LOUIS ISADOR KAHN

CAREER

He was a world-renowned architect of Estonian origin based in Philadelphia, United States. Trained at the University of Pennsylvania While continuing his private practice he served as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. From 1957 until his death he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design University of Pennsylvania. After completing his Bachelor of Architecture in 1924, Kahn worked as senior draftsman in the office of City Architect John Molitor. In this capacity, he worked on the design for the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition.

LIFE

Louis Kahn, whose original name was ItzeLeib (Leiser-Itze) Schmuilowsky (Schmalowski), was born into a poor Jewish family in Kuressaare on the Estonian island of Saaremaa. In 1906, his family immigrated to the United States. the family couldn't afford pencils but made their own charcoal sticks from burnt twigs so that Louis could earn a little money from drawings and later by playing piano to accompany silent movies. He became a naturalized citizen on May 15, 1914. His father changed their name in 1915.

HIS STYLE

Louis Kahn's work infused the International style with a fastidious, highly personal taste, a poetry of light. He was known for his ability to create monumental architecture that responded to the human scale. He was also concerned with creating strong formal distinctions between served spaces and servant spaces. Isamu Noguchi called him "a philosopher among architects." His palette of materials tended toward heavily textured brick and bare concrete, the textures often reinforced by juxtaposition to highly refined surfaces such as travertine marble.

Kahn also worked closely with engineers and contractors on his buildings. The results were often technically innovative and highly refined. In addition to the influence Kahn's more well-known work has on contemporary architects . The texture of the cast concrete louis kahn used on many of his buildings were derived from his fascination with ancient stone architecture .

HIS WORK

YaLE UnIVERSITY

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1951 1953), the first significant commission of Louis Kahn His first masterpiece, replete with technical innovations. For example, he designed a hollow concrete tetrahedral space-frame that did away with the need for ductwork and reduced the floor-to-floor height by channeling air through the structure itself.

he created the Yale University Art Gallery as a space to harmonize the quiet glory of great works of art with the movement of life. the Yale University Art Gallery was asked by Yale President Richard Levin and Provost Alison Richard to produce a viable plan for enhancing the mission and facilities of this teaching museum.

The building's discreet, grey, monotone exterior of mat steel and reflective glass and its clearly read concrete frame confer a certain noble, armored mien appropriate to its purpose. If a building can be personified as possessing a powerful physicality and musculature, those are the words for the Yale Center for British Art. ...Inside the building the visitor experiences the same clarity and organization seen on the exterior.

Without the plan being fully revealed upon entry, the entrance court immediately establishes a sense of logical orientation, and the second-floor library court continues this interior organization so that the visitor intuitively feels familiar with the plan and can find his way around the galleries through reference to the courts.

Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in Dhaka, Bangladesh (19621974), considered to be his masterpiece and one of the great monuments of International Modernism.

Richards Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, (19571965), regarding which Kahn said, No space you can devise can satisfy these requirements. I thought what they should have was a corner for thought, in a word, a studio instead of slices of space.

The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California, (19591965), was to be a campus composed of three main clusters: meeting and conference areas, living quarters, and laboratories. Only the laboratory cluster, consisting of two parallel blocks enclosing a water garden, was actually built. The seeming geometrical coldness of this complex is in equilibrium with hot sun and small details...

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY BUILDING,DHAKA (BANGLADESH)

Some say this complex brought a cornerstone of democracy to Bangladesh. They have good place to gather and discuss their problems. I think that the local politicians must feel very little there.little like modest citizen..

Louis Kahn wore scars from burning his face from his childhood. This fact maybe led him to use raw panels with "concrete scars and holes from manufacturing" to build Salk institute..

THaTS IT thankyou..