This study considers the question of how Louis Kahn’s development as an architect was
shaped by the influences of Robert Venturi. The personal and professional interaction between these two historically significant architects began late in Kahn’s career and early in Venturi’s.
— Sam Rodell, WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY, Thesis 2008
If my friend Kurt Dillon has not sent me the link for this significant thesis by then Master of Science in Architecture candidate Sam Rodell in Washington State University in 2008, I would have my suspicions hanging in the air without proper documentation. It is a great reading for folks who are... View full entry »
Three of the most important modernist houses in the Northeast, including the 1964 house Robert Venturi designed for his mother, have been (or will soon be) put up for sale by their long-time owners, two of them without covenants that would ensure their preservation. — archrecord.construction.com
Venturi's Philadelphia House Louis Kahn’s Esherick House View full entry »
Balance. For decades we’ve had an art culture that tries to wow us with too muchness — blockbusters, biennials, bank-breaking museum buildings no one needs — and that ends up delivering way too little. Could it be that the day of just enough is upon us, and that Yale’s just right museum is a bellwether? — NYT
Holland Cotter reviews the final results of the $135 million renovation and expansion of Yale’s museum complex. The entire refurbished complex — a block-and-a-half-long stretch that is itself a museum of changing architectural styles — officially re-opened two weeks ago... View full entry »
The creation of a public monument is a fraught business these days. That the pristine work of an architect nearly 40 years dead should rise intact, in today’s contentious political, legal and aesthetic climate, is a wonder. And how timely it is that the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt should be honored in such eloquent fashion at a moment when powerful political forces in this country seek to dismantle it. — Places Journal
Why is the design of memorials so fraught? Belmont Freeman reviews the design and politics of diverse memorials to American presidents, with a focus on Four Freedoms Park in New York City, the memorial to Franklin Roosevelt designed by Louis Kahn that opened last month. View full entry »
Kahn drew up the design in 1973, rendering it with soft charcoal on yellow tracing paper. He had readied it for construction in 1974, but New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a prime mover of the project, became vice president to Gerald Ford and got distracted by mightier demands...
Then Kahn died of a heart attack in a public bathroom in New York’s Pennsylvania Station at age 73.
— bloomberg.com
The park...was conceived four decades ago. The visionary architect who designed it died in 1974. The site...remained a rubble heap while the project was left for dead. But in a city proud of its own impatience, perseverance sometimes pays off. — New York Times
Archinect Editorial Contributor Aaron Plewke recently visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, which opens officially Fall 2012. Designed by Louis I. Kahn the park is on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, New York City. Check out more photo's via his Flickr stream. View full entry »
Within the parameters of the building art there cannot be artists like Saul Bellow and Philip Roth or like Sidney Lumet and Woody Allen, who in books and movies probe the excruciating details of the Jewish encounter with American capitalism and lifestyle. Architecture cannot tell stories about one’s Jewish mother or one’s Jewish nose. Especially in the era of high modernism, architecture possessed limited expressive resources for detailed cultural critique. — Places Journal
Is there a type of Jewish architecture that unifies the work of Louis Kahn, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, and Daniel Libeskind? Architectural historian Mitchell Schwarzer reviews Gaven Rosenfeld's ambitious book, Building After Auschwitz: Jewish Architecture and the Memory of the Holocaust, and... View full entry »
Anne Tyng, a pioneering woman architect whose ideas about geometry influenced Louis Kahn's buildings and who later had a child with him, died Tuesday, Dec. 27, in Greenbrae, Calif. She was 91, said her daughter, Alexandra, who lives outside Philadelphia.
Although Ms. Tyng was among the first group of women to graduate from Harvard University's architecture school in 1944, she struggled her entire career to be taken seriously. Firms would not hire her because she was a woman.
— philly.com
Kahn doesn’t draw like an architect. Kahn’s drawings are instead personal, emotional. Each subject is unique, with Kahn truly moved by each building or landscape he studied. He had no interest in imposing his own order or technical perfection on the world he sketched. — metropolismag.com
Louis Kahn's plans for "Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park" are now officially beginning construction, 37 years after the initial groundbreaking was canceled due to New York City's near bankruptcy. Take the jump to read the full story... ↑ Click image to enlarge Louis Kahn's plans for... View full entry »
The “schematic design” phase is now complete, and the building’s basic position and shape have been established... The new building will double the amount of gallery space at the Museum, which was designed by Louis I. Kahn and is considered to be a milestone of museum... View full entry »
The Esherick House in Philadelphia by Louis I. Kahn is up for auction on 18 May 2008... Completed in 1961, the house combines the sensuous qualities of concrete and Apitong wood, in Kahn's unique geometrical style. As Nathaniel Kahn puts it: "It’s the perfect house for a creative person. If... View full entry »
Louis I. Kahn’s Margaret Esherick House, completed in 1961 in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, and county-appraised in 2006 at about $300,000, went on the auction block May 18. Richard Wright, the president of the auction house, expects it to fetch $2 to $3 million. AIArchitect View full entry »
Carter Wiseman talks to California Literary Review about Louis I Kahn and his new biography on titled Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style. CLR View full entry »
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