic qualities; the institute's Minimalist elements radiate a sense of eternal beauty. The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth (1966-1972) occupies the somewhat faceless city like an island of spiritual space, an effect that is achieved by simplicity in design and materials. Also, the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (1962-1974) and the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, National Assembly of Bangladesh in Dhaka that was finished after his death are buildings of monumental importance, demonstrating the vision of a talented and very unusual man. This book brings together 17 Kahn projects, ranging from private housing to commercial architecture, religious buildings, exhibition spaces, and government buildings.
Customer Reviews:
Exellent Series.......2007-01-10
Full marks to TASCHEN for the BASIC ARCHITECTURE series. The small format, clear text/layout/photography make them visually pleasing and well worth revisiting often. I am buying one each month.
A Low Price Ticket to an Architect's Life Work.......2006-09-26
Although I am a fan of Modern Architecture, I have never really understood why Louis Kahn was one of the great architects of the Twentieth Century. His buildings have never really appealed to me. They stike me as very dense and way too serious. Kahn's embrace of "monumentality", strikes me as antithetical to Modernist thought.
I purchased "Louis Kahn: 1901-1974" because at $9.99 this book is a low risk investment. It is published by the German Publishing Company, Taschen. This imprint produce some of the finest books currently being published about architecture. Typical of the Basic Architecture Series, the book is very well written and includes beautiful photos of the architect's best buildings. It is hard to believe that such an attractive book sells at such a reasonable price.
I am still not a fan of Kahn's buildings but I now have a better understanding of why he is considered one of the most important architects of the Twentieth Century. This book is a good purchase for anyone trying to understand the forces that shaped the practice of architecture during the past fifty years. A good value and highly recommended.
Average customer rating:
- forgot some stuff for my research
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Louis I. Kahn: Light and Space
Urs Buttiker
Manufacturer: Watson-Guptill Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0823027724 |
Customer Reviews:
forgot some stuff for my research.......2000-04-30
i want some more pictures about his designs if u can plz help me thank u
Customer Reviews:
imaginary photographs of unbuilt buildings.......2001-01-08
So I'm looking through this book of photographs of unbuilt projects, and gradually I realize. . . I'm looking at photo. . . . graphs of. . . unbuilt projects. They're great-looking photos, too. There's a building at the Salk Institute in La Jolla which I know isn't there, and another Jewish memorial NYC which I don't think exists, and they look great.
What Kent Larson has done is a simple, powerful, cool idea that took a lot of time, energy, MIT architectural thinking, and SGI computing power to accomplish. Larson first pieced together a reasonable paper version of each structure, then assembled a 3-D virtual model of that structure, then had to choose the best virtual camera angles under the best false sunlight for the best portraits. Larson went as far as using high-resolution photographs of existing Kahn walls to skin these virtual surfaces, and added a patina of wear and tear, just to make it more convincing.
So Larson's work is the result of a lot of a helluva lot of choices. It helped the interpretation that Kahn preferred a limited palette of building materials - like concrete - which helped Larson orchestrate this score. It didn't help Larson that Kahn was known for his close attention to lighting effects. All that lighting took the most sophisticated possible CAD/CAM rendering on SGI hardware.
But the payoff is - shocking. You get bright sunlight, soft counter-reflections, complex reflections in glass (the glass-block Jewish memorial is the showboat piece in that respect). You have to see them to know how much you want to believe them, if that makes any sense. To know how much you'd like to visit these six new Kahn buildings that will never exist. In a weird way, this project advances Kahn's career and reputation, not only from beyond the grave, but lapsing over into architectural cyberspace.
Architecture & computer at it's best .............2000-12-15
Larson has not only demonstrated superb skill in computer rendering but also a much deeper understanding of Kahn's architecture. Reviews by Scully demonstrate the histrorical development of Kahns work & Mitchell has done a fine job of giving the analysis. This book will help in establishing some standard for presenting unbuilt works of architecture in the future.
Format of the book is good in its simplicity although some reference to drawings would have made it a more comprehensive study. Great book ... a collecter's item for all "Kahnian's" across the world.
Beautiful Book!.......2000-11-20
This is not just another architecture book. It is also a beautiful photography book. It is astounding that these luminous images are of spaces that were never built!
Extraordinary.......2000-11-19
I have known the eight projects presented in this book for over thirty years, but now realize that my understanding was only superficial. This extraordinary volume reveals aspects of the buildings impossible to perceive from drawings and models: the layering of space, the rich materiality, and - most of all -Kahn's genius for manipulating light. Delightfully, this ambitious and unorthodox study is sure to rattle those who regard Kahn as an unapproachable icon.
Presumptuous.......2000-11-17
Kent larson presumes he can show a finished Kahn using a computer. As we all know, the building process is evolving. It certainly was for Kahn. Larson's leaden computer graphics shed not even the glimmer of a candle on the genius of Kahn.
Book Description
A thoughtful selection of the celebrated architect's speeches and writings. This unique anthology draws from Louis Kahn's speeches, essays, and interviews—some never previously published—to capture the evolution and central tenets of the influential American architect's thinking, from his early work of the 1940s to his death in 1974. Professor Twombly's introduction and headnotes offer incisive commentary on the texts. 30 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
more poet than architect.......2007-03-21
When one reads Kahn, one finds a hope. This hope is a hope that promises
growth. His last and best philosophical claims, "Silence" and "Light"
invites reader to the "unmeasurable" dimension. It's the dimension of
vertical sublimity and archaic gravity that he saw during his travels in
Egypt and residency in Rome.
Reader is surprised by the fact that Kahn composed Kimbell and Dakka
by poetry long before actual buildings were built. His individual rooms
form a community ,,, his material reveals the story of construction ,,,
his light brings life to every corner of the building.
Steven Holl used to say that he wanted to work for Kahn right after
schooling because he was the only architect (except one landscape
architect) who has a thought. In Holl's words, "Kahn had an idea
that brought about phenomena."
I sometimes wonder what makes me come back to Kahn. For long, I thought
I was under the spell of Vincent Scully. Then, I thought Exeter/ British
Art Gallery/ Kimbell mesmerized me. Few years ago, I was thrilled to
see Kent Larson's unbuilt projects' renderings. Recenltly,
Nathaniel's "My Architect" shocked me.
Reading this book, now I know why I stick to Kahn.
It's his words. Words that can only be spoken by a person who dares
to pick up burning charcoal. Words that can only be charged by a
person who lives solely on proselytizing architecture.
I hope Kahn's powerful words wet your thirst and silence your
worries as well.
Very Essential.......2006-04-14
I was required to purchase this book for a class on Louis Kahn, and have found it to be an indespensible source of inspiration in everything that I do. I took the class as an art history major who has an intense fascination with architecture, and a love of all things Kahn. The book is a serries of lectures and conversations between Kahn and his students. Some of the questions posed are questions that as creators we all face, and Kahn's answers which may not always offer a perfect solution, make the reader aware that the questions we cannot answer are the source of passion in design. Kahn has an amazing ability to enliven the art of architecture. Because of several events in my life I have chosen the path of design for my future, and one day that road should include architecture. I keep this book close at hand, for days I feel overwhelmed. Kahn's simple words sooth the soul and sometimes make a heart skip a beat.
Book Description
This book owes its concept to the transparency of the work process of Louis I. Kahn, whose ideas are preserved in the wealth of sketches he did whenever developing new concepts or working out details for new building projects. Sketches and plans of different developmental stages of his projects are laid out in a basically chronological order and these are complemented by relevant extracts from his writings and speeches and by his commentary while this documentation was being prepared in 1973 - the year before his death. As in the first edition, the authors` aim has not been to interpret or evaluate. Rather, they wish to provide the scholar with a solid base for further research, allowing him to follow the traces of a remarkably creative mind that revered architecture as a manifestation of man´s spirit.
Customer Reviews:
have a nice trip to Louis I. Kahn's Complete Work, 1935-1974!.......2007-08-06
we have a nice trip to "Louis I. Kahn's Complete Work, 1935-1974". You provide our graduate students with useful information. BEST TANKS!
Best book to feel and love Kahn's light and space concept.......1997-02-23
This book lead you into the complex world of Louis I. Kahn, letting you understand his personal way to intend history of architecture as a contemporary world of "figures", or "ideas" that the architect's mind can renew and tranform in completely new projects.
Kahn will conduce you trhough the ancient ruins to discover their actual life in today architecture.
Average customer rating:
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What Will Be Has Always Been
Rizzoli
Manufacturer: Rizzoli
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0847806073
Release Date: 1986-05-15 |
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Louis I Kahn
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