Louis I. Kahn and the Ruins of Rome

Kahn wanted to deal with begin­ nings-with the primeval reality by Vincent Scully ofarchitecture as a physical mass.

Vincent Scully gave his lecture on Louis Kahn, from others to shape a space-a theater for human which this article is adapted, on November 12, 1992, action. Caltech's theater seems to be one of the as the first James Michelin Distinguished Visitor. The gentlest, most cloistered and wonderfully empty Michelin Distinguished Visitor Program was estab­ campus spaces I've ever seen. Caltech must be Kahn's mature style, lished by a gift from New York designer Bonnie the most elite of institutions because all day long in which he succeed­ ed in "wrapping ruins Cashin to foster creative interaction between the arts I haven't seen anybody. And I find that I like around buildings"­ and the sciences by inviting annually to Caltech visitors that very much the older I get. buildings that appear who will stimulate thought and discussion on a wide Cal tech also demonstrates some of the basic to have neither glass nor function-is best range of topics. Cashin, an influential fashion ttuths about the problems of modern architec­ represented by his designer, with more than 60 screen credits for costume ture; that is, once, before there was modernism, great buildings on the designs and numerous national and international Caltech had a very good plan by Bertram Good­ Indian subcontinent. This is housing for awards, was the principal founder of the Innovative hue. To modern historians like myself Goodhue government officials Design Fund to encourage the development of ideas from used to be the enemy, a Beaux-Arts architect who at Sher-e-Bangla creative designers. represented the past. But Goodhue knew how to Nagar, Capitol of Bangladesh, (1962-83) Why Caltech? Cashin established the program (as put a town together. He knew how to put a Dhaka. well as the James Michelin Scholarship Fund in Geol­ campus together, and he knewhow to design ogy and Geophysics) in memory of her uncle, a consult­ buildings that got along with each other and ing geologist and longtime resident of Arcadia, Califor­ made a place. But along about World War II nia. Michelin, whose lifelong interest in mathematics something happened. Perhaps it was the Depres­ inspired Cashin's own interest in the shapes, forms, and sion and then war, and, I think; also the victory relationships of design, earned his BS in geology from of the modernist idea itself, but all of a sudden UC Berkeley in 1924 and was associated with a we seemed to forget what architecture was all number of oil-field ventures in southern California. about. We began to forget that architecture But his greatest, and unfulfilled, wish was, according consisted of buildings that were supposed to to his niece, to return to studying-at Caltech. get along with one another, and instead modern architects wanted to do things that had never This is the first time I have been privileged been done before. Buildings began to appear as to come to Caltech, and I'm very moved by the attempts at the most original, the most unusual, beaury of your campus. I think that it's only on the most exotic, the most decorative imaginable. the college campus, and especially on the Ameri­ Caltech has its examples of these too. can college campus, that architecture exists in its Now, Louis 1. Kahn was a modern architect. proper scale-not in terms of individual build­ He wanted to invent. He wanted to seem to ings trying to outdo others, but in terms of the make it all up out of his own head. He wanted to creation of an environment as a whole in which seem to have no identifiable sources. He refused buildings are designed to get along with the to use historical details in his buildings, and yet,

Engineering & SciencelWinter 1993 3 Out of that came a lor of things, for example, the revival of the vernacular and classical tradi­ tions of architecture and thei r reincorporation into the mainstream of modern architecwre, which has, in my opinion, been the most impor­ tant general development in architecture of the last generation. Along with this came a revival of traditional urbanism itself, rescued from the contempt into which the modernists had cast it. Along with that revival, roo, has come the most important mass movement in architecrure­ indeed, the only oll e chat has affected the co urse of modern archireccure: the popular movement toward historic preservation. That movement is now politically so powerful that it can drive architects kicking and screaming to respect the centers of ollr cities, to save them from destruc­ tion at the hands of departments of transportation everywhere and co rebuild what we once had. Above: Paul Cret's Now, Kahn cared not a rap for revival of ver­ Federal Reserve building in Washing­ nacular and classical traditions, for urbanism and ton is an example of historical preservation. He wanted to be JUSt as the "stripped classic" by the way he built, he did in a sense end one inventive as other modernists and JUSt as abstract, style popular during the New Deal. Unfor­ long basic development of modern architectute and he was determined not to use readily identi­ tunately totalitarian and begin something very new. In the 10 years fiable historical forms in his buildings. And governments were that Kahn spent with us at Yale (he joined us in because of that, he has also become something of also fond of it. Below: George 1947), we had no idea whatever that he would a major diviniry for the current neo-modernists Howe's house (1924), ever be as important as he came to be. Between who would like to claim him for theif own and w ith its primitive cyl­ about 1960 and his untimely death in 1974 he write his histOry in a way tbat would make him inder and suppressed glass, represents the became, I think, the most important architect in the first inventor, the hero-architect, once more order in which Kahn the United States, whose work changed things in shaping the world anew. This is not the way it was tra ined and to a fundamental way. went. which he ultimately ret um ed. Starcing in the early twenties, modern archi­ Kahn was trained in a clear order, the order of tects wanted to be as ftee as modern painters the Beaux-Arts, at the University of Pennsylvania were-as free to invent as the cubist painters who under his g reat teacher, Paul Crer. Then he lost had JUSt come on the scene, and as free from the that order. H e lost it so completely that he for­ shackles of responsibi lity. They wanted no got what it was that he'd lost. And then he had contextual responsi bil ity to the traditional city; to find it again , but he had to fi nd it on his own they were, in fact, contemptuous of trad itional new terms so that he could believe, deep in his urbanism. Buildings were co have no top, no soul that he was inventive, that he was, in a sense, bottom, no side, no up, no down-nothing that making it all up himself. read of construction, but rather of composition. The order in which Kahn g rew up can be seen What Kahn did that was new in the high in a house built in 1924 by George Howe, who modernist period was to build buildings that later became Kahn's parmer in Philadelphia. It's were pure construction-buildings that showed a masonry structure with a wonderful, primitive, nothing of the idea of composition and no trace of cylindrical form in which glass is suppressed; he pictorial freedom. The connection with absrract gets the g lass as much OUt of the way as he can so painting, except in the abstraction of the forms he has JUSt the quality of a cylinder with a dark that he insisted on, tOtally disappeared. H e void cut in it. After Kalm g raduated from the began to build buildings that looked like the University of Pennsylvania in the late twenties, very fiest kind of building that an architect might he traveled to Italy, looking at precisely thar kind do, and he began to design only forms rhar were of architecture-solid, almost primitive, masonry suggested to him by a stru ctural sys tem. His masses with voids in [hem without glass. He buildings had rhe basic architectural quality of drew these structures with a soft, flat carpenter's being comtrllcted. Kahn wanted to deal with pencil and also painted them in watercolor. beginnings-with the primeval reality of (Watercolors were associated with the Beaux-Arts architecture as a physical mass. period; modernism despised the watercolor as

4 Engineering & Science/Winter 1993 effete, 50 Kahn kept them under wraps and most So Kahn did his best to do this new light of us only later learned of their existence.) architecture with thin columns and weightless The "high style" architecture in which Kahn walls of glass. He wasn't bad at it, but he wasn't was trained by Cret was called "modern class ic" exceptionally good at it either. And he wouJd or "stripped modern" in its time, and Cret, more not have become rhe Kahn we know had he con­ than anybody else, created it. His Folger Library tinued to do it. He just didn't feel it. When he and Federal Reserve buildings in Washington, came to Yale in 1947, he still had no major D.C., major commissions in Cree's office during buildings. He was a man who clearly had lost his the time Kahn worked for him in 1929-30, are order. H e was constantly talk ing about order, in Mussolini's Foro Italico (top left) drew good examples. They're much like the vernacular particular about the order of crystals, seeming Kahn back to his architec ture that Kahn had sketched in Europe, like so many ocher people at that time in rhe arts modern-classic in the sense that they're heavy, massive, and and art hi story to lose confidence in the arts and traditions when he sketched it in pastels sym metrical. What you feel is the mass and the turn to sCie nce. in 1950 (top right), void, and g lass plays very little part in the des ign, Then in 1950 Kahn went back to Italy, as a His drawing is It's a traditional classicism simplified under the fellow at the American Academy in Rome. The reminiscent of the haunted shadows and pressure of modernism, bue still retaining a very first thing he did was to go to a forum in arcades of the painter monumental symmetry and employing perma­ Rome and do a pastel of it. (You weren't de Chirico (bottom) nent materials, beautifully assembled. 0 sooner "allowed" to do watercolors anymore, and pastels that evoked ancient themes antagonistic was Kahn trained in this approach, however, than were the closest he could get ro chern.) Now, it's to modernism. Le Corbusiec's Villa Savoye (1929-31) bur$[ upon interesting what forum he went to. H e didn't go the architectural profession. Suddenly one could to the Porum Romanum; he didn't go to Trajan's no longer look at buildings that were symmetri ­ Forum; he went to the Foro Italico, Mussolini's cal, massive, heavy; one could no longer use the forum, the style that he'd been trained to see. classical order in which Kahn had been trained, His drawing of it, with its open arcades and om­ because now architecture had to be thin, taut, inolls shadows, is remini scent of those wonderful light, asymmetrical, stretched out to pure idea. haunted visions of Italian urbanism painted by de Other events also contributed to the demise Chirico during World War I. The Fascist archi­ of the stripped classic style. Nor only did we tects themselves were, of course, very good at build our best POSt offices and other buildings in creating these effects to drive out modernism and the thirties in this style, but so did the Fascists use the ancient vision ofhaunced Ital y to hold the and the Nazis. L'ltcr modernist critics, forgetting imagination of the Italian people. (hac we also bad employed this style during the Kahn traveled to other Italian towns and drew New Deal, used its association with totalitarian­ their wonderful urban spaces-like the Piazza ism as a club co beat classicism with. You del Campo in Siena. In Kahn's pastel of it, he cou ldn't separate it from its cultural meaning. makes it curiously timeless by taking out all the

Engineering & Science/Winter 1993 5 Kahn's 1951 drawing elements-windows, doors, people-that tell you silence in much of Jewish and Christian medieval of the Piazza del Campo in Siena scale or time or use. Everything is dissolved in literature has to do with the fundamental pres­ (above left) eliminated one great bath of red shadow, which then floods ence of God: the great silence of J ehovah is his everything that would down over the Campo. This is exactly what he'll power. In Kahn's pastels he sees the pyramids as indicate scale or use, later come to build-an architecture where all pure Light--enormous masses that dissolve, a style characteristic of his later architec· rime and scale elements are eliminated. dematerialize into light. The pyramids, which ture, particularly in Kahn also traveled to Greece that year, and were covered with blinding white limestone, India and Bangladesh. served to transport the pharaoh to the sun-not The Egyptian pyra· drew in pastel the great temple of Apollo at mids also had a Corinth, with its thick columns and its sense of with inscriptions or decorations but by pure profound influence on structural power. But the white light of Greece magic. They became, massive as they are, the Kahn. The massive structures dissolve was not what he wanted, and so he made the embodiment of pure light. As Kahn's pyramids into light in his pastel temple and background orange. He was looking dissolve in light, the viewer's mind does not of 1951 (above right). for a horter, heavier light, and he found it in supply the other sides; you thi nk it might have Egypt. His great pastels of the Temple of Khons three sides or even only one. But then, curiously at Karnak show the swollen, compressed col umns enough, they always dissolve into tetrahedrons, and the heavy vegetable color be wanted. tetrahedrons that are vehicles of light. It's interesting that this trip to Egypt seemed While Kahn was doing these pastels at Giza, to unlock Kahn's Jewishness, even though he had he got word that George Howe, who by then was previously nor had much of an interest its prac­ Yale's dean of architecture, had managed to tice. The swollen columns of Karnak, which secure him the commission for the Yale Art became for Kahn vessels of light, reappeared in Gallery. It would be the first importanr building Kahn's plan for the Mikveh Israel synagogue in constructed at Yale since the war, and Kahn's Philadelphia. This plan, nevet built, also had first important commission. And w4at he built rootS in cabalistic diagrams of the order of the was tetrahedrons- a great ce il ing slab of braced universe. Kahn loved pictures like an architect, beams, creating a kind of crystalline order in the and I think his J ewishness, his mysticism, would tetrahedrons that carry the lighting system. come out when he found a shape he li ked. H is (Another influence on this building came from proposal for the Mikveh Israel project would have Kahn's partner, Ann Tyng, who was an enthusi­ been, I think, the most important monument of astic admirer of Buckminster Fuller and his synagogue architecture in the modern day. geodesic domes, also constructed out of tetrahe­ In Egypt Kahn came finally to the pyramids dral shapes. Fuller came to Yale around that and d id pastels of them. In 1951 he wrote a time, and talked and talked. H e would utterly poem calling G iza "The Sanctuary of Art, of destroy the brains of students; if (hey were Silence and Light." Lighr is perhaps the most impressionable enough, they couldn't believe important word on the first page of Genesis, and that anything else in the world was worth doing

6 Engine€ring & Science/Winter 1993 Left: Tetrahedrons form the great ceiling slab of Kahn's Yale University Art Gallery 11951-53). Its string· courses are close to Italian palazzo design (above); the entrance is hidden at the side.

except building geodesic domes. Since the appl i­ Trenton. H ere he also came co other basic shapes cation of this one idea ro the complex problems of that have pervaded Western architectural aes­ architecture is minimal , a lot of them have had a thetics from the time of the Roman archi tect Below: In the bath.. house 11954-59) of good deal of rrouble since.) Vittuvius and earl ier: the sq uare and the c.ircle. the Trenton Jewish Of all the bujldings built at Yale since then, it In the Trenton bathhouse he has five squares, four Community Center, still seems ro me that we have no thing CO equal of rhem ropped by pyramids and rhe fifth con­ Kahn employed not only his pyramids but Kahn's art gallery. But he himse lf was never taining a ci rcl e. Leonardo's well-known image of the Neoplatonic order happy with it. Before Kahn was granted the rhe Nlan ojP"ject ProjJortiollJ (ca. l500) is only of the circle and the commission, Howe and the forces at Yale had one of hundreds of such drawings derived fro m square, exemplified by Leonardo's well. already decided that it would be a rectangular the passage in Vitruvius where he says , more or known Man of Perfect building, because it made a lOt of se nse on that less, that it's wonderful that the human body is Proportions I ca. site. Kahn then inserted inro it a fund amentall y proportioned so that it can fit into the perfect 1500). triangular element, and he didn't like the d is­ shapes of the sq uare and the circle. This idea, parity. The building wanted [Q cake on a tri­ probably Pyrh agorea n, obsessed rhe Middle Ages angular shape as a whole, which, of course, it and was taken up by Neoplaconism during the couldn't have done on its site, so he fe lt that it Renaissance. It suggested the basic image upon was compromised. But he was wise in the things which Gmhic and Renaissance architecture alike he did not do. For example, he didn't try CO are based. Implicit in jt is the idea that thete design an entrance, beca use he couldn't des ign ex ists a fundamental order that you can find only one not suggested by the S(fucture, H e kept the in drawing; that is , in the domai n of conception; entrance back and at the same height as the base if gross matter intervenes, you get further away of the old building next door, so you SOrt of slide from the idea of an underlying order of the uni­ into the building at the side, Using the srring­ verse as a whole. The forms, the circle and the courses to express where the slabs were is very square, thus drawn are taut as piano wire. Kah n's close to Italian palazzo design, and this enabled embrace of this idea connects him with the Kahn to pick up the movement down the stree t richest part of the class ical tradition, its theoreti­ thar the older bui ld ing had , and then g ive it cal center, from whic h are derived the great some velocity coming ro the co rner. Bur what architectural images of the order of the world­ Kahn really loved was inside the building-his for example, the new France and the cosmic order pyramids. The staircase is especially wo nderful ; as embodied in the g reat French classic gardens you look up the staircase and the black shadow of of the 17th century. This is a central theme of a pyramid floats there ovethead , weightless, pute history that Kahn , once taught by Cret and other shadow, pure lig ht-silence and li ght. French Beaux-Arts architec ts, was now able in a Kahn built actual pyram ids in the bathhouse sense to reclaim. he designed for the J ewish Community Center in Kahn 's new order, based on the circle and the

Engineering & Science/Winter 1993 7 P.A~" M.Ji4 f<:k"•• __ .,.;,'" ...... 1<0,

From the initial "form square, was also based on something else thar carried by pre-cast concrete columns that are and design" drawing (above left) of the came out of classicism and continued in the actually smaller in scale and seem less structural First Unitarian Church Beaux-Arts tradition-the id ea of served and than rhe towers. The pre-ca~ t building is all laid and School (195~91 serving spaces, big spaces articul ated and sep­ up dry-no morrar. Kahn said he began to feel in Rochester, New York, the final plan arated but connected to each other by small the crane as all extension of his arm and sense (center) "deformed" spaces such as corridors, bathrooms, and so on. each one of these big heavy units a~ a brick. an and evolved, but You can see this idea in the plans of the French element in the structure. In a way it's like Greek remained based on the circle and the Gothic cathedrals that Kahn loved: square spaces temples, which were also laid up dry without square and served capped by circular domes and articulated by mortar; you put the parts together piece by piece, and serving spaces. groups of pillars making corr idors that serve the as Kahn had learn ed in the Beaux-Arts tradition. The building's win· dows are set back larger spaces. Out of this influence came Kahn's He was beginning to link back to the structural (above right), the g reat plan for the Alfred Newwn Richards traditions that modernism had intended to casr glass suppressed. Medical Research Build ing at the University aside. Below: The towers of the Richards Medical of Pennsylvania. Ir's clear fro m this moment in the early sixries Research Building Although it didn't come, as modern pragma­ that these memories were beginning to flood into (1957-65), reminis­ tism would have it, from pure invention, the plan his sys tem, and he was beginning to use them. cent of medieval Italian masonry was analyzed according to structure and function All of this comes togethet in the First Unitarian towers, contain stairs to produce a new unity that had never been there Church in Rochester, New York, which is where and ducts and are not before. There's a centtal building that is basi­ he proposed his rheory of fo rm and design. The actually structural. call y service. The laboratories are sq uare and are "form" is the first formal idea that comes to served by stairs and ducts to remove noxious air. architects' minds when they're faced with a new Kahn carefully detailed the ducts and the stairs so project. Here the projec t co nsisted of a church that they don't look structural , or load-bearing, with a big meering hall and also a school, which on the exterior. Bur while Kahn was designing needed to be close to the hall to use it occasional­ rhe laboratory building, another deep memory ly. So he draws somerh ing that looks like the intruded-his watercolor from the late twenties circle in the square. And then he articulates it of the solid masonry rowers of a medieval1talian a little bit more in the next drawing, where he town- and that's the way he finally designed rhe writes "FIRST DESIGN, close translarion of Richards Building rowers. Whe,her they had realization in form. " H ere he bombards this ducts or stairways in them. they all looked like perfect Neoplaron ic id ea with the pecuLarities so lid structu ral members. Bur he shows thar of the program, the demands of the structure and they're nonstfUcrural by stepping them in or by function of the program. W hen you do rhat, the cutting a triangle at the bottom. There are some form wi II deform because the rooms want to be problems with the buildings: you do get confused different shapes. But if it doesn't deform too by the towers. The major vertical structure is much, then you build it. And since the form

8 Engineering & Science/Winter 1993 The scholars' studies at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1959-65) in La Jolla, Califomia, are angled toward the sea (right). Looking toward the sea (below), only the concrete slabs are visible, and the thin stream of water running through the plaza. Kahn's design for a community center at Salk (bottom), which has never been built, shows his first break­ through to the idea of "wrapping ruins around buildings," a style that was to culminate in his great buildings on the Indian subcontinent (next page).

here was right, this is what he built. The client under the influence of Frank E. Brown, the great had originally had the wrong form id ea, a SOrt of Romanist of Yale and the American Academy in binuclear plan, but that didn't work because the Rome. Brown led us all to Rome and made us school functions needed to be close ro the see that it was n'r just an architecture of engineers meeting hall. It's wonderful to watch that (I don't mean that the way it might sound to a beautiful plan evolve: the main entry hall gets Cal tech audience), but also an architecture of larger; so does the library; the classrooms grow poetry, of light and water, With Brown and smaller, the kitchen longer. From that point on alone, Kahn had visited such ancient sites as we can trace everything about the building Hadtian's Villa, Trajan's Market, Ostia, and the through its reception oflight. We can feel that Flavian Palace on the Palatine Hill. Kahn has expressed function and structure like In his fi rst schemes for the scholars' studies an absolute modernist, and that the plan is also adjoining Salk's laboratories, Kahn drew a plan wholly abstract-that he's ach ieved, in a sense, consisting of a square with a fanning pattern the modern ideal. opening outward-a pattern he had seen in the The windows are set back, to protect them garden court of the Domus Augustana of the from glare. he said, so we hardly see the glass in Flavian Palace. The fann ing pattern coming the exterior wall, which becomes very plastic and out of each square bay gave the sense of fo rces solid . Up above, four great monitors rise to light running through matter, which had furnished the central space, whose bony structure is one of baroque architecture with its life and which Kahn's greatest. You can really feel the si lence he certainly affected Kahn. This was the first time talked about, thrumming as with the presence of he overtly tried to use a Roman form. divinity, when the cinder block is washed silver Eventually, though, Kahn discarded this plan by the light that floods down upon it, while the because he wanted the scholars' studies inflected heavy, heavy slab is li fted overhead, This space toward the sea. But the sense of forces running joins that of the Yale Art Gallery as one of Kahn's through matter remained. Down through the early essays in the sublime, intO whose vast center of the empty courtyard runs a thin stream silences all his late wotk was to move. of water; instead of a normal plaza, it becomes a Then he built Salk-the Salk Institute for cotridor. It's directional. You can feel the space Biological Studies in La Jolla, At Salk you don't being drawn from the continent to the sea. Many see any glass. There's g lass set back at the people describe the Salk Institute in terms of the entrances inco the laboratOries, but the general Acropolis, because you can't see any glass and feeling is of a bony Structure of concrete slabs, because the concrete is so beautifu ll y made it panels of wood, and no glass whatsoever. It was looks li ke marble. And sometimes in that in Salk that Kahn first began to use the images glowing space, looking toward the sea, you might that he rediscovered in the ruins of Rome in 1950 happen to see Icarus gliding across the scene-

Engineering & Science/Winter 1993 9 •

Above: Housing for officials at Sher-e· Bangia Nagar, Capital of Bangladesh (1962- 83), in Dhaka, exhibits no trace of scale or function; glass is suppressed behind the coast there is one of the most popular hang­ glassless Roman ruins to the Indian subcontinent, the voids cut in the gliding spots in sO Llthern California. and there his great primitive shapes began to cylindrical "ruins." Kahn also designed a cOll1ffiunity center for appear. H is brick Indian Institute of Manage­ Below: At the Indian Institute of Manage­ the Salk Institute, and I hope someday Dr. Salk lnent in Ahmedabad seelns to be a conscious ment (1962-74) in will be able [Q build that wonderful complex of misreading of a Roman ruin. Romans, in Ostia Ahmedabad, Kahn buildings. Tr represents an enormous break­ for exan1ple, often built walls of two courses of devised his new "brick order," a through in Kahn's design in that it wholly brick, filled with concrete. In order to keep the conscious misreading resembles Roman ruins. The rooms would have fresh pour from breaking the wooden lintels over of a Roman ruin, with walls almost entirely of glass, but protected from openings, they would build a relieving arch right void, lintel, and arch. glare by thin concrete walls that are perforated through the two thicknesses of brick wall. So you but have no glass in them. Square rooms are get a void, a lintel, and an atch. In what Kahn surrounded by cylindrical walls and circular called his "brick order" he revised this and used rooms by walls at right angles. H e called this the lintel to hold the arch together. H e splits the "wrapping ruins around buildings" to provide a impost block in the middle to make you feel the vision of a building without glass. H e was tautness, the (ension of the sides-as if they're encouraged in this by a paper written about that trying to hold the brick back. There's so much time on the forum baths at Ostia. The author, an more life in it than if it were a solid block. engineer and a pupil of Brown's, showed that the Kahn is an idealist and, indeed, a Romantic orientation of these wonderful ruins, some of Classic architect; his models are the great archi­ them rectangular, some curvilinear, was such tects of the 18th century- and in particlliar the (and the heat so efficient) that they probably were great draftsman and etcher Piranesi, whose prints never intended to have glass, even though the of the ruins of cla~sical Rome inspired the Romans had pleney of glass. Kabn figured if tbe Romantic Classic architects. Like them Kahn is Romans could do it without glass, so could he. It trying to revive architecture by going back and was Kahn's beautiful drawing of this proposed starting with the ruins of Rome. And also like building, which incorporated so many of the them, Kahn wants fundamentally sublime effects. things he loved-the pure void in the ruin, the The 18th-century concept of the sublime is curved, taut, thin walls, the lintel between (wo different from that of the beautiful in that it deals levels of opening- that more than anything with the awesome and the unfinished, the primi­ made me feel when I saw it in 1962 that Kahn tive and the frightening, embodied in Piranesi's was an architect offrighteningly awesome fantastical priots. And this is the quality that potential. It expressed romanitas-the gravity Kahn, toO, wanes. and authority of Rome. Everybody laughed at The wonderful space of the waiting room of this design and called him "Loony Lou." the outpatient clinic at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, the But Kabn bad the last laugh; he took his capitol ceoterin Dhaka, Bangladesh, is almost an

10 Engine€ring& SciencelWinter 1993 The cylindrical and block shapes of the National Assemby Building at Sher·e· Bangia Nagar, Dhaka, (far right) act as containers of light punched through with circles and triangles. Great circular holes also light the north entrance staircase (right). Below: Kahn took the cross-vaulting in the Indian Institute of Management (right) from Trajan's Market in Rome (left)

exact rranscriprion of the Thermopoiium, the famous little hot-d rink stand in Ostia, where you have the light coming in from both sides. Tra­ jan's Market is a splendid example of Roman brick and concrete strllcture , with a concrete barrel vault that gets light into it from penetrat­ ing cross-vaults, which make the whole thing seem to be lifted. Kahn recreated this in the Indian Institute of Management but reduced it to a simplified, clari fied structure that he could build rationally. Inscead of being pouted concrete and cross-vaults, it uses brick arches carrying concrete slabs with steel in them. The great Narional Assembly building ar Sher-e­ BangIa Nagar has antecedents in the Temple of J upiter Optimus Maximus at Ostia-and the shapes in the plan, some cylindrical, others Above: Light from square, can be found in Piranesi's fantastical both sides illuminates reconstruction of the Roman Campus Marrius the Thermopolium in Ostia (left, 2nd cen· tbat hu ng behind Kahn's office desk. Kahn used tury A.D.) as well as these shapes as he had inrended to do at Mikveh Kahn's waiting room Israel, as containets of lig ht, their thin walls cut of the outpatient clinic at Sher·e· through with circles and tall pyramids., while big Bangia Nagar. circles light the great counc il chamber. Right: The round Even though he used all these wonderful brick vaults under the National Assembly sbapes fro m classical models. Kahn avoided building at Sher.e· tipping hi s hand by quoting obvious classical Bangia Nagar look detail s like the pediment, the rondo, and so on self·consciously Roman, and very (so now he can be deified by the modernists as Piranesian. inventing it all out of his head). O ther architects involved in a classical revival are doing that SOrt of thing now but Kahn never would. H e wanted • ~-,."I...... - (:..-.~,,:. - ~ • ~~_ ~;

Enginee ring & Science/Winter 1993 t t The arches along one side of the Kimbell Art Museum (1966-72) in Fort Worth, Texas (right), match a se­ quence from Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli. Glass is again subordinated. Below: In the central Hall of the Phillips Exeter Academy library (1965-72) in New Hampshire, a circle in the concrete square illuminates the stacks.

years and builds rhe grear and much-admired Yale Center for Brirish An. A big heavy g irder Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, he stays runs above ground level with shops underneath. very close to the ruins and subordinates the glass. Above it he builds a concrete structure holding There is a wall of g lass, bur ir's masked by trees solid panels of stainless steel and panels of glass. and normally YOLI don't see it. Inside YOLI have Ir's close to what Mies van der Rohe did (for Roman round-headed arches that have been example in his buildings at the Illinois Institute deformed to distribute the indirect light better. of Technology), and Mies got it from a similar The profile of arches along one side match very source. But visually Kahn's building seems a closely a sequence from H adrian's Villa. And in more solid structure than Mies's. You feel that his library ar Phillips Exerer Academy in New wonderful quality of its being "built"; it expresses Hampshire, Kahn won't even let it become a weight and compression. The lintels weigh building; he wants it to remain a ru in. The walls heavily on the piers; the joint is point-loaded, don't connect at the corner or the cop. They static, G reek, silent. And the conctete is as remain like a hollow shell into which every now beautiful as marble. and then, almost grudging ly, he wilJ ram some Inside, such sublime features as the great glass. !t's basically rhar hollow frame rhar he cylindrical stair tower that doesn't reach quite wants, and then inside this abstract square he to the ceiling, lighted from above, create the putS a circle: the pure circle in the square in effecr of silence and lighr rhar Kahn loved so heavy concrete. much. But the most unlikely thing for him is Because he stayed so close to the Romantic the lise of g lass, which, as we have seen, he had Classic rui ns in these buildings, Kahn's last always avoided or tried to subordinate. And he's building, nor complered ar rhe rime of his dearh, used g lass with mote light and incandescent seems a miracle. With the Yale University vitality than J have ever seen in it before. Next to Cenrer for Brirish Arr he leaped forward 100 the surface of rhose matte panels, rhe glass simply years-from the Romantic Classicism of the mid- explodes wirh light and reAecrion. 18th century to the materialist realism of the And whar it's reflecring are all the buildings mid-19th century. Henri labrouste, in his across rhe stretr-the wonderful old 1920s Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve in Paris, solved Beaux-Arts art gall ery with its arches, and Kahn's rhe problem of building a G reek remple, which own art gallery from rhe early 1950s with irs far the necessities of modern life had to be closed srringcourses. Paul Rudolph's much maligned off from the sueet, by putring tbe columns on a Art and Archirecture Building, a villain of lare base wirh a strong stringcourse. Nanbearing modernism, stands at the end of Chapel Streer, panels, some solid and so me glass, fill in between embracing and completing the movement of the the columns. buildings down the Street with a wonderful open Kahn uses basically the same system in the gesture. Kahn's Center for British Art seems to

12 Engineering & ScienceJWinler 1993 The Yale Center for Brilish Art (1969-74). Kahn's last building (above), reflects the flow of buildings act in a community relationship with the pte­ and historia/ls. SCfllly is /lOW the Sterling Professor of across the street-the existing buildings in a way that no Kahn build­ History of Art, E1I1eritllS, and the lViliiam Clyrk old art gallery, Kahn's ing had ever done before. It's poss ible that here, DeVane Professor of Humanities, EmeritltS, at Yale, own earlier building, and Rudolph's Art and in his last building, he's beg inning to discover a but teaches for half the year CIt the University of Architecture Building sense of contextual responsibility- the conversa­ Miami. A nd despite the national notice accorded his at the end. tion between the generations that makes civiliza­ retirement, he comitJlle.J to teach half the year at Yale Below: The heavy lintel point-loaded on tions, that makes towns. [t'S hard to say, because also. His most remil book, of a. total of 15. Architec­ the pier and the we don't know what he wo uld have done after­ tute: The Natucal and the Manmade, appeared last cylindrical stair tower ward. But we do know that across the way, in his year. give the effect of weight and silence fi rst great building, we can see the record of his SClllly, born and raised in New Haven, Connect jatt, that Kahn loved. beginnings, where he wrestled with Pharaoh and received both his BA and PhD from the hometown with J ehovah---or where, like J acob, he wrestled university, Yale. He met Kahn when both joined the with the angel all night throug h umil the first Yale famlty ill 1947, SClllly as a yOllllg illJlrttctor in g reat architects of western civilization reached art history and Kahn as a visitor in the school of out to him and set him on hi s way. D architecture. Althollgh he states ill his lectltre that during Kahn's 10 years at Yale, {{u;e had no idea whatever that he would wer be as important as he cam£ to be,!! Smlly WetS his ardent admirer and supporter f rom the beginning. It UJaJ /Ja rtiaLly due to Scully's Sltpport, in addition to that of Yale's architecture dean, George Howe, that Kahn rec-eit)ed his first major commission for the Yale University A rt Gallery, where This Vincent Satlly is not, as Los Angeles Dodger ((the first great architects oJ-western civilization reached faIlS might have presumed, the radio voice of baseball. out to him and set him 01/ his way" to returning Rather, he's widely considered to have transfonned the classical traditions to modern architecture. field ofarchitectural history and is vety likely the "most The first comprehemive retrospective of Kahn's work

influential historian of architecture ever, 11 according to has heen organized by the MlIJellm of Contemporary Vice Provost and Professor of Physics and Applied Art, Los A ngeles. Aft,,· sojourns ill Phi/arklphia, Physics (and Dodger fan) David Goodstein in his Paris, New York, andJ apan, ((Lollis /, Kahn: In the introduction to Satlly's lectltre at Caltech. IVhen he Realm of Architectllre" opened at MOCA on Febrllary retired in 1991 Jrom 44 years ofteachi/lg at Yale, the 28. SC1llly is credited with being the "gllidillg spirit" final lecture of his legendary coltrse in the history of and tlmagnificent inspiration" for the exhibit. A architecture mark the Jront page of the New York version ofthis talk has previollsly appeared in the T imes. Among his students ha.ve been many of the MoMA Members Quarterl y, published hy the country's leading architects and architectural critics MlJJettm 0/ Modern Art in smmller 7992.

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