Enrico Pietrogrande, Adriano Rabacchin,

Alessandro Dalla Caneva, Jia Lu

NOTES ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF

LOUIS I. KAHN

DBS

1
This book was translated from the original Italian by the Oxford University
graduate Clive Prestt.

2
Contents

7 Introduction

9 The ‘inbetween’. Observations on materials and

technologies used by the architect Louis Kahn
Enrico Pietrogrande

37 Louis Kahn. The architecture of the house

Adriano Rabacchin

47 Louis Kahn and the Mediterranean. The spirit of

classical antiquity as a compositional method
Alessandro Dalla Caneva

61 Louis Kahn’s Dramatic Light

Jia Lu

71 Ehle House, Haverford, 1947-1948

Adriano Rabacchin

77 Casa Morris, Mount Kisco, New York, 1955-1958.

Representation of the house using ancient styles
Alessandro Dalla Caneva

87 The Fleisher House, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1959.

The evocative nature of shape
Alessandro Dalla Caneva

97 Fisher House, Hatboro, Pennsylvania, 1960-1967

Jia Lu

107 Korman House, Philadelphia, 1971-1973

Jia Lu

117 Bibliography

123 Sources of illustrations

3
4
Introduction

The idea of collecting several papers dedicated to specific

aspects of the architecture of Louis Kahn occurred to me
some years ago during the academic year 2011-12 in con-
nection with the exercises on my Urban and Architectural
Composition course dedicated to the Twentieth century
master*.
At that time I and other members of the teaching group
had a few doubts about the subject. Limiting ourselves
only to the one-family dwellings Kahn actually built, we
asked the students to develop a small independent sup-
porting building located nearby. However, the exercises
convinced us to deepen the projects on the master toge-
ther with the pupils since some of our reflections would
be useful to future students.
As mentioned above, the papers deal with specific
aspects of Kahn’s architecture. Firstly, I looked at the ma-
terials and construction elements that both Kahn and the
neo-brutalist movement used in the 1950s and that super-
seded the theoretical positions of the Modern Movement.
Together with the Smithsons’ projects, the frank exposure
of the material and the undiluted exhibition of the con-
struction process in Kahn’s architecture still influence a
lot of creations in architecture today, above all in Switzer-
land and England.
The papers contributed by Adriano Rabacchin are de-
dicated to the one-family dwelling, a project theme that
Kahn practiced continuously but about which relatively

5
little is known in both the master’s introductory studies
and examples he developed. So Rabacchin analyses the
Ehle house.
Alessandro Dalla Caneva’s contribution is a theoreti-
cal consideration of the subject of building composition
in the Latvian master’s projects. On the one hand, the
project experience concerns understanding the importan-
ce of representation in the form and on the other hand
understanding the methods through which the idea can be
recognised in the form of the construction.
Jia Lu is a Chinese architect who trained at the Univer-
sity of Harbin. In his chapters in this book he looks at the
way Kahn used light by examining extraordinary exam-
ples in the Fisher house and the Korman house.
Lastly, given the complexity of thought and comple-
xity of the projects by the man who for many is the most
important architect of the last century, and while this book
is a fragmented study, the report it presents concludes
that he was the most appropriate architect for fulfilling
projects with a multiplicity of characteristic features that
cannot be reduced to a single unit.

Enrico Pietrogrande

* This is the teaching of the Architecture and Urban Composition

2 (co-teachers Adriano Rabacchin, Alessandro Dalla Caneva) on
the degree course in Building Engineering - Architecture at the
University of Padua (Department of Civil, Environmental and
Architectural Engineering).

6
Louis Kahn and the Mediterranean. The spirit of
classical antiquity as a compositional method
Alessandro Dalla Caneva

Examining the work of Louis Kahn today is still a

good idea since original thinking having its origins in
mankind’s existence and aspirations is always valid,
at least in this writer’s opinion1. The feeling of fleeting
impermanence that distinguishes schemes in our times
makes it very interesting for us to look at Kahn’s work
and find the idea of a civil architecture whose reasoning
evokes the feeling of the individual belonging to shared
values2 which is deeply deposited in its form.
Kahn mainly considered himself to be an artist and
that architecture is a medium for art3 and Kahn’s personal
experience represents an invitation to examine reality
with wonder and amazement as if it were the first time4
everything that is above, beyond, and deeper than the actual
appearance of things has been imbibed and distinguished
by separating what is there permanently from what is

45
1. Batptistery of Saint John, Siena (1951).

fleeting and ephemeral. The real and authentic feeling of

knowledge is essentially produced by an ecstatic passage5
from the reality to an elusive, immobile, and longed-
for place of origin6. Every ideation is triggered by this
spark of imagination7. A start full of faith, wonder, and
silence8. The job of art itself is to reveal this universal
and ideal content in the external form of the appreciable,
conferring beauty on what obeys an aim, a purpose, an
end. The aim is to represents the deeper reasoning for
gathering the nature of what a building needs and must
be. The idea that powerfully contains the building’s
identity comes from the exhibition of this will to live9.
The form and its functional reasons are expressed in it,
as well as the essence around which the compositional

46
2. Piazza del Campo, Siena (1951).

plan being defined by it too. Its achievement is brought

about by using the principle of decorum that confers
appropriate form on the construction so that it achieves
its function. The items composing the construction are
subordinate to the main idea of the general aim being
revealed appropriately.
The understanding of what then became a method in
composition came to Kahn clearly during travels in the
Mediterranean world of Italy, Greece, and Egypt in the
Spring of 1951 in which Kahn experienced a moment
of revelation and confirmation of how the ancient world
knew how to represent durable values of civil life in
architecture. The spirit of classical antiquity in Roman
buildings reveals the need to refind that monumental

47
3. Rome (1951).

character in the fullness of the forms handed down to

our times but which seem to be lacking in contemporary
buildings. The ancient buildings take care of the feeling
of monumentality in the cracks in the construction and
these have become examples to modern society for the
new institutions it needs to construct10. It clearly defines
the idea of how the nature of a project transcends the
architectural plan to achieve the essence of the human
activity with which it is bound. The Pantheon is exemplary
in exalting the urgent need to transcend the particular
rite in order to express a higher purpose than the lay
or religious components11 which form a specific aspect

48
4. Roman ruins (1951).

contained within the general idea. While this purpose in

the Pantheon finds expression by being measured using
an instrumental space sublimated in the Egyptian ideal
that was maximally expressed in the pyramids, the ideal
is expressed without any mediation by the predetermined
space that demonstrates the pure expression of “higher
thought” very strongly (Hegel)12.
Furthermore, it is the feeling of starts that Kahn
felt was questioning him when he contemplated ruined
buildings such as the thermal baths of Caracalla. In this
case he contemplated the sense of ideation since what
remains after the loss of function is the condition that

49
5. Acropolis, Athens (1951).

exalts the ultimate meaning of the building13. According

to Kahn, if there is a romantic aspect, this becomes
clear when the ancient monument recovers the irrational
component. A good architectural project stirs emotion in
us. Above all, it is in the monument that the collective
feeling assumes its highest expression. It is the emotional
rush as an emotional given that needs to be incorporated
in the project. Not only the forms but also ideas and
emotions are gathered from history to represent the values
of our times. Consequently, the tradition is not so much
the recovery of a formal experience as the assimilation of
the essence contained in the reality14. Whether traceable to
the classical world or the Roman world, ancient buildings
have above all handed down all of these purposes in that it

50
6. Parthenon, interior, Athens (1951).

considers and identifies the general value that represents

an invariable including when the building changes or loses
its original function. It is the feeling of monumentality, the
interpretation of a symbolic code revealed in the ancient
form to be recomposed over and above the building
reasons, the typological interpretation, and an evolutionary
conception of architecture that Kahn did not appear to
be interested in since he was driven by research into the
metahistorical archetype15: “Once again the dilemma
between the past and present arises: perhaps form (content),
inspired by dreams, is only really nothing other than the
memory. It is perhaps in some way a model, something that
has always existed in the past (…)?” (V. Scully).
Once this leap has been made without any temporal-

51
7. Temple of Apollo, Corinth (1951).

spacial constrictions in the inaccessible place of the

origins, freedom is justified due to typological inventions
whose reason for being is the sense of order that establishes
geometric relationships full of meaning.
The meaning from which everything is created having
been clarified, and the true place of architecture in a region
where appearance is more important than reality having
been identified, understanding how the gold dust of the
essential constructs a body appropriate to expressing that
entirely inner meaning becomes necessary. Furthermore,
the monuments and stones of Ancient Rome immediately
offer themselves as a means through which to understand
the methods by which the monumental assumes a material
substance that corresponds consistently. It is not only the

52
8. Temple of Amon, Karnak (1951).

discovery of what but also of how the incommensurable

can take shape in spaces and time by adapting to the
circumstances. Architecture in Roman times was
researched for its material structure and the construction
components used to create the form (content) of the
building. Even more than Greece or Egypt or the rest of
the ancient Mediterranean world, what Rome was able to
restore was the wonderful sense of the conforming space
that the building forms create. The imposing powerful
brick and stone walled constructions are expressed as if
their aim is to make their form appropriate to the space
that in culturally exalting the function, expresses the
general aesthetic idea16. One comes to understand how
those important spaces demonstrate their nature in clear

53
9. Pyramids, Giza (1951).

correspondence to the logic of the construction17 so that

the space is not obscured but rather revealed by the light18
that picks out the profile and surfaces in the building’s
parts. Being luminous and crystalline in its physical
presence, the space cannot but be organised to modulate
the parataxical composition of the box type volumes
that are rigorously positioned to make the general aim
recognisable, an aim that does not lie in the circumstances
but in the expression of the institution. The Roman lesson
has the feeling of déjà vu when Kahn’s experiences as a
young man at the Academy of Beaux Arts in Philadelphia
and the hours spent mastering a method that found its
reason to exist in putting the rational principles of French

54
10. Ptolemaic Temple, Edfu (1951).

Illuminism into operation are taken into acount19. The

nature of the classic landscape that emerges “from the
intelligent composition of the distinct elements”20 could
not produce forms coherent with the genius loci in which
the fullness of the light in the sunny Mediterranean
climate cuts the volumes in the blue sky, revealing the
plastic incorruptibility and chiaroscuro light and shade
rhythm of the pure and absolute forms. It is precisely
the latter that reveal the immeasurable tension with
disarming amazement, brought into play by combining
simple forms21 as if the simplicity were functional in the
recognition of the building’s nature. It is confirmation of
the formal choice that characterised the best of Kahn’s

55
production that opposed the International Style dogmas
of his time. After the stay in the Mediterranean world,
this compositional method was developed coherently
in the schemes that make Kahn the continuer of a
monumental tradition in architecture. Construction that
nostalgically re-proposes the durable symbols of civil life.
Consequently, Kahn’s real aim seems to be to recreate a
world rising out of the ruins of the long-departed reality
drawn in by a fiction that is configured as if it were the
real and true indisputable reality. So the composition is
functionally snatched out of the human world’s transience,
oblivion, and death forever conferring on it a sense of a
wider, richer, and deeper dimension of life, less reality
and more idealism.

Notes
1
“I believe also that a building must be answerable to an institution of man.
What is instituted by men is that which has the approval of man, or rather this
sense of institutionalizing or making of the institution of man, comes from our
inner inspirations”. Kahn 1964, pp.170-171.
2
“He is the architect for the great occasion, for institutions, churches,
synagogues, museums, universities, and capitals. His architecture gives form
to what is tending to disappear or has no form in the contemporary world: cult
locations – of religious cults, taste, culture – but also faceless institutions that
the world submerges and destroys. His architecture aims to put a collective
value back into operation". Tafuri and Dal Co 1976, p. 408.
3
“My father has always been considered to be an artist, in fact, he would have
liked to have been a painter and exhibit his paintings but when he discovered
architecture, constructing buildings became his artistic medium”. Sue Ann
Kahn, My father and a day in Rome, in: Barizza and Falsetti 2014, p. 54.
4
“I believe wonder is the motivator of knowledge”. Kahn 1961, p.124.
5
“Within us is the complete story of how we were made, and from this sense,
which is the sense of wonder, comes a quest to know, to learn, and the entire
quest, I think, will add up to only one thing: how we are made. I think our
entire quest for knoweledge is only that: how we are made”. Kahn 1964, p.171.
6
“What seems to interest the Lithuanian American teacher is the interception
of one secret layer of architecture, an implicit level in which time and with it

56
history do not pass, being configured as something that has absolutely stopped,
that finds a reason for its own existence in its stability”. Franco Purini, Il luogo
dell’origine, in Di Petta 2010, p. 9.
7
“I love beginnings. I marvel at beginnings. Beginnings are that which
confi rm its continuation. (...) It’s in my character to want to discover
beginnings”. Kahn 1972, p. 150.
8
“Today, building needs an atmosphere of belief for the architect to work in.
Belief can come from recognizing that new institutions want to emerge and be
given expression in space”. Kahn 1973, p. 257.
9
As Kahn said in a letter to Balkrishna V. Doshi at the origin of every work
is an idea.
10
“The images we have before us of monumental structures of the past cannot
live again with the same intensity and meaning. Their faithful duplication is
unreconcilable. But we dare not discard the lessons these building teach for they
have the common characteristics of greatness upon which the buildings of our
future must, in one sense or another, rely”. Kahn 1944, pp. 22-23.
11
“This building (Pantheon) had no precedents: its motivation was clear and
full of belief. The force of its wanting to be inspired a design equal to its
desires in form.” Kahn 1973, p. 257.
12
“When you see the pyramids now, what you feel is silence. As though the
original inspiration of it may have been whatever it is, but the motivation
that started that which made the piramids, is nothing but simple remarkable”.
Kahn 1968, p. 240.
13
“I note when a building is being made, free of servitude, that the spirit to
be is high allowing not a blade of grass in its wake. When it stands complete
and in use its seems like it wants to tell you about the adventure of its making.
But all parts locked to serve makes this story of little interest. When its use
spent and it becames a ruin, the wonder of its beginning appears again. It feels
well to have itself entwined in foliage, once more high in spirit and free of
servitude”. Kahn 1968, p. 229.
14
“This led me to realize what may be Tradition. Whatever happens in the
circumstantial course of man’s life, he leaves as the most valuable, a golden
dust which is the essence of his nature. This dust, if you know this dust, and
trust in it, and not in circumstances, then you are really in touch with the
spirit of teradition. Maybe then one can say that tradition is what gives you the
power of anticipation from which you know what will last when you create”.
Kahn 1967, p.227.
15
“There is something that pulls on you as though you were reaching out
something primordial, something that existed much before yourself. You
realize when you are in the realm of architecture that you are touching the
basic feelings of man and that architecture would never have been part of
humanity if it weren’t the truth to begin with”. Kahn 1968, p. 27.
16
“Reflect on the Pantheon which is recognize as one of the greatest of
buildings. Its greatness has many facets. It is the realization of a conviction
that a building could be dedicated to all religions and that this ritual free space
can be given expression. It presents a belief of a great man which led to its
design as a non directional domed space. If architecture may be expressed as

57
a world, then this building expresses it well, even refi ning it, by placing the
oculus, the only window, in the center of the dome”. Kahn 1973, p. 257.
17
“The architectural space is one where the structure is apparent in the space
itself. A long span is a great effort that should not dissipated by division
within it. The art of architecture has wonderful examples of spaces within
spaces, but without deception. A wall dividing a domed space would negate
the entire spirit of the dome”. Kahn 1973, p. 257.
18
“A voult, a dome, is also a choise of a character of light”. Kahn 1967, p.224.
19
“We need Boullée, we need Ledoux, Boullée is, Ledoux is, Thus
Architecture is”. Kahn 1967, p.223.
20
Norberg-Schulz 2003, p. 45.
21
Kahn said that in Italian architecture all of the possible combinations of
pure form have been experimented. See Louis Kahn in Di Petta 2010, p. 24.

58
Casa Morris, Mount Kisco, New York, 1955-1958.
Representation of the house using ancient styles
Alessandro Dalla Caneva

The Trenton Bathhouse of 1955 forms a reference point

for studying Kahn’s use of differentiated space1. There
are several preparatory drawings of the house, which was
not built, at Mount Kisco in New York State that were
sketched at the time for Lawrence Morris. There are two
distinct versions that refer to a process of definition of
the dwelling’s form in which the study of the individual
structural units represents the leitmotiv unifying both ver-
sions according to a procedure progressively aggregating
the individual cells in meaningful unity. It should also be
noted how the first version is strongly analogous with the
project for another public building, the Richards Medical
Research Building of 1957 that brought Kahn’s ideas for
differentiated spaces into being, conforming to its own
rational and visible building structure. This attitude can
be interpreted in the light of Kahn’s Beaux Art training

75
1, 2. Plan sketch, first version (left), definitive plan (right) of the Morris House
(1955-1958).

and his Roman experience. In particular, the latter led to

reflective meditation on the idea of differentiated space
where each individual entity is clearly recognisable in-
side the entire ensemble. In exploding the international
myth of continuous undifferentiated space, Kahn revised
the way contemporary architecture is understood by for-
cefully proposing the idea of recognisable space unspoilt
by interruptions that infringe nature: “Architecture deals
with spaces, the thoughtful and meaningful making of
spaces. The architectural space is one where the structure
is apparent in the space itself. A long span is a great effort
that should not dissipated by division within it. The art
of architecture has wonderful examples of spaces within
spaces, but without deception. A wall dividing a domed
space would negate the entire spirit of the dome”2. The
idea of the autonomous spatial unit forcefully persists
even when the second version of the project tends to in-
corporate the individual units inside the same perimeter

76
3. Elevation sketch of the Morris House (1955-1958).

in a more stringent relationship between the ground floor

and raised parts according the principles of the picture-
sque that in the asymmetry and misalignments are remin-
ders of the typical methods of medieval architecture that
Kahn pondered with interest. This does not mean that the
house grows arbitrarily but is always subject to a principle
of order that confers a solemn character typical of ancient
architecture.
However, what amazes in the Morris house is the ima-
ge of an ancient ruin with the three-dimensional version
perhaps offering memories of ancient castles or medieval
ruins that make us forget the passing size of the dwel-
ling for a moment and lead us inside a symbolic vision
of architecture as a place representing the ideal with spe-
cific values. We know that the theme of ruins was dear
to Kahn’s heart precisely because the sense of its design
strongly emerges in the form of a ruin, that is, the main
reason underlying the creation of the building: “But when

77
4. Sketch of the Pennsylvania Medical Research Towers (1956).

the building is a ruin and free of servitude, the spirit emer-

ges telling of the marvel that a building was made”3. In
the lack of life that characterises a ruin, it is precisely in
the ruin losing its function that it manifests the true sense
of knowledge, the true aesthetic intention that motivates
the design and represents all that is most authentic in tra-
dition: “Whatever happens in the circumstantial course of
man’s life, he leaves as the most valuable, a golden dust
which is the essence of his nature. This dust, if you know
this dust, and trust in it, and not in circumstances, then
you are really in touch with the spirit of tradition. Maybe
then one can say that tradition is what gives you the po-
wer of anticipation from which you know what will last
when you create”4. The design re-proposing the ancient
idea of monumental character with the meaning concea-
led in the form certainly leads to the extreme consequen-

78
5. Sketch of walls of Carcassonne (1959).

ces of recovering forms or citations of the ancient world

such as castles or medieval manor houses. The modern
historiography has underlined how the Morris house has
close links with the Richard Lloyd Jones house by Frank
Lloyd Wright in terms of the alternating verticalism of
glass and masonry reconfiguring the external form in fa-
scias. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the strength of
the images arising out of the volumetric designs and si-
gnifying a monumental dimension that remind us of the
silhouettes of medieval castles or their vertical parts si-
gnifying the evocative towers that Kahn would later use
in the Richards Medical Research Building, excellent
examples referring to the slender towers of San Gimigna-
no that Kahn saw during his first journey through Italy in

79
1929. Here too the form of the Morris house is enriched
by allusions and has meaning transcending the temporary
appearance. On the other hand, the raison d’être of the
vertical parts has no functional counterpart and can only
be interpreted as a mask interposed on the façade. The
search for the symbolic dimension of the Morris house
is made less banal in the contemporary Richards Medical
Research Building project in which the evocative langua-
ge of the towers is united with the practical needs of the
functional plan of empty spaces with columns or stairs
inserted to distribute the air. Even the technical and minor
spaces, always considered secondary, assume their role
within the project and make a contribution to the meaning
of the form. Infact as Kahn said the nature of the space is
further characterised by the minor service spaces. Store-
rooms and cubiculums must not be areas divided by par-
titions with the same spatial structure but must be given
their own structure.
The dyssimmetrical arrangement of the spaces on the
plan had immediate implications for the interpretation of
the picturesque perception of the volumes in the space,
not only alluding to the typical reasons for composing the
form according to the Nordic European world but also to
the Mediterranean world (Villa Adriana). Form, size, di-
mensions, hierarchies, and orientation of the spaces are
the result of composition valuing the principle of “archi-
tecture is the thoughtful making of spaces. It is, note, the
filling of areas prescribed by the client. It is the creating
of spaces that evoke a feeling of appropriate use”5. The
suggestion of Villa Adriana reveals this intention in that
it is “a kingdom of spaces made to evoke their use”6. The

80
6. San Gimignano’s towers (1929).

monumental nature of the Morris house is no different to

what was pursued in projects contemporary with it in that
it demonstrates the method of moulding the meaningful
form of the Roman lesson from which Kahn learnt the

81
7. Frank L. Wright, Richard Lloyd Jones House, Tulsa, Oklahoma (1928-1931).

strength of the wall and the power of light and shade, that
is, chiaroscuro. Once again the profound septums arti-
culate the main prospect of the house and measure the
rhythm of a succession of full and empty alternations of
light and darkness that evokes characteristics recurring
in Roman or Greek architecture: “A plan of a building
should read like a harmony of spaces in light. Even a spa-
ce intended to be dark should have just enough light from
some mysterious opening to tell us how dark it really is.
Each space must be defined by its structure and the cha-
racter of its natural light”7. Consequently, the rhythmic
arrangement of the septums is a studied device to obtain
a light effect. Paradoxically, from the moment that com-
plex inventions are used to transform the medieval walls
of a domestic house into meaningful and evocative forms,
the search for monumentality still seems to be more evi-
dent when referring to domestic architecture. Perhaps the
Morris House latently possesses the search found in the
Unitarian church in Rochester or in that most successful
of projects, the Esherick house in which the prospect is

82
presented “with a strong predominance of the full on the
empty spaces alternating in a compact tight sequence of
septum walls like blinds on the sides windows that subdi-
vide and so break up the external surfaces (...)” and “the
increase in the walls’ depths provides the pretext to insert
fixtures and fittings on the inside”8 marrying a functional
solution with the most truly evocative reason in a new
way. How the theme of Kahn’s domestic dwelling persi-
stently transforms an exclusively real but temporary fact
is also striking, elevating it to the monumental by going
beyond details to a more general dimension: “I now read
Goethe, and I find there is wonder in it. He calls his auto-
biography truth and poetry. This is a wonderful realization
of life and the course of living. Though he reported what
happened to him, he always avoided confining it to the
circumstantial, or what happened, but reflected on its me-
aning, which trascended his own life. And this I think was
marvelous (...). That was wonderful, I thought, and that
is really art”9. Kahn’s aim seems to have been arranged
so that it sublimates the real into a deeper and more real
dimension of life in which the design transforms empiri-

8. Model of the Morris House (1955-1958).

83
cal facts into meaningful occurrences and allows access
to a higher level of existence: “Architecture has little to
do with solving problem. Problems are run of the mill. To
be able to solve a problem is almost a drudgery of architec-
ture. Though it is tremendously delightful, there is nothinh
equal to the delight of coming to realizations about archi-
tecture itself. Man will reject that which is not the truth.
Many attempts that have been made in earlier times to make
things exist and perpetuate themselves have failed becau-
se they weren’t the truth”10. Through composition Kahn
could understand the transience, oblivion, and death of
the human world while always conferring a meaning on
it. Through connections full of meaning, the building con-
structed brings into life the ultimate feeling of life against
the transience of natural existence. In addition, we cannot
but believe that this is Kahn’s real aim as he has always
considered architecture to be a medium through which art
is expressed.

Notes
1
“The idea he used in his work was a building without any predefi ned
function to make it totally flexible for every possible use (...) It is clear that
Kahn was persistently extending his principle of self-sufficient spatial unity
by now (...)”. Braghieri 2005, p. 38.
2
Kahn 1973, p. 257.
3
Kahn 1971, p. 484.
4
Kahn 1967, p.227.
5
Kahn 1960, p. 68.
6
Bonaiti 2002, p. 40.
7
Kahn 1960, p. 68.
8
Fumo and Ausiello 1996, pp. 112-113.
9
Kahn 1963, p. 165.
10
Kahn 1968, p. 27.

84