Louis Kahn
Singularity, strengh, thickness
A man
Louis Isadore Kahn was an american architect related to functionalism and father to serving spaces notions, served spaces and hollow architecture. He is one of worthy representative of modern movement, in the continuity of Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and Le Corbusier works. Vers une architecture lecture of Le Corbusier mays, as we say, particularly influence him. His using of light like a real material makes inspiration and an essential symbol of contemporary architecture.
A masterpiece
The Salk Institute
Near perfection, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, California, 1966) is one of the most significant and monumental masterpieces of this architect.
Some projects
Oser House, 1940-1942
Roche House, 1947-1949
Weiss House, 1947-1950
Shapiro House, 1956
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-1953
Medical research center Newton-Richards, Philadelphie, Pennsylvania, 1958-1961
First Unitarian Church of Rochester (en), Rochester, New York, 1959-1967
Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, New Hampshire, 1965-1972
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-1974
Some rewards
He was rewarded in 1951 of the Rome Prize in architecture and elected in 1971 member of american academy of letters and arts.
Some words
« A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable. »
« 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. »
« Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love. »
« The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building. »
Louis Kahn
(1901-1974)
