Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture - review
American architect Louis Kahn is renowned as a visionary, his work taught in architecture schools far and wide, and yet his acclaim is based on a few diverse buildings completed in a relatively short burst of just 25 years.
Design Museum, London
Until 12 October
Review by Cate St Hill
American architect Louis Kahn is renowned as a visionary, his work taught in architecture schools far and wide, and yet his acclaim is based on a few diverse buildings completed in a relatively short burst of just 25 years.
He died of a heart attack at Pennsylvania Station in 1974, practically bankrupt, and his last project was completed posthumously in 2012, three decades after he dreamed it up.
London's Design Museum has put together a retrospective looking at Kahn's life and work, from his radical masterplans for his hometown of Philadelphia to city-like complexes further afield in India and Bangladesh.
See also: Louis Kahn - Six Most Important Buildings
'I like to think of his work as being responsible for coming up with a new way of building modernist buildings,' says exhibition curator Alex Newson.
In the National Assembly Building, Dhaka
'The majority of his contemporaries were trying to find ways to make buildings as light as a feather, with steel and glass, but Louis Kahn showed us that you could build modern buildings in a very different way. He didn't have the recognition from outside the wider architecture community, and I really hope this [exhibition] shows the way we can start to readdress that balance and bring his work to the wider public.'
The exhibition is divided thematically, taking in Kahn's use of engineering and geometric structures and his devotion to public buildings. Satisfyingly large models, some of them 1:1, punctuate the space, while smaller sketches and photographs are scattered on the walls.
As well as documenting Kahn's portfolio of projects, the exhibition gives context to his work with an intriguing collection of personal possessions, including family portraits, yearbook extracts, postcards from his travels and even his well-worn suitcase.
There are also conveniently placed timelines in each section detailing the people he met and places he visited. Born in 1901 to Jewish parents in what is now Estonia, Kahn's family moved to America when he was five.
His early work in the Forties and Fifties focused on small-scale housing and urban planning. It wasn't until relatively late in his career, at the age of 50, that he began to design much larger buildings, from synagogues and churches to museums and laboratories.
He started with Philadelphia, advocating increasingly avant-garde concepts for the reconstruction of its inner city, including a 180m-high twisting tower that remained unbuilt.
Models, sketches and photographs
A fantastic wooden model of the project, which almost brushes the ceiling, stands in the gallery and brings the project to life for the first time (it was produced for the touring exhibition when it was at the Vitra Design Museum). Says Newson: 'I think one of his largest frustrations in his career was that he wasn't able to affect the city planning of Philadelphia as much as he would have liked to.'
Kahn later put what he learned into practice at the Yale University art gallery (1951-53) and created a triangular, reinforced ceiling inspired by Buckminster Fuller's lightweight space frames. For the Kimbell Art Museum (1966) in Fort Worth, Texas he designed an undulating, concrete, vaulted ceiling interspersed with skylight slots to bring natural light into the galleries. One of his most referenced buildings is the Salk Institute (1959-65) in California, a laboratory which successfully divides what Kahn termed 'servant' spaces (stairwells, corridors and back-of-house functions) and 'served' spaces (in this case, the labs themselves).
'One of the interesting things is that he created one of the best labs scientists have said they've ever worked in, but equally he created wonderful art galleries that art directors and artists say are some of the best spaces they've ever exhibited in. That's incredibly powerful for an architect to turn his hand to creating some of the best spaces practitioners have ever used, in wildly different building uses as well. The difference between a laboratory and an art gallery is huge and being able to transcend that gap is very powerful,' says Newson.
Model of the 180m-high tower planned for Philadelphia
His late and largest projects were in India and Bangladesh, to where he returned more than 40 times in 10 years from 1963 until his death. One of his finest buildings arguably is the truly monumental National Assembly Building (1962-83) in Dhaka, shown at the end of the exhibition in a large model. The real building sits like a fortress on a pool of water and inside displays his masterful use of light. 'It became an icon for an emerging nation and I think the Bangladeshis are very proud that this building stands for their government and their democracy,' says Newson. 'It's a powerful way of showing that architecture can be bigger than just the building itself.'
Many people, especially those outside the tight-knit world of architecture, may not be aware of Kahn's work. But his buildings stand as powerful as cathedrals, built to last much longer than a lifetime. This exhibition enables us to appreciate them afresh.
