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A Lucid Mystic Helped Transform Our Architecture

By John Lobell

Smithsonian

July 1979, Volume 10, Number 4

Classical principles, the spirit of materials, and a visionary's pure ideals informed the high art of Louis Kahn, master builder

Louis Kahn was an anomaly among modern architects: a mystic in an age of the rational, a form giver in an age of methodologists. But by the end of his life, Kahn had done a great deal to transform modern architecture. He brought to it a new awareness of history and a concern for structure as a giver of order.

The modern architecture that Kahn worked to transform was defined by the rationalist world view which had emerged during the Renaissance. There were reactions against rationalism during the course of its 500-year development, but on the whole its progress was steady. In the 17 th century, Newton's successful use of mathematics to describe both Earthly and celestial mechanics lent rationalism great support, and the 18 th century Enlightenment saw it extended from the natural sciences to human affairs. By the 19 th century the Industrial Revolution had seemingly confirmed the powers of rationalism not only to understand nature, but also to conquer nature; then, with Marx and Freud, rationalism was extended to history and consciousness.

There was originally a spiritual impulse behind the rationalism of modern architecture and its symbol, the glass skyscraper, and there was promise of a utopian existence in a crystal city. Today, however, that glass skyscraper merely serves to spread alienation and sterility to cities throughout the world. The problem is not merely the "style" of modern architecture but its basic philosophical assumptions.

From the Renaissance through the mid-19 th century, the fine, clear vision of the rationalists was appropriate. But in the late 19 th century, just as absolute rigor in all of the sciences seemed obtainable, the underlying foundations of the rationalist view of the world began to crumble. Experiments to determine the Earth's motion through static space revealed disquieting results. Eventually, Einstein's Special and General Theories of Relativity transformed Man's understanding of gravity, space and time (SMITHSONIAN, February 1979). Later, quantum mechanics undermined causality, and in 1931 the American mathematician Kurt Godel affirmed arguments showing the incompatibility of mathematics and nature.

Kahn realized, as had numerous poets before him, that reason is the discipline for understanding things which are . But if we attempt to see larger world, one which includes that which is not yet along with that which is , as the creative scientist, artist and architect must, then a more powerful discipline is needed, one used by the poets, which Kahn called "Order."

Louis Isidore Kahn was born on February 20, 1901, on the Baltic Island of Saaremaa, Estonia (then part of Russia). There, as a young boy, is face was burned by fire while he was carrying hot coals. He emigrated with his parents to Philadelphia in 1905, where they lived in poverty. He was brought up in a traditional Jewish--but not strictly Orthodox--way. His later pursuit of knowledge always had a Talmudic, questioning quality to it. As a high school student, Kahn's talents as a painter and musician enabled him to win citywide art prizes and help support his family by playing the piano in silent movie theatres. He had won a scholarship to study art, but in his last year of high school he took a course in architectural history and resolved to become an architect. From 1920 to 1924 he studied at the University of Pennsylvania. Penn at that time was a Beaux-Arts school, modeled on the French Ecole des Beaux-Arts (SMITHSONIAN, November 1975) which had been founded in the early 19 th century and had its roots in earlier academies.

During the 1930s, Kahn became familiar with the works of the modern European architects, particularly those of Le Corbusier. Kahn was excited by the possibilities modern architecture offered for the use of lightweight industrialized materials, abstract geometric forms, and for large-scale urban renewal. However, he was troubled by the absence in modern architecture of the more solid classical principles he had learned in his Beaux-Arts education. He set for himself the complex task of using the industrialized materials and methods of construction of modern architecture to express the inner orders which had been present in the Beaux-Arts.

Kahn was a small man with a shock of thick white hair and thick-lensed glasses (above). The lower part of his face was scarred from the childhood accident. He was ugly with an intense beauty. Architectural historian Vincent Scully, Jr. said of him, "Nobody gave off so much light. It was a physical light that came from the activity of his imagination and the aliveness of his intellect through all his pores." Kahn's voice was soft and hoarse. When he spoke, others quieted and strained to listen. His speech was often in poetry and was always a questioning, a pressing deeper into architecture. His words, therefore, were difficult for many to comprehend. And they were also difficult for Kahn himself in terms of conveying his thoughts.

Reaching artistic maturity late in life, it was not until Kahn was in his 50s that he began to resolve the hierarchical order of the Beaux-Arts with the democratic lightweight materials and free-column grids of modern architecture. As this resolution became apparent, there was an excitement among the architects who were around Kahn, and who began to see in his work a major achievement. Referring to a presentation Kahn made of one of his buildings in the mid-1950s, Robert Geddes (now dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton and then a fellow faculty member with Kahn at Penn) said: "There was a feeling of being at the absolute frontier of architecture."

Kahn's resolution was first fully expressed in the Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building at the University of Pennsylvania (above), which he started in 1957, and which was quickly recognized as a significant challenge to the previous course of modern architecture. For the first time in more than 20 years, red brick appeared in an important building. In the "Medical Towers," Kahn started with the rational assumptions of modern architecture: a clear response to the functional program and an honest, geometric expression of materials. But he found these assumptions alone inadequate, and he went beyond them. He distinguished between what he called "served" and "servant" spaces: the served spaces being for people and the servant spaces for pipes, ducts, stairs, toilets, and so on. He also used a bold precast-concrete system, which allowed the structure to give order to the spaces as well as support the building. This concern for hierarchy and structure was symbolic of Kahn's larger search for a meaningful order in his buildings, a search which paralleled a poetic exploration that led him to what he eventually called "Order."

Rationality had set consciousness and nature apart, with mathematics as their link. Order set them together, dependent on each other. Kahn did not say what Order is, speaking of it only in metaphor, but we might say that Order is he principle underlying all things, a quality things have in their beginnings outside of time. We might also say that Order is an active creativity: it is the way things come into being.

Kahn spoke of this coming into being using a complex metaphor involving Silence and light. He said: "Silence--the unmeasurable, desire to be, desire to express, the source of new need--meets Light--the measurable, giver of all presence, the measure of things already made--at a threshold which is inspiration, the sanctuary of art, the Treasury of Shadow. I said that all material in nature--the mountains and the streams and the air and we--are made of light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light."

Kahn distinguished between Form and Design. In searching for the nature--the Form--of a building, Kahn would always start with the question: "What does this building want to be?" In the case of a chapel, for example, Kahn described the Form by saying: "First you have a sanctuary, and the sanctuary is for those who want to kneel. Around the sanctuary is an ambulatory, and the ambulatory is for those who are not sure, but who want to be near. Outside is a court for those who want to feel the presence of the chapel. And the court has a wall. Those who pass the wall can just wink at it."

Once he sensed the Form, Kahn could begin the Design. Design gives Form specific shape and materials. Kahn said: "A great building, in my opinion must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable. The only way you can build, the only way you can get the building into being, is through the measurable. You must follow the laws of nature and use quantities of brick, methods of construction, and engineering. But in the end, when the building becomes part of living, it evokes unmeasurable qualities, and the spirit of its existence takes over.

During the 1960s our institutions came under attack. Many architects were disillusioned enough either to drop out or to join in radical political action for reform. Both reactions stemmed from a feeling that meaningful architecture, per se, was no longer possible. Kahn was sensitive to these views but shared neither of them. He was too optimistic to drop out and too realistic to believe that radical politics would bring about a utopia in which architecture would again be meaningful. Rather, he practiced his art on a level that transcended his troubled times and continually tried to go back to beginnings--to find out, for example, what the original essence of education was before designing a school.

He said: "in consultation with nature you will discover the order of water, the order of wind, the order of light, the order of certain materials. If you think of brick and you're consulting the orders, you consider the nature of brick, you say to brick: 'What do you want, brick?' Brick says to you: 'I like an arch.' If you say to brick: 'Arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel over an opening, what do you think of that, brick?' Brick says: "I like an arch.'"

After Kahn designed the Richards Medical Towers in Philadelphia, Dr. Jonas Salk asked him to build a laboratory in La Jolla, California. "When Salk came to my office," Kahn once recalled, "he said, 'There is one thing which I would like to be able to accomplish. I would like to invite Picasso to the laboratory.'" The Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1959-1965) is in some ways a repetition of the basic organization (the Form) of the Richards building. However, the Salk Institute introduces new elements into Kahn's work. The building not only responds to the stated requirements of the program, but also seeks to respond to the whole human being. Working from the outside in like a mandala--a mystic symbol of the universe--the building represents body, mind, society and spirit. The stair and toilet towers, on the outside, serve the body. The laboratory spaces, where work is done, serve the mind. The walkways and stairs providing entrance to the laboratories are places for people to meet and serve society. The tower studies, which allow the research fellows to contemplate their work or the ocean in solitude, and the court, between the two halves of the building, serve the spirit. The court is a "sanctuary," a place for quiet, a place without any purpose but to put one in touch with Being.

Kahn's Kimbell Art Museum (1966-72) in Fort Worth, Texas, is dedicated to bringing the viewer and the paintings together in natural light. Most museums use artificial light because the ultraviolet in sunlight can damage paintings. However, Kahn preferred natural light because it is alive and ever changing. Top deal with its damaging qualities, he brought the light in through long skylights in the vaulted ceiling, and then used screen inside to filter the light and reflect it off the concrete ceiling. The exposed concrete of the ceiling, usually a dull material, here has a warm glow.

The building is simple and austere and at the same time is rich and noble (left and above). Its richness comes not from decoration applied as an afterthought, but rather from the reverence with which Kahn treats each of the materials. The structure is concrete, alive in the light; the walls are travertine, a form of limestone, here used as a nonstructural surface material. The floors are oak, warm underfoot; the roof is lead, an ancient and impervious material that easily bends to fir the roof's curves and reflects a dull sheen in the Southwestern sun.

One of Kahn's last buildings, the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut (1969-74), was built across the street from one of his first, the Yale University Art Gallery (1951-53). The Center is urban in character, with shops along the street on the ground floor, and is clad in a pewter-colored stainless steel. Dark on the outside, the building explodes with light inside. A system of skylights brings ultraviolet-free light into the galleries of the top floor and, through two interior courts, brings this light down into the building. The courts are paneled in a luminous light oak and have balconies looking into them from the other floors of the building. One court is at the entrance. The other is near the center of the building and is Kahn's last offering to Silence, a space without function, a place for that which is not yet.

Kahn's career was one of constant struggle, both the creative growth and for survival. His circumstances were at times miserable. His method of working, which was frequently slow, excluded commissions from clients who were motivated by speed or profit. Business inefficiencies in his offices, and projects in India and Pakistan which sometimes required great expenditures only to fall through, burdened Kahn with crushing debts. It is remarkable that he was able to practice architecture as the highest of arts--totally uncompromised by expediency--and not only survive, but also complete so many exceptional buildings.

Through his 60s and into his 70s, Kahn designed buildings and projects in the United States as well as in Italy, India, Bangladesh, Israel Iran and Nepal for the major human institutions: residence, religion, art, government, science and medicine, industry, theater and education. His buildings were contributions to architecture and to human culture, and several in this country are ranked among our finest. He gained recognition as one of the leading modern architects and was awarded gold medals and honorary degrees, among these the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects and the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture from the Royal Institute of British Architects. He was elected to--and honored by--the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Louis Kahn died of a heart attack on March 17, 1974, at he age of 73, while returning from India where he was working on several projects. He was at the height of his creative powers.