Learning from the last of Louis Kahn’s important sketchbooks

2024-07-13T10:00:00-04:00

The architect who designed some of the 20th century’s great buildings kept a notebook with intimate glimpses into his creative vision. Now it’s his daughter’s final goodbye. [...] We’re reminded of the nuts and bolts of architecture — how legends, too, are susceptible to so-called value engineering.

Sketches for posthumously completed projects for the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park in New York City are included in the recreated facsimile, which Kahn’s daughter Sue Ann put together for the 50th anniversary of his death with help from Swiss publisher Lars Müller.

The result, Sam Lubell writes for the Times, is a "remarkable creation." (It's important to note that these are separate from the Kickstarter-funded push for another facsimile copy of earlier sketchbooks from Designers & Books.)

Conservation work on the YCBA, meanwhile, is expected to wrap up later this year.

Kahn brought back to new life: gorgeously renovated Yale Center for British Art due to reopen

2016-05-10T18:09:00-04:00

The greatest work of art at New Haven’s Yale Center for British Art is arguably the landmark building itself—and Louis Kahn’s last structure is due to reopen this month after a 16-month renovation of its public galleries and lecture hall, and an upgrade of its accessibility, security, mechanical and electrical systems. This is the third phase of a $33m conservation project that began in 2008.

"George Knight of Knight Architecture, who led the conservation work, says: “The thing that kept me up at night was [thinking] how can we preserve the building, which is so architecturally rich, and do all this surgery so as not to disfigure the patient in any way?""

All images courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art.

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Learning from the last of Louis Kahn’s important sketchbooks

Kahn brought back to new life: gorgeously renovated Yale Center for British Art due to reopen