Kahn at Penn

Louis I. Kahn is widely known as an architect of powerful buildings. But although much has been said about his buildings, almost nothing has been written about Kahn as an unconventional teacher and philosopher whose influence on his students was far-reaching. Teaching was vitally important for Kahn, and through his Master’s Class at the University of Pennsylvania, he exerted a significant effect on the future course of architectural practice and education. This book is a critical, in-depth study of Kahn’s philosophy of education and his unique pedagogy. It is the first extensive and comprehensive investigation of the Kahn Master’s Class as seen through the eyes of his graduate students at Penn.

James F. Williamson is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Memphis and has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Drexel University, and Rhodes College. He holds two Master of Architecture degrees from Penn, where he was a student in Louis Kahn’s Master’s Class of 1974. He was later an Associate with Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates. For over thirty years he practiced as a principal in his own ﬁrm in Memphis with special interests in religious and institutional architecture. Williamson was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in recognition of his contributions in architectural design and education. He is the recipient of the 2014 AIA Edward S. Frey Award for career contributions to religious architecture and support of the allied arts. Routledge Research in Architecture

The Routledge Research in Architecture series provides the reader with the latest scholarship in the ﬁeld of architecture. The series publishes research from across the globe and covers areas as diverse as architectural history and theory, technology, digital architecture, structures, materials, details, design, monographs of architects, interior design, and much more. By making these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to promote quality architectural research.

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James F. Williamson First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 James Williamson The right of James Williamson to be identiﬁed as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identiﬁcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Williamson, James, 1946–. Kahn at Penn: transformative teacher of architecture/James Williamson. pages cm.—(Routledge research in architecture) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Kahn, Louis I., 1901–1974—Philosophy. 2. Kahn, Louis I., 1901–1974— Career in teaching. 3. University of Pennsylvania—Faculty. I. Title. NA737.K28W55 2015 720.92—dc23 2014035589

ISBN: 978-1-138-78214-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-76936-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK For my graduate students of architecture at the University of Memphis. Through their eyes I continue to discover Louis Kahn. This page intentionally left bank Contents

List of ﬁgures ix Master’s Class contributors xi Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

PART I Searching for the Unmeasurable 5

1 Louis I. Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania 7

2 A philosophy of education 12

3 A man under a tree 23

4 Pedagogy in practice 37

5 Kahn and his students 69

6 Kahn and the psychology of creativity 88

7 Kahn in the light of contemporary architectural education 99

PART II A teacher of teachers and practitioners 107

8 Teachers and practitioners 109

9 After Lou 113 JOHN TYLER SIDENER JR. viii Contents 10 Kahn’s voice 123 RICHARD T. REEP SR.

11 Learn, do, order, reﬂect: the cycle of a career 131 MAX A. ROBINSON

12 The Kahn connection 141 GARY MOYE

13 From the ground 150 STAN FIELD

14 Lessons learned, lessons applied 157 JAMES L. CUTLER

15 Becoming and being: reﬂections on a career 164 SHERMAN ARONSON

Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy 173

Appendices: Design problems and student demography, 1955–74 186

Appendix A: Class problems and student demography, 1955–74 189

Appendix B: Country of origin 193

Appendix C: Institutions of higher education attended prior to enrollment at the University of Pennsylvania 194

Bibliography 198 Index 200 Figures

0.1 Louis I. Kahn xvi 0.2 The author and Kahn, 1974 3 3.1 Louis I. Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania, n.d. Photograph by Hans Namuth ©1991 Hans Namuth Estate, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography “That Socratic manner of searching, debating, discussing around the big table was the best and truest, democratic ‘round table’ style I have ever seen […].” Fikret Yegul, Master’s Class of 1966 26 3.2 “Schools began with a man under a tree, who did not know he was a teacher, discussing his realizations with a few others, who did not know they were students.” (Louis I. Kahn, Master’s Class, 1962) 28 4.1 “One shouldn’t judge in a school of architecture. One should criticize, but not judge.” (Louis I. Kahn) 43 4.2 Kahn’s Master’s Class met in the upper floor apse of Frank Furness’ Fine Arts Library (Master’s Class, 1974) 45 4.3 “School is my chapel. I write songs when I teach well.” (Louis I. Kahn) 45 4.4 Room (student project, Master’s Class, 1974) 47 4.5 Music school (student project, Master’s Class, 1972) 51 4.6 Society Hill housing (student project, Master’s Class, 1972) 51 4.7 Society Hill housing (student project, Master’s Class, 1972) 52 4.8 Redesign of Independence Mall (student project, Master’s Class, 1970) 53 4.9 Redesign of Independence Mall (Master’s Class, 1964) 54 4.10 North Philadelphia redevelopment (student project, Master’s Class, 1974) 55 4.11 Turning to face the blackboard and holding a piece of chalk in each hand, he proceeded to make a fluid, perfectly symmetrical drawing of a large flower-like object. (Master’s Class, 1964) 60 4.12 Final jury, 1970: Perkins, LeRicolais, Kahn, and Rice reviewing student projects 62 x List of figures 4.13 Final jury, 1970: Kahn’s juries were often treated like celebrity appearances 63 6.1 “Silence to Light; Light to Silence.” Drawing by Louis I. Kahn 89 14.1 Room (student project, Master’s Class, 1974) 159 Master’s Class contributors

Sherman Aronson, AIA, LEED BD+C, Master’s Class of 1974, is a Senior Associate with BLT-Architects in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with special interests in sustainable design and historic preservation. He is an Adjunct Professor of Architecture at Drexel University. Michael Bednar, FAIA, Master’s Class of 1967, is Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Virginia where he taught design studio, urban design, and lighting for forty years and authored four books. David Bernstein, Master’s Class of 1962, is co-founder of Levitt Bernstein Architects ’68 and Circle 33 Housing Trust in London. He specializes in social housing and buildings for the arts. J. Michael Cobb, Ph.D., AICP, PP, Master’s Class of 1970, is an urban designer, planner, and development consultant. He directed the master planning and urban design of Jubail New Industrial City in Saudi Arabia as well as many other international projects. His practice is based in Princeton, New Jersey. James L. Cutler, FAIA, Master’s Class of 1974, founded his own firm in 1977 (now Cutler Anderson Architects) on Bainbridge Island, Washington, focusing on custom residential and corporate projects. Jim has taught design studios at Harvard, Dartmouth, and the Universities of Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, California at Berkeley, Washington, and Oregon. Edward D’Andrea, RA, Master’s Class of 1967, practices architecture in Malibu, California, specializing in custom homes. He taught design and architecture at Franconia College in New Hampshire before starting a design-build and land planning firm with partner William C. Reed. Charles E. Dagit Jr., FAIA, Master’s Class of 1968, is the retired founder of Dagit-Saylor Architects of Philadelphia. He has taught at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, and is the author of Louis I. Kahn – Architect: Remembering the Man and Those Who Surrounded Him. xii Master’s Class contributors David G. De Long, Ph.D., Master’s Class of 1963, is an architect, architectural historian, and Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He is co-author of Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture. Brian Dudson, Master’s Class of 1964, now retired, has worked as an architect and city planner in New Zealand, Hong Kong, the United States, Malaysia and Australia. He is the author of a study showing how all motorized trips in future cities could be made by automated cars. David C. Ekroth, USGBC, Master’s Class of 1971, has practiced architec ture focusing on religious, commercial, hospitality and residential facilities. He has taught at Iowa State University, University Science Malaysia (Penang), Texas A&M University and the University of Texas (Austin). Stan Field, SAIA, RIBA, Int’l Assoc. AIA, Master’s Class of 1969, is a native of South Africa. He practices architecture in Palo Alto, California, and is a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, California College of the Arts and Stanford University. John Raymond (Ray) Griffin, FRAIC, Master’s Class of 1964, practices architecture in Vancouver, Canada, after having retired from the firm he co-founded, Dalla-Lana/Griffin Architects, which carries on as DGBK Architects. Miguel Angel Guisasola, Master’s Class of 1970, practices architecture in Mendoza, Argentina. He has served as Vice Director of Architecture of the Mendoza Provincial Government and has taught architectural and structural design at the Universidad de Mendoza and the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Dennis L. Johnson, Master’s Class of 1961, is the retired founder of Johnson/Smith Architects and Planners in Philadelphia, PA, specializing in libraries, schools, and facilities for the developmentally disabled. Donald Leslie Johnson, Hon. RAIA, Master’s Class of 1961, is an architect, teacher, and architectural and city planning historian. He is an adjunct professor of architectural history at the University of South Australia. Tony Junker, Master’s Class of 1964, is the originator of the Envision Peace Museum and a founding partner in the firm of UJMN Architects and Designers in Philadelphia, specializing in museum and exhibit planning and design. He has served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, North Carolina State University and Moore College of Art. James Nelson Kise II (1937–2012), FAIA, Master’s Class of 1961, was co- founder of Kise, Straw and Kolodner in Philadelphia. As architect and planner for many high-profile projects, he combined the advocacy of con temporary design with historic preservation. Master’s Class contributors xiii Tim McGinty, AIA, Master’s Class of 1967, taught for nearly thirty years and founded the National Conference for Beginning Design Students. He is co-founder of McGINTY, which focused on bookstores and retail design. Glen Milne, Master’s Class of 1964, is semi-retired in Ottawa, Canada, and Anna Maria, Florida. He works as a consultant and author in public policy, foresight, and organizational strategy. Gary Moye, Master’s Class of 1968, is a practicing architect in Eugene, Oregon, and is Associate Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Oregon. He was a member of Kahn’s office from 1968 to 1974. Following Kahn’s death in 1974, Moye was a partner in the successor firm formed to complete the work then in progress. He established his Eugene office in 1986. Fred Linn Osmon, Master’s Class of 1962, is a retired architect and former faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley and Arizona State University. He lives in Carefree, Arizona, where he was engaged in private practice from 1973 to 2005. Richard T. Reep Sr., AIA, Master’s Class of 1962, served as Associate Professor of Architecture at Clemson University until 1969. He currently practices architecture with KBJ Architects in Jacksonville, Florida, and has designed hotels, churches, and a college campus. Martin E. Rich, AIA, LEED AP, Master’s Class of 1964, has practiced architecture in New York City for forty years specializing in medical planning. He is the author of a number of publications and has lectured widely. He has served as an adjunct professor at Lawrence Technical University School of Architecture and New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture and as a visiting critic at Pratt Institute and Yale. Max A. Robinson, Master’s Class of 1964, is a retired architect who has practiced in Austin, Aspen, Wichita, and Knoxville. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tennessee where he served as Director of the School of Architecture. His projects include a museum for Appalachian artifacts, a bank headquarters, a tennis stadium, and a veterinary medicine complex. He is now a practicing artist. Gavin Ross, RAIS, Master’s Class of 1968, is retired and lives in Scotland. He was formerly Vice Principal of Robert Gordon University, Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, and an architect and planner for the Greater London Council. Denise Scott Brown, Master’s Class of Fall 1964, is an architect, planner, theorist, writer and educator. She has taught at Penn, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Yale, and Harvard, and has influenced students and architects worldwide. As principal with Robert Venturi at Venturi, Scott Brown xiv Master’s Class contributors and Associates, she worked globally on a broad range of architectural, urban planning, and campus planning projects. John Tyler Sidener Jr., FAIA, Master’s Class of Fall 1962, is retired from Bechtel Corporation and the University of Hawaii. He lives near Seattle and devotes his time to writing. Karl G. Smith II, AIA, Master’s Class of 1972, practices in San Francisco, specializing in residential projects, and serves as a juror at the Archi- tecture School of the Academy of Art College. David S. Traub, AIA, Master’s Class of 1965, is the owner of David S. Traub Associates, architects, planners, and interior designers in Philadelphia. He is the co-founder of Save Our Sites, SOS, an historical and urban preservation organization. His projects include the Junod Community Center and Mason House in Philadelphia, and the Gordon House, Margate, NJ. David Tritt, AIA, Master’s Class of 1972, is a senior architect and designer at Aetypic Architects in San Francisco. He was formerly adjunct Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University School of Architecture, now the Knowlton School of Architecture. Anthony E. Tzamtzis, Master’s Class of 1974, is originally from Greece. He practices architecture in Miami, Florida, with special interests in environmental design and construction management for hotel, school, and residential work. He has served as a lecturer and guest juror at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Fikret Yegul, Ph.D., Master’s Class of 1966, originally from Turkey, is a professor of the History of Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many books and articles, including Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity. Cengiz Yetken, AIA, Master’s Class of 1966, is originally from Turkey. He has taught architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Middle East Technical University, Ball State University, the University of Virginia, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He practiced architecture in the office of Louis Kahn, and later with Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and with Perkins and Will in Chicago. Acknowledgments

Special appreciation is extended to the many alumni of Louis Kahn’s Master’s Class who contributed to this study, generously sharing recollections of their time at Penn, profiles of their subsequent careers, and many of the photographs and drawings that reveal Kahn’s lasting influence as a teacher. Without their contributions, this book would not have been possible. My thanks go to William Whitaker, Curator and Collections Manager of the University of Pennsylvania’s Architectural Archives, and Nancy Thorne, Archivist/Cataloguer, who provided extensive assistance contacting over 400 Master’s Class alumni, compiling an overall profile of members of the class through the years, researching project assignments, and providing photographs, correspondence, and other documentation from the Louis I. Kahn Collection, the comprehensive repository of records relating to Kahn’s academic and professional career. It is with gratitude that I acknowledge the invaluable assistance of David G. De Long, Penn Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Historic Preservation, who offered innumerable insights and constructive criticism, including a review of the preliminary manuscript at several points in its development. The University of Memphis College of Communication and Fine Arts, Richard R. Ranta, Dean, and the Department of Architecture, Michael Hagge, Chair, provided generous financial support of my research, for which I am grateful. Finally, my profound appreciation goes to Peggy Williamson, my dear wife and indefatigable in-house editor and cheerleader. Figure 0.1 Louis I. Kahn. Esther Kahn Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Photograph © Robert C. Lautman Photography, National Building Museum. Introduction

Forty years have passed since the death of Louis I. Kahn in 1974, the year I was among his Master’s Class students at the University of Pennsylvania. Kahn’s reputation as the greatest American architect of the second half of the twentieth century has been acknowledged by many. He has been lionized and in some circles worshipped for his buildings. In recent years he has also come to be known for his troubled and controversial private life, a man with feet of clay as well as Olympian creative powers. However, there is another dimension to Kahn that has received little attention and which may, in the light of history, prove to be his most enduring legacy. For in addition to his achievements as an architect of some of the most stirring and enduring buildings of the modern age, Louis Kahn was an unconventional teacher and philosopher whose influence on his students, particularly those at Penn, was far-reaching. Much has already been written about Louis Kahn’s buildings, and his personal life has been exposed to public scrutiny through his son Nathaniel Kahn’s film, My Architect. This study thus makes no attempt to discuss these. Instead, it examines Kahn’s career as a teacher about which little has been written, including his philosophy of education, his unconventional seminar approach to design as practiced in the Master’s Class at Penn, and his motives for teaching. It reflects the views expressed by his students about their teacher and the lasting impact of the Master’s Class on their professional lives. Where justified, it includes frank criticism of certain aspects of Kahn’s pedagogy. And it includes a proposal for adapting his methods for today’s schools of architecture, informed by an understanding of the psychology of creativity. Fikret Yegul, a member of Kahn’s Master’s Class of 1966, has commented on this neglected aspect of Kahn scholarship:

I have always been surprised that in the many books and exhibitions about Kahn . . . I ﬁnd very little information, emphasis or insight about his teaching and his students. The emphasis is always about his role as an architect and designer and the head of a not-always-successful architectural ofﬁce; there is very little if anything at all about the fact 2 Introduction that half of Kahn’s life was dedicated to his teaching! He acknowledged that, he was proud of it, and he was absolutely a dedicated teacher to his Master’s Class.1

Beginning in 1956 until his death in 1974, Kahn’s students at Penn numbered more than 400. In addition, those he influenced through his teaching include his students at Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Princeton in the late 1940s and mid-1950s, and the many others who attended his lectures at schools of architecture across the country and abroad. This book is the first in-depth study of Kahn’s philosophy of education and his pedagogy, and the first extensive investigation of the Master’s Class taught by Kahn as seen through the eyes of his former graduate students at Penn. With the assistance of the university’s alumni office and its architectural archives, the majority of alumni of the Master’s Class were contacted for assistance with this project. Letters, drawings, photographs, essays, anecdotes, and career profiles from approximately fifty of these alumni were collected documenting their experiences in the Master’s Class and Kahn’s influence on their subsequent careers. These primary sources, most of which have never been published, form the principal basis for this book. Taken together they reveal a remarkable consistency, both in their recollections of the nature and content of the Master’s Class experience and in its personal significance. Many of these graduates of the Master’s Class have become teachers, and many of these have continued to pass along to new generations of students a philosophy of architectural education and a system of professional values originally inspired by their exposure to Kahn. As Bill Lacy, founding Dean of the University of Tennessee School of Architecture observed, “As great as his buildings are, I suspect that his true legacy will prove to be those whom he taught and his works, and the works of those whom they will teach, and on and on.”2 This emphasis on teaching in their subsequent careers is one way in which Kahn’s students have distinguished themselves. Included in this book is a collection of essays by Master’s Class graduates who became teachers or who combined teaching with practice, reflecting on the overall arc of their professional careers beginning with graduation from the Master’s Class. According to Michael Bednar, Master’s Class of 1967, who along with most of the others in his class went into teaching, Kahn

engendered in many of us such strong belief and so many insights that we wanted to share them with others. In that way he was a great teacher of teachers. Through us, who are now teaching, his spirit and philosophy continue to explore the meaning of architectural belief.3

Vincent Scully commented that beginning in the mid-1950s, Kahn “set his strongest students free”4 from the straitjacket of an exhausted International Style model, as well as from his own powerful vocabulary of form: Introduction 3 His ﬁrst great act was an act of destruction. . . . He released a generation of students that think and act upon their own. He also opened up, by breaking that model, their own paths – their own paths which had been separated from them by two generations of persuasive European inﬂuences. And those students are now an army. . . . By the later 1960s, some of them . . . had gone beyond Kahn, but they could not have done so without him. . . . And along with these came a whole new generation of students, some of whom revered him perhaps more than was entirely good, but to his enormous gratitude and joy.5

Unlike my relationship with many of my other teachers at Penn, I was never personally close to Kahn. I would not have felt comfortable addressing him as “Lou” and doubt he knew my name. Indeed, he seemed to discourage personal relationships with his students, and my main impression of his personality was its combination of strength and remoteness. Although he was usually kind enough, I recall few overt expressions of concern for his students. Kahn’s idealism, although inspiring, often seemed unrealistic, and in my later professional practice I have continued to struggle to reconcile his lofty ideals with the realities of the marketplace. Nevertheless, spending the better part of a year in Kahn’s last Master’s Class was, for me, a life-changing experience that shaped every aspect of my subsequent career.

Figure 0.2 The author and Kahn, 1974. (James F. Williamson Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania) 4 Introduction Kahn’s idealistic conviction that there existed a dimension to architecture that transcended the mere solving of problems was revelatory. In that sense, he was a great spiritual force. It was clear to me that he was in touch with some unseen dimension of reality that he referred to as the “Unmeasurable” to which we might hope to gain access as well, if we were willing to join him in a lifetime of searching. It has been forty years since that unforgettable year, and I still sense the unabated power of Kahn’s philosophy. Hardly a day has gone by that I have not reﬂected on some aspect of his ideas in my practice and teaching. I am convinced that I received from Kahn a gift not shared by most other architects, and in my work I have never stopped the search for the “Unmeasurable” that he inspired. In the course of teaching a graduate seminar focusing on Kahn’s work and philosophy, I continually encounter new levels of meaning in his often cryptic words. In our seminar discussions, loosely modeled on those Kahn conducted in the Master’s Class, I do my best to pass along his legacy to a new generation of students. For most of these, Kahn’s ideas are sufﬁciently radical compared to those they have previously encountered to create some initial discomfort and even skepticism. However, as we continue to explore his ideas, I can see the light begin to dawn. Kahn was absolutely unique, a “singularity,” as he would phrase it, and there will never be another Master’s Class. But if I can succeed in recreating something of its spirit of searching for the Unmeasurable, passing that spirit along to today’s architects, students of architecture, and others who sense the continuing validity and relevance of his teaching, then this book will have served its purpose.

Notes 1 Fikret Yegul, “Louis Kahn’s Master’s Class,” unpublished essay provided to the author, 2011. 2 Bill Lacy, as quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), p. 287. 3 Michael Bednar, “Kahn’s Classroom,” Modulus, 11th issue, 1974, University of Virginia School of Architecture. 4 Vincent Scully, as quoted in David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1991), p. 141. 5 Vincent Scully, as quoted in Wurman, p. 297. Part I Searching for the Unmeasurable This page intentionally left bank 1 Louis I. Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania

Beginning in 1890, the architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania was dominated by the influence of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where the emphasis was on drawing and the adaptation of historical styles. Under the leadership of Theophilus P. Chandler, a remarkable cadre of Philadelphia’s architectural elite were recruited as lecturers, including Wilson Eyre and Frank Furness. In 1903, the first alumnus of the École des Beaux-Arts to teach at Penn, Paul Philippe Cret, joined the faculty. Other Ivy League universities, including Harvard and Princeton, and other north- eastern schools, such as MIT, emulated Penn and recruited alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts to lead their programs.1 By 1921, however, under Cret’s leadership the Penn Architecture Department was widely considered to be the best in the nation, a designation conferred by the government of France.2 Cret dominated the architecture program with his open-minded approach to style and his emphasis on the problem-solving aspects of architecture. Among his many gifted pupils the most distinguished was Louis Kahn, who studied at Penn from 1920 to 1924, earning his bachelor’s degree in architecture. There he won the bronze Arthur Spayd Brooke Memorial Prize for design3 and narrowly missed qualifying for the final competition for the Paris Prize awarded by the École des Beaux-Arts.4 According to Kahn:

Penn was a nice school then. It was highly religious, not as if it were a certain religion, but religious in the sense that transcendent qualities were considered worthy. We learned to respect the works of the masters, not so much for what they did for themselves, but for what they did for others through their works, which were a high use of the language of architecture.5

With the rise of the Bauhaus following the First World War and the ascendancy of the International Style in Europe, Modernism began to displace Beaux-Arts classicism in the United States. Beginning with Joseph Hudnut at Columbia and Harvard, Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer at 8 Searching for the Unmeasurable Harvard, and Mies van der Rohe at what was to become the Illinois Institute of Technology, it was only a matter of time until Modernism became the norm in the most progressive American schools of architecture. While Kahn would play an integral part in the transition to Modernism in architectural education, his initial experience as a teacher was gained outside of academia. In 1931 during the early years of the Depression with many Philadelphia architects out of work, Kahn organized the Architectural Research Group, a forum for discussion of the new Modernist ideas. Kahn’s natural gifts as a teacher became evident in the regular weekly lunch meetings, where he was remembered as “this little guy who held forth.”6 Ironically, given his later success with the Master’s Class, Kahn’s interests during this period focused on building rather than teaching. In 1947 this changed as Kahn began teaching at Yale as a visiting critic, commuting from his native Philadelphia two days a week. He was well-liked by students who recall:

He almost always had a piece of charcoal in one hand. In the other, he was likely to have a small cigar, which dropped ashes on the students’ drawings as he bent over them. Kahn seemed oblivious to the mess, working the ashes into the charcoal with a kneaded eraser and ignoring the stains on his hands. One of Kahn’s teaching techniques was to have his students make what he called “energy drawings,” quick sketches intended to capture the fundamental idea of a project before moving on to a more formal version.7

In 1950, Kahn was invited to the American Academy in Rome for a three- month term as Architect in Residence. It was during this brief but highly significant period for his development as a teacher that Kahn was exposed first-hand to the ruins of antiquity, not only in Italy (including Paestum, which he had first visited in 1929), but also in Egypt and Greece. Back at Yale, where Kahn was still a visiting critic, Vincent Scully was instrumental in Kahn’s being invited to become chairman, a post Kahn turned down in order to devote more time to his expanding practice in Philadelphia.8 However, he had already begun to distance himself from Yale – perhaps due in part to Paul Rudolph’s presence, including Rudolph’s studio assignment of a “roadside frozen custard stand” for which Kahn was expected to serve on the jury, and which he no doubt found trivial. “Kahn’s interest lay with deeper issues,” and at Penn he would find the freedom to assign student projects of his own choosing.9 During the mid-1940s, Kahn had been active in the American Society of Planners and Architects, where he became acquainted with G. Holmes Perkins, a Harvard-educated architect and planner.10 Following the war it was Perkins, as the visionary new dean at Penn, who first embraced Modern - ism and replaced the existing Beaux-Arts curriculum with undergraduate programs in architecture, city planning, and landscape architecture. In 1955 Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania 9 Perkins hired Kahn away from Yale on the basis of his “powerful reputation as an unorthodox teacher.”11 Perkins believed architecture should be studied at the graduate level after first completing a liberal arts degree. Under the banner of the new Graduate School of Fine Arts, the old undergraduate Bachelor of Architecture program was gradually replaced by a three-year Master of Architecture curriculum for students with no previous training in architecture.12 At Penn beginning in the fall of 1955, Kahn was initially assigned to teach Arch. 400 and 501, the fourth- and fifth-year undergraduate studios, as well as Arch. 600, a graduate studio entitled “Architecture and Civic Design.” This graduate studio, taught with Perkins and the engineer Robert LeRicolais, was highly unusual in its concentration on “experimental studies of the relation of structure and the mechanical plant to the development of significant architectural form and of social needs and advancing technologies upon civic design.”13 These courses foreshadowed the focus of Kahn’s later teaching. Research by William Whitaker suggests that “Perkins must have been planning the evolution from the School of Fine Arts to the Graduate School of Fine Arts and saw Kahn as a centerpiece of that effort.”14 Beginning in the Fall of 1960, Kahn was placed in charge of Architecture 700, a new one-year Master’s Class for holders of the first professional degree, either a B.Arch. or an M.Arch. “Do it your way,” Perkins told Kahn.15 The evolutionary process that eventually led to the Master’s Class ushered in what was to become a remarkable chapter in the history of architectural education. The class would soon become known among some architectural educators as “the most famous course in the USA.”16 Denise Scott Brown, Master’s Class of Fall 1964 recalls, “It was what brought me to Penn, on Peter Smithson’s advice.”17 Perkins and Kahn enjoyed a tense relationship, although Kahn was sometimes the patrician Perkins’ guest for lunch at the “frosty Rittenhouse Club.”18 Among Kahn’s students and employees, some believed Perkins saw Kahn as “too much of a star to handle” and blamed Perkins for not fully supporting Kahn:

They were always at loggerheads. Perkins considered Lou a dreamer, impractical. The Penn department never had a chairman; it was run by Perkins as the dean along with the other arts departments. Lou was the obvious choice for a chairman if it was going to have one, but Perkins wouldn’t give it to him, and he never passed Lou the design work he had access to.19

In the early 1960s Kahn confided to August Komendant, his engineering consultant, that he had been promised the commission to design a new fine arts building at Penn.20 Kahn considered it to be a project of the greatest significance and often enthusiastically discussed it with his Master’s Class students. He strongly believed it should be sited on the campus in the midst 10 Searching for the Unmeasurable of urban West Philadelphia, where the faculty could participate in city life, a place of learning where both professional practice and academia could meet. The commission was not to be his, however, due to political considerations, perhaps including lingering memories of design problems associated with the Richards Medical Research Laboratories on the Penn campus. The students and faculty were outraged that Kahn had been passed over. Kahn was deeply disappointed and planned to resign. To avoid his resignation, the university offered him the Paul Philippe Cret Chair, named for his old mentor. Kahn accepted the position, but disregarded the new building, keeping the Master’s Class in Frank Furness’ Fine Arts Library where it had met previously.21 (In fact, he did occasionally enter the new building to attend the Friday afternoon student-run “happy hour.”) Penn soon developed its own strong institutional identity, which tended to differentiate it from other Ivy League schools of architecture. Richard T. Reep Sr., Master’s Class of 1962, describes some of the differences between Penn and Yale, based on a discussion with Charles Gwathmey, a Yale graduate of the same period. When he and Gwathmey compared the well- known names among their fellow graduates at Penn and Yale, “Gwathmey’s won by a big margin.” There were other differences, as well:

Yale drew students who planned to go somewhere or be somebody in the profession; Penn drew students who wanted to search for meaning. Yale students were more image-driven; Penn students were more introspective. Yale more urbane; Penn more casual. Yale more Episcopal; Penn more Quaker. Yale more Modern; Penn (because of Kahn’s education) more Beaux-Arts.22

Perkins’ greatest achievement was the recruitment of a vibrant faculty that would take Penn in a new direction. In addition to Kahn, these included Robert Geddes, Romaldo Giurgola, Lewis Mumford, Stanislawa Nowicki, George Qualls, Robert Venturi, and the engineer Robert LeRicolais. He also appointed visiting critics such as Balkrishna Doshi, Aldo Van Eyck, and Oscar Stonorov. Together these individuals, under Kahn’s spiritual leadership, constituted the core of what became known in the 1960s as the Philadelphia School. It was a heady time to be at Penn, characterized by one “prominent former faculty member” as “the most vibrant architecture school in the country.”23 For over a decade, GSFA faculty and students together created the foremost school of architecture, planning, and landscape architecture in the United States, perhaps in the world, embracing the notion of designer as scientist while at the same time augmenting the artist’s position. Research and application were combined in a cauldron of new ideas, new values and a pervading sense of optimism. History and historicism, the foundation of Penn’s Beaux-Arts curriculum, took a back seat to this new excitement.24 The Philadelphia School was part of a larger reassessment of architectural education led by a new generation of teaching practitioners who challenged Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania 11 the “reductive and formalistic architecture of ﬁgures belonging to the post- World War II period such as Philip Johnson, Eero Saarinen, Paul Rudolph, and Kevin Roche.” This new generation centered about a “Penn–Yale axis” and, in addition to Kahn, included Venturi, Giurgola, and Charles Moore.25 Even though Kahn was already 54 when he accepted the position at the University of Pennsylvania in 1955, his most creative years as a teacher and practitioner still lay before him. Beginning in 1960 until his death in 1974, Kahn would divide his professional life between his practice and the Master’s Class. It would be through his teaching in the Master’s Class that he would fully develop his unique approach to architectural education.

Notes 1 Joan Ockman, ed., with Rebecca Williamson, research ed., Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America, (Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 2012), p. 81. 2 Ann L. Strong and George E. Thomas, The Book of the School: 100 Years, The Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1990), p. 37. 3 Carter Wiseman, Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007), p. 26. 4 David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1991), p. 21. 5 Kahn, as quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), p. 121. 6 David P. Wisdom, as quoted in Brownlee and De Long, p. 25. 7 Wiseman, pp. 56–57. 8 Brownlee and De Long, p. 46. 9 Brownlee and De Long, p. 62. 10 Brownlee and De Long, p. 34. 11 Wiseman, p. 83. 12 Strong and Thomas, p. 137. 13 University of Pennsylvania Bulletin, vol. 56, no. 6 (December 16, 1955). 14 William Whitaker, letter to the author, May 16, 2014. 15 Wiseman, p. 83. 16 Norman Rice, letter to Kahn, describing a conversation with “Professor George of the University of Kansas” (probably Eugene George), May 18, 1964, Kahn Collection, A-RC/17. 17 Denise Scott Brown, interview with author, May 9, 2012. 18 Wiseman, p. 91. 19 Thomas (Tim) Vreeland, as quoted in Wiseman, p. 84. 20 August Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), p. 175. 21 Ibid., pp. 176–177. 22 Reep, Richard T. Sr., “The Icon: Memories of Lou Kahn’s Master’s Class, 1961–62,” unpublished essay. 23 Wiseman, p. 82. 24 Strong and Thomas, pp. 148–149. 25 Ockman and Williamson, p. 171. 2 A philosophy of education

Kahn’s distinctive philosophy of education emphasized three principal themes, all of which set it apart from the prevailing Modernist approach. Drawing on the Beaux-Arts tradition, he advocated a renewed appreciation of the place of history and an emphasis on order, monumentality, and the power of intuition. He espoused a Neoplatonic view of reality, which inﬂuenced his approach to the beginning of a project and the origins of architectural ideas. He also supported an unconventional and even radical view of the role of the architect in society.

The Beaux-Arts influence Kahn was always quick to credit his Beaux-Arts training at Penn with the later development of his own mature approach to both design and teaching. He often displayed lavish Beaux-Arts architectural renderings from the rare books collection of the Furness Fine Arts Library, fondly pointing out to his students their elegance of detailing and breadth of vision. John Raymond (Ray) Griffin, Master’s Class of 1964, recalls Kahn saying, “‘See these beautiful gargoyles placed at these strategic points? Don’t ever be afraid of Griffins,’ which caused a titter among some near me because of my name.”1 Kahn’s Beaux-Arts background, as well as his exposure to ancient architecture as a Resident in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome, led him to search for a way to integrate a new concern for monumentality into Modernist architecture, including the expression of symbolic content. For him, monumentality was defined as “a spiritual quality inherent in a structure which conveys the feeling of its eternity, that it cannot be added to or changed.”2 This concern for the spiritual, respect for history, and search for new ways to express the same permanence and timelessness emphasized in the Beaux-Arts tradition was to become a central focus of Kahn’s pedagogy. As a result of Kahn’s influence, John Tyler Sidener Jr., who had originally been trained in the Modernist tradition and who was enrolled in a single semester of the Master’s Class in the Fall of 1962 as part of Penn’s A philosophy of education 13 two-year Civic Design program, eventually began to see the Beaux-Arts tradition in a different light:

Later, though, many things from that magical (I later realized) studio became clear. One thing which really surprised me then, and surfaced later were Kahn’s homages to Beaux-Arts site planning and architecture: symmetry, almost Palladian balance sometimes . . ., and focus on central ceremonial places. After learning that he’d been a student at Penn when the teaching was of the Beaux-Arts format . . . it was a little more clear. They learned from Paul Cret [. . .]. I had hated the Beaux-Arts buildings at the core of the Berkeley campus from childhood, when they were scary monumental giants. Thanks to Kahn, I would one day help write a book about preserving the Beaux-Arts core of the Berkeley campus.3

The Beaux-Arts influence also seems evident in the origins of Kahn’s emphasis on an intuitive search for the underlying nature of a building, which required the same sort of instinctive creativity as the Beaux-Arts esquisse, a quick sketch of an overall design concept made without consulting the instructor. (The esquisse was no doubt the inspiration for the initial “energy drawings” Kahn later assigned to his students at Yale, as well as his own “Form.”) As Kahn explained it, “the sketch depended on our intuitive powers. But the intuitive power is probably our most accurate sense. The sketch depended on our intuitive power of appropriateness. I teach appropriateness. I don’t teach anything else.”4 The Beaux-Arts tradition influenced Kahn’s attitude towards the client’s program of requirements as well. He criticized the purely analytical thinking most architects use to begin design based solely on the program, which he believed should not be taken too literally. “I believe the architect’s first act is to take the program that comes to him and change it. Not to satisfy it, but to put it into the realm of architecture.”5 Kahn’s intuitive approach contrasted sharply with the prevailing Modernist dogma that design was essentially problem solving, that the program was to be considered absolute and immutable, the only legitimate beginning point for a linear, objective “design process,” and that intuition was highly suspect. Kahn taught that

architecture is a thoughtful making of spaces . . . It is not filling pre- scriptions as clients want them filled. . . . It is a creating of spaces that evoke a feeling of use; spaces which form themselves into a harmony good for the use to which the building is to be put.[6] Solving problems is run-of-the-mill. If my office is engaged in solving problems, I can hear the tears flowing, because it is completely insignificant. It’s the part that is the drudgery of architecture.7 14 Searching for the Unmeasurable By contrast, Problem Seeking, an influential guide to programming for architects written in 1987, expresses the prevailing Modernist attitude, both then and now:

Programming the requirements of a proposed building is the architect’s ﬁrst task, often the most important.[8] Most designers love to draw, to make “thumbnail sketches,” as they used to call them. . . . Call them what you will, they can be serious deterrents in the planning of a successful building if done at the wrong time – before programming or during the programming process [italics added]. Before the whole program is deﬁned, solutions can only be partial and premature. . . . The experienced, creative designer withholds judgment, resists pre-conceived solutions and the pressure to synthesize, until all the information is in. He refuses to make sketches until he knows the client’s problem. He believes in thorough analysis before synthesis.9

Kahn advocated using the program only as a guide, as taught in the Beaux-Arts tradition. He argued that the program developed by a client for use by the architect inevitably had its origin in the duplication of similar, previously constructed prototypes. As such, the program had a superficial character that failed to reflect the underlying nature of the building. “The first thing to do is to throw away the program,” Kahn said, perhaps somewhat rhetorically. Instead, he advocated a search for the “unprogramed spaces” that the client had failed to recognize as important for the expression of the essential character of the building. “An architect who does not retranslate the program in relation to the sense of the emergence of the new institution, or the modification or strengthening of one that exists, is serving the client very little.”10 Thus design should not be about the mere arrangement of areas, but about the making of spaces that have a character appropriate to their use, that inspire certain activities:

Because after all, if an architect gets a program from a client, he gets an area program. He, the architect, has to change the areas into spaces, because he’s not dealing only with areas. They’re spaces: it isn’t just ceilings. They are . . . feeling, ambience. They are places where you feel something – different.11

The specifics of site, materials, and the client’s budget and programatic requirements were all of secondary importance compared to this search. Kahn taught that the architect had a responsibility to interpret the program to reflect his “realizations” about the building’s true nature, what it “wanted to be,” an intuitive “feeling that there is a validity about something.” 12 This approach depended on intuition, not analysis. As Walter Gropius, another A philosophy of education 15 influential philosopher of architectural education, emphasized, artistic creativity requires “a fresh mind, unaffected by the accumulated debris of intellectual knowledge. Thomas Aquinas has said, ‘I must empty my soul that God may enter.’ Such unprejudiced emptiness is the state of mind for creative conception.”13 Kahn’s philosophy could be deeply unsettling to many of his students who had previously been indoctrinated into the entrenched Modernist approach. Kahn was encouraging them to reject their prior learning and to trust their intuition as more powerful than their analytical capacity. Most Master’s Class students agree that in challenging this aspect of the prevailing approach to design education, Kahn taught that architects have a higher duty to society and to themselves than an unquestioning obligation to the requirements of the program. Kahn’s approach involved a search for beginnings, for the underlying essence of things as the origin of creativity that takes precedence over the client’s ideas and preconceived notions. Tim McGinty, Master’s Class of 1967, was startled by this aspect of Kahn’s teaching:

Admonishing architects to rewrite the program, if not radical, was very controversial. . . . In class I remember that we were asked to “overcome” the “circumstances” of the program and measure ourselves against the “inherent” spirit of the building type as we solved circumstantial needs that might very well change [. . .].14

The analytical approach to design based on the primacy of the client’s program was and still is taught in most schools of architecture. Some of the confusion and even hostility that Kahn’s ideas provoked among his fellow practitioners can be traced back to this fundamental difference in how one begins the design process. August Komendant, Kahn’s structural engineering consultant and a frequent lecturer in the Master’s Class, was not alone in his criticism of Kahn for this attitude toward the program and his emphasis on intuition instead of analysis, considering it a disservice to the students.15 For many other architects who had been taught that design was an analytical exercise in problem solving, Kahn’s intuitive approach seemed highly suspect. For many students once Kahn’s intuitive approach to begin - nings was understood, a liberating effect was the result – although it was difﬁcult for some to reconcile what they had absorbed in the Master’s Class with the prevailing approach they later encountered in the professional mainstream where Modernist philosophy prevailed.

Neoplatonism A second central theme that runs through Kahn’s philosophy of education is his Neoplatonic view of reality, which inﬂuenced the importance he placed 16 Searching for the Unmeasurable on the beginning of a project. The emphasis in all Master’s Class assignments was on beginnings, which held a special appeal for Kahn, and in his teaching he was always more interested in a student’s initial thoughts than in the ﬁnal product. Kahn taught that the architect must use intuition to discover the eternal, pre-existing “Form” of a building, an understanding of its “existence will,” of “what the building wants to be,” without regard to the site, the program, or what the architect himself might want to design. The concept recalls the metaphor in Plato’s Republic of the prisoners whose under standing of the unseen world outside their cave is shaped by the shadows projected on its walls. Form had a timeless aspect and could be neither created nor destroyed:

What is has always been. What was has always been. What will be has always been.16

While all the sources of Kahn’s ideas about form are unclear, they are not unlike Michelangelo’s conception that the artist reveals a pre-existent reality. His ideas are reminiscent, as well, of Jung’s concept of archetypes, the universal, ancient patterns found in the so-called “collective unconscious,” similarities that will be explored in Chapter 6. It has been suggested that he also drew from Egyptian hieroglyphics and German romanticism.17 For Kahn, Form was characterized by “Order,” the relationship among its “inseparable parts,” and recalls the principle of the “organic” in architec ture as espoused by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Order refers to the essential, integrated, underlying relationships of these parts to each other and to the whole, such that the Form is complete and nothing can be added or taken away. As Kahn expressed it in his poetic essay, Order Is:

The same order created the elephant and created man They are different designs Begun from different aspirations Shaped from different circumstances

The realization of Form and Order had nothing to do with the beautiful:

Order does not imply Beauty The same order created the dwarf and Adonis18

For Kahn, beauty was suspect. He cautioned that “To make a thing deliberately beautiful is a dastardly act; it’s an act of mesmerism which beclouds the entire issue. I do not believe that beauty can be created overnight. It must start with the archaic first.”19 A philosophy of education 17 When Form was first realized, the result could often be ungainly. “The ugliness must be seen before we can make it beautiful,”20 he taught. Thus for Kahn, the archaic temple of Paestum was to be preferred to the later Parthenon, for it was Paestum that made the Parthenon possible. At Paestum he sensed that the Form of the Greek temple was being fully realized for the first time, and for this reason it was the stronger, even though it seemed crude by comparison, lacking the sophisticated proportions of the Parthenon.21 (It would be a mistake, however, to conclude from this that Kahn was not interested in visual impact. “Architecture should throw off sparks,” he remarked.)22 Although Form and Order could be suggested in a diagram, Form was pure concept without shape or dimension, immaterial and pre-existing in the realm of architecture. It was to be discovered or “realized,” not invented, and the Master’s Class was devoted to the search for this underlying essence. Instead of just designing a school based on the program, for instance, the student should first search for the Form School. This obligation was the basis for his controversial idea that architects have a duty to rewrite the program, and even the budget, when they pose an obstacle to the realization of ideal Form. Not until the Form was realized should design begin, the adaptation of the ideal to the specific “circumstantial” constraints. Design was the process of bringing a building into physical existence, of moving from the Unmeasurable to the measurable, while still remaining true to the original Form:

Form is impersonal and belongs to nobody. Design is personal and belongs to the designer. Design is a circumstantial act: how much money there is available, the site, the client, the extent of knowledge. Form has nothing to do with circumstantial conditions. In architecture, it characterizes a harmony of spaces good for a certain activity of man.23

Even though design was personal, for Kahn it had nothing to do with fashion or even with appearances. Instead, design was about expressing the essential nature of the building, including the inseparable parts of its Form, in a way that allowed it to be built in accord with the laws of physics. In explaining this approach, Kahn referred to his design of a women’s dormitory at Bryn Mawr College:

The mind has to be stimulated by circumstantial things – let us say by knowledge or by the speciﬁc knowledge that is necessary to understand the function of a building such as a dormitory. One must not assume that he knows anything about such a building when he begins to conceive its design, but must think about what is the nature of such a building. What is the nature of a girls’ dormitory as compared with a hotel or an apartment building or even, say, a men’s dormitory. 18 Searching for the Unmeasurable A dormitory for girls is not the same as a dormitory for men. In a women’s dormitory one must feel the presence of house much more [. . .].24

Kahn taught that with a successful design, the completed building would once more suggest this quality of the Unmeasurable; it would be true to its underlying Form:

To give presence to something, to translate the realizations which come from the sense of Form, to preserve that sense with everything that you have at your disposal and to give presence to that which has existence in the mind – that is what design is all about.[25] A great building, in my opinion, must begin with the Unmeasurable, go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable.26

The “Unmeasurable” was a term Kahn invented and used to describe Form, and was not to be confused with “immeasurable.” As Gavin Ross, Master’s Class of 1968, understood it,

the distinction is important. Immeasurable means that something could be measured if the means to do so existed. Unmeasurable means that it simply cannot be measured whatever the means. Thus when he talked about “joy” in the creative impulse, joy would be unmeasurable but nonetheless essential. If one looks at his thinking process, intuition informed by intellect, feeling made manifest by thought, then one can see that the beginnings are in the realm of the Unmeasurable.27

The Unmeasurable belonged to the world of dreams; it existed only in the mind, as an ideal and was incapable of full realization. It could only be approached, never completely attained. As soon as one began to design, to attempt to translate the Unmeasurable into the measurable and bring it into material existence, one inevitably fell short. As Kahn expressed it, “When I place the ﬁrst line on paper to capture the dream, the dream becomes less.”28 It was possible for many different designs to emerge from the same realization of Form, and the Master’s Class became a laboratory for the exploration of the many designs that could express the same Form. Kahn believed that the most successful assignments in the Master’s Class were those in which a consensus emerged as to the ideal Form. One class assignment involved the design of a Greek Orthodox church. The discussion centered on the relationship of the court, the school, the community center and the narthex, and whether the traditional relationships of these components were valid. As Kahn explained it, A philosophy of education 19 we were taught by a priest all about the functions of the church. We visited churches that functioned in the ritual of the religion. The tendency was to place the school and community center on another side of the court. After some talk about the meaning of anything that may enter the realm of religious environment, everyone accepted the idea that the narthex had to take another shape than it always had. It was the entrance to the community hall and also the school.29

The search Kahn advocated did not necessarily lead to a realistic architectural solution, however. When he assigned a project he was working on in the office, the competition to design the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California at Berkeley, the class agreed that the ideal Form was a sphere – a most impractical realization.30 Still, the fact that the class had arrived at a common understanding validated Kahn’s notion of the universality of Form. For him, the realization of Form had nothing to do with practical considerations. Unlike most of his professional peers who had been schooled in Modernism and who had come to consider history to be largely irrelevant, Kahn continued to find inspiration and support for his ideas in the enduring works of antiquity, such as Paestum and the Parthenon. He frequently cited another ancient building, the Pantheon, as a successful example of a building whose design reflected its underlying, archetypal Form, “a universal religious space.”31 Similarly, he said of the Greek stoa:

No partitions, just columns, just protection. Things grew in it. Shops became. People met, meet, there. It’s shaded. You present a quality, architectural, no purpose. Just a recognition of something which you can’t define, but must be built. . . . But that’s a definite architectural quality. It has the same quality as all religious places, a simple quality of knowing that a stone stands free. . . . It is something in the way of a mysterious decision to make Stonehenge. It’s terrific. It’s the beginning of architecture. It isn’t made out of a handbook, you see. It doesn’t start from practical issues. It starts from a kind of feeling that there must be a world within a world.32

The existence of this pre-existing, Neoplatonic “world within a world” that the architect must ﬁrst realize and then translate into brick-and-mortar materiality was one of Kahn’s most enduring themes, to which he returned over and over in his teaching in the Master’s Class.

The architect in society While Kahn’s teaching rarely, if ever, touched on architectural practice, he was vitally concerned with the architect’s role in society, which formed the 20 Searching for the Unmeasurable third leg of his philosophy of education. Many of his lessons dealt with what he considered the moral aspects of practice. He challenged the view of the architect as primarily a businessman, a problem-solver bound by the client’s requirements, preoccupied with advancing his career. “Never think of your ‘career’ as such,” he advised. “That is a poisonous and damaging thought, and I have seen many a talented colleague fall by the wayside because of excessive thoughts of ‘career.’”33 Kahn was careful to distinguish between being an architect and being a professional, which for him was not the same thing at all:

If you are in the profession of architecture, it is likely that you are not an architect. If you are an architect without thinking of the profession, you might be one. The profession kills your incentive.[34] . . . be really an architect and not just a professional. A professional will bury you. You’ll become so comfortable. You’ll become so praised . . . that you’ll never recognize yourself after a while. You get yourself a good business character, you can really play golf all day and your buildings will be built anyway. But what the devil is that? What joy is there if joy is buried? I think joy is the key word in our work. It must be felt. If you don’t feel joy in what you’re doing, then you’re not really operating. And there are miserable moments which you’ve got to live through. But really, joy will prevail.35

While Kahn was reluctant to criticize other architects or the profession in class, he did so in private with Komendant.36 Impatient with a superficial characterization of design as a “process,” Kahn scoffed. “Process is used for making beer.”37 He taught that too many architects were more interested in business than in seeking the “realm of architecture” and distinguished between making buildings and making architecture. “If you think about the profession of architecture, you can’t expect much,” he said. “But if you think about Architecture, you can expect a hell of a lot more.”38 He had little regard for those who confused professional fame, making a profit, and the design of high-profile projects with quality:

I know architects who have tremendous commissions, who down deep want nothing more than to be recognized for a small building, in spite of all the great projects, as being a signiﬁcant contribution to architecture itself. Because most buildings that are built belong merely to the marketplace. That doesn’t belong to the realm of architecture at all.39

He was strongly opposed to what he perceived as a growing trend, especially in large commercial architectural firms, toward specialization and teamwork, with architects developing the design in concert with others or focusing on only a single detail. “Group action has nothing to do with making a wonderful A philosophy of education 21 plan. You can find groups getting together, but the one man finds the wonderful plan. The group never does.”40 Instead, Kahn advocated the role of the architect as an individual artist who grappled with the underlying nature of a project, concerned with integrating the design of an entire building rather than focusing on only a few component parts:

The architect can realize the spirit of his art and the emerging order only when the problems before him are considered part of a whole. Relegated to niches of specialization, he will become one of a team, designing parts and giving the world nothing but solutions of temporal- circumstantial needs. The architect is thinking more deeply into the nature of a building or whatever he has to design if he is thinking of desire rather than only of need. The architectural tradition is what gives the creator, artist, architect or engineer, the power of anticipation from which the creator knows what will last when he creates.41

On one occasion Kahn was asked, “What are the reasons for the deterioration of our environment and cities?” The question prompted an answer that revealed Kahn’s attitude toward the corporate practice of architecture:

The current deterioration of our cities and environment, as far as architecture is concerned, is caused mainly by large architectural corporations indifferent to the value and essence of the true architecture. Due to this attitude in the market place, the professions tend to become businesses which suppress individual talent and desires – quality is replaced by quantity.42

In summary, Kahn was for many architects the foremost moral philosopher of his time, always searching for authenticity, controversial in his challenge to many prevailing views within the profession. He advocated a renewed appreciation of the place of history and an emphasis on order, monumentality and the power of intuition, which grew out of the Beaux- Arts tradition. He espoused a unique approach to how a project should begin based on a Neoplatonic search for Form that took priority over one’s own ego or a slavish adherence to the client’s program. In practice, he opposed over-specialization and the growth of large architectural corporations, and he advocated a redeﬁnition of the architect’s role in society. For Kahn, the architect should be an artist, not just a professional solver of problems.

Notes 1 John Raymond (Ray) Grifﬁn, “Recollections on Louis Kahn,” unpublished manuscript provided to the author, 2012. 2 David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1991), p. 43. 22 Searching for the Unmeasurable 3 John Tyler Sidener Jr., “Me and Lou,” unpublished essay, 2011. 4 Brownlee and De Long, p. 22. 5 Kahn, as quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), p. 89. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 28. 8 William Pena with Steven Parshall and Kevin Kelly, Problem Seeking (Washington, AIA Press, 1987), p. 12. 9 Ibid., pp. 20–21. 10 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 24. 11 Kahn, as quoted in Alessandro Vassella, Ed., Louis I. Kahn, Silence and Light (Zurich: Park Books and Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania, 2013), p. 40. 12 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 78. 13 Walter Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture (New York, Collier Books, 1955), pp. 32–33. 14 Tim McGinty, letter to the author, February 2, 2014. 15 August Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), p. 185. 16 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 116. 17 Brownlee and De Long, p. 72. 18 Louis I. Kahn, “Order Is,” as quoted in Vincent Scully, Louis I. Kahn (New York: George Braziller, 1962), p. 113. 19 Kahn, as quoted in Brownlee and De Long, p. 15. 20 Kahn, as quoted in David Bernstein, class notes provided to the author, 1961. 21 Brownlee and De Long, p. 15. 22 Kahn, as quoted in Fred Linn Osmon, “An Interlude – The Louis I. Kahn Studio,” unpublished essay, 2014. 23 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 89. 24 Ibid., p. 3. 25 Ibid., p. 213. 26 Ibid., p. 89. 27 Gavin Ross, letter to the author, October 11, 2011. 28 Kahn, as quoted in Louis Kahn: Essential Texts, ed. Robert Twombly, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), pp. 62–63. 29 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 22. 30 Brownlee and De Long, p. 62. 31 Kahn, as quoted in Twombly, p. 135. 32 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 59. 33 Grifﬁn. 34 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 134. 35 Kahn, as quoted in Twombly, p. 280. 36 Komendant, p. 188. 37 Kahn, as quoted in Karl G. Smith II, interview with author, May 7, 2012. 38 Ibid. 39 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 73. 40 Ibid., p. 32. 41 Kahn, as quoted in Komendant, p. 173 42 Ibid., p. 174. 3 A man under a tree

Kahn’s attitude towards learning and questioning as conducted in his Master’s Class seminars was readily revealed in his pedagogy, which was in turn derived from his philosophy of education. “Learning was for Kahn an existential quest. It was at heart an exploration of life itself. . . .”1 It was one of the three major human inspirations along with “meeting” and “wellbeing.” He explained his reverence for learning, which he saw as “a fundamental inspiration. It isn’t just something we do because we have a duty. It is born into us. The will to learn, the desire to learn is just one of the most, the greatest of inspirations.”2 Norman Rice, Kahn’s longtime friend and teaching colleague, pointed out that Kahn did not do well in high school, where the accumulation of facts was emphasized over the intuitive and where “he was always on the verge of being flunked.”3 Throughout his life he had a prejudice against “information” and those who relied on statistics and sociology, including city planners. This lack of success in school and the early experience of teaching informally outside academia, including the Architectural Research Group during the 1930s, seem to have produced an “anti-establishment view of education”4 in which talent and intuition were considered superior to knowledge. In speaking of the education of a future architect, Kahn revealed his unconventional attitude toward formal education. “Can you really begin any later than when he’s six years old . . .? And you wonder about all these degrees you must have first before you study your profession. It seems like one of the worst things is all that academic nonsense that precedes.”5 What was important was the learning of the tools that would enable one to develop one’s natural talents. He felt this could happen through an influential mentor, an office or a shop, as well as a school. Although not well-versed in engineering or the technical aspects of science, Kahn was able to relate architecture, and especially his search for “beginnings,” to scientific theories in a metaphorical way. He referred to the earth as a “13 billion-year-old memory” or to rock as “spent light.” He was acquainted with Albert Einstein and, like Einstein, believed in the importance of art as well as science for a complete understanding of the world. “Art is a merger of science and religion,” he observed.6 24 Searching for the Unmeasurable “I believe the institution of learning actually stems way back from the nature of nature,” Kahn said. “Nature, physical nature, records in what it makes how it was made,” he taught, perhaps alluding to his observation of the strata in sedimentary geologic formations or the growth rings in trees. “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 were made.”7 His pedagogy was informed by two ancient approaches, the Socratic method of questioning and the Talmudic tradition of the parable and the paradox. In addition, he emphasized a distinction between what he termed the “what” and the “how.” These three concepts had in common the search for the underlying essence of an architectural assignment through a process of questioning. As Kahn often emphasized, a good question was superior to the most brilliant answer.

The Socratic method Although the Socratic method of teaching has long been applied in many disciplines, architectural design has generally not been among these. Instead, design, which forms the core of the curriculum, has traditionally been taught in a studio setting in which the instructor moves from one student to another, conferring in a one-on-one conversation while seated at the student’s drafting table. The discussion focuses on the student’s approach to the project as shown in drawings and models, with the instructor commending strong concepts and pointing out defects, oversights and areas that need further study. Except for the initial project assignment and the ﬁnal “jury,” group discussions are rare. When these do occur, the Socratic style of questioning is seen infrequently. A recurring theme in Kahn’s students’ recollections is his unconventional approach to studio criticism conducted through group discussions in a seminar format. Instead of a narrow focus on the individual student’s ideas, the discussions in the Master’s Class explored a wide range of philosophical issues relating to architecture in its broadest sense. Max A. Robinson, Master’s Class of 1964, articulates Kahn’s wide-ranging seminar style:

His teaching was really a process of questioning and we were continuously exposed to it as he generally discussed architecture and the studio projects through the basic seminar setting of the class. His elaborations upon the notions of silence, light, wonder, joy, knowledge, realizations, singularities, the measurable and the Unmeasurable offered insights into the depth and extent of his ideas and presented us with a gauge by which we could measure our own attempts. This differed significantly from the individualized work and desk critiques of my undergraduate experience. The Master’s Studio focused upon addressing topics through the design problems but it was a continuing group conversation about A man under a tree 25 more significant and generalized issues and always done by persistently inquiring about their nature. It was not about doing architecture, especially like how Kahn would do it, but about how to approach it yourself and what to aspire to as an end rather than as the finite product of the result itself.8

Like Socrates, Kahn believed “you learn nothing that is not part of you”9 and that the teacher’s role should consist of drawing lessons out of the student’s own experience. Reﬂecting on his year in the class, Fikret Yegul (1966) ﬁnds that through the years he has come to appreciate Kahn’s style of teaching more and more. He remembers the importance of the spirit of searching that Kahn emphasized:

Kahn’s Master’s Class at Penn was different than anything I had been used to. It must have been different from how architecture was taught anywhere in the United States. . . . We sat around a large oak table, with Kahn, Robert LeRicolais, and Norman Rice at the head, and discussed whatever architectural problem we had in a broadly cultural, spiritual, almost mythical way. It was a little formidable for a 23-year-old. Kahn wanted us to search the essence of the problem, whatever it was – a school, a monument, or his famous “place for well-being.” His approach, I later realized, was something like the Socratic method of teaching: he loved to ask a question and let the class ruminate over it, or answer a question with another question. The importance of those “searches”and those evocative musings on the nature and meaning of architecture came to me much later, when I was much older, when I could understand and appreciate it better. Still, that Socratic manner of searching, debating, discussing around the big table was the best and truest, democratic, “round-table” style I have ever seen; this was prob ably the most impressive contribution of Kahn’s teaching. There was this great sense of openness and trust; we must have felt being in the presence of something greater than any one of us singly. Kahn said he liked those long afternoons of Socratic musings, questions and answers; in that open atmosphere of searching he said he learned from his students, and I believe him. It is surprising that the veritable forum where this thinking man honed his ideas almost every afternoon from September to June, the role of this forum in his development as an architect, is largely neglected.10

As Michael Bednar (1967) understood Kahn’s approach:

The primary objective of the year-long studio was to develop a philosophical approach to architectural problems; to question, probe and 26 Searching for the Unmeasurable

Figure 3.1 Louis I. Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania, 1971 Photograph by Hans Namuth ©1991 Hans Namuth Estate, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography “That Socratic manner of searching, debating, discussing around the big table was the best and truest, democratic ‘round table’ style I have ever seen […].” Fikret Yegul, Master’s Class of 1966

search to the very core of architectural belief. No preconceived approaches were accepted; nothing was assumed. In Kahn’s classroom the intent was not to acquire a certain amount of knowledge, but rather to develop attitudes and beliefs. The hope was to start the development of a philosophical approach to design which could last a lifetime. Whereas the value of speciﬁc knowledge is short-lived, the value of belief is eternal.11

Charles E. Dagit Jr., Master’s Class of 1968, also emphasizes that students were encouraged to investigate their own attitudes and values, to “find out who we were; to find our own way. . . . He wanted you to evolve into who you are, for Kahn’s teaching went beyond the design of buildings.”12 For J. Michael Cobb, Master’s Class of 1970, Kahn’s teaching had two objectives: “to uncover new insights from his students, as he continued to explore his own approaches to architecture and design, and to encourage us to find our way. . . . He wanted the class to ‘look beyond the seemingly obvious’ to the nature of things” and taught that “it’s okay to really hate a solution you produce – if you can tear it up and start again – you learn that way.”13 A man under a tree 27 The Talmudic method Kahn was Jewish and influenced by the Talmudic emphasis on questioning “the harmonization of apparent contradictions and the interlinking of apparent irrelevancies.”14 Using the seminar format, Kahn employed a pedagogical method characterized by the frequent use of metaphors, myths, parables and fables illustrating his philosophical preoccupation with the search for the ultimate origins of architectural ideas. These were intended to startle the student out of his complacency and to open his eyes to another way of thinking. Many of Kahn’s well-known aphorisms show this paradoxical quality in their emphasis on the importance of a search for the underlying nature of reality. “I asked the brick what it wanted to be, and the brick said, ‘I like an arch.’” During one student critique he commented that “nature would never make two identical dogs and allow one to eat grass and the other to eat meat.”15 Tony Junker, Master’s Class of 1964, remarked on Kahn’s gift for expressing his ideas in a memorable way:

He had wide ranging imagination and boldness in use of the language that could startle with its unorthodox power. One day, during a critique, he was looking for words for explaining why he thought it was not good to have a tower grow out of a ﬂat slab (e.g. Lever House). He said it was like meeting a stranger in the water at the beach, and he or she is waist deep in water – you don’t know what the bottom looks like. Now, there’s nothing rational in this, but the idea is there. He would take risks like this with words and ideas, and some people would react negatively, but I tell you – I never forgot the point.16

Fikret Yegul (1966) recalls how in the course of one afternoon spent “exploring the question of the meaning of ‘outside’ and ‘inside,’” Kahn shared a traditional parable with the class about a prophet and his wife:

It was a beautiful sunny day, the story went. The prophet went outside his house, breathing deep the fresh, lovely air, and said to his wife, “Woman, come outside and see what God has created!” His wife from the cool, dark house quietly answered, “You come inside, man, and see what God has created!”17

For some, Kahn was a mystic. While he was not an observant Jew, he had a strongly spiritual nature and was clearly aware of Jewish mysticism. In what may or may not have been a conscious reference, the floor plan of his unbuilt Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia closely resembles the sixteenth-century image of the Tree of Sefiroth from Paulus Ricius.18 28 Searching for the Unmeasurable One of the best known of his fables, contained in a 1960 lecture broadcast by Voice of America and often repeated in class, involved the origins of the first school:

Schools began with a man under a tree, who did not know he was a teacher, discussing his realizations with a few others, who did not know they were students. The students reﬂected on the exchanges between them and on how good it was to be in the presence of this man. They wished their sons, also, to listen to such a man. Soon, the needed spaces were erected and the ﬁrst schools came into existence. The establishment of schools was inevitable because they are part of the desires of man.19

To some who knew him and absorbed his teaching ﬁrst hand, Kahn was seen as a prophet. Indeed, some of his observations have biblical overtones, such as his enigmatic statement, “Order Is.” In its economy, ambiguity and sense of much left unsaid, it is reminiscent of Yahweh’s revelation to Moses: “I am that I am.” Kahn understood the Talmudic principle that an ambiguous observation can often be more effective than a straightforward one in conveying a truth.

Figure 3.2 “Schools began with a man under a tree, who did not know he was a teacher, discussing his realizations with a few others, who did not know they were students.” (Louis I. Kahn). (Drawing by John Tyler Sidener Jr., Master’s Class of 1962) A man under a tree 29 Because of its power to inspire questioning, reﬂection and interpretation, such a realization, once understood, becomes the student’s own. The ﬂavor of these observations in the Master’s Class is recorded by David Bernstein, Master’s Class of 1962, in his studio notebook:

Place something against your will. Put it where it really should be. . . . Some spaces deserve attention and some do not. . . . When a man knows how to make a joint he doesn’t hide it. . . . Find the smaller architecture in the crevices of the larger architecture. . . . The piazza evolved from a reason, not because someone liked it. A Form because you like it isn’t enough. . . . Discover your dream, then search for a way to express it. If you don’t know, trust the laws of another. But trust a superior dream. . . . Art is something you do every day. It is part of life. All that man does is art. . . . We are making old-fashioned buildings with concrete and steel. It is sometimes better to forget one’s recollection of the past; to discover the essence of the thing on which we are working. To present rather than represent. There has been a lot of water over the dam since the Renaissance. In order to discover its true nature, it is better to use a box than a Renaissance building with modern materials.20

Kahn was fond of the use of striking metaphors. He had been a skilled musician as a young man and often claimed that when he had received a gift of a piano that left no room at home for a bed, he chose to sleep on the piano. His love of music continued throughout his life, and in his critiques “he often used musical analogies, humming bars from Beethoven and Bach.”21 Cengiz Yetken, Master’s Class of 1966, describes one such critique:

“Look, here are the violins” he would say, pointing to certain parts of the plan in a student’s work while imitating violin sounds . . . “then enter the oboes,” he exclaimed, pointing out the row of rooms on the side, “and here are the drums, the rhythm section. . . .” He starts pounding, “bum, bam, bum,” and points to the structural grid. Studio critiques turn into a music lesson. . . . This kind of criticism could only come from someone with a great understanding of music. Lou examines the plan as if he is looking at a musical score and he talks about it as if he is describing a symphony. He is like a conductor of an orchestra. . . . Pointing to a plan, he would describe inconsistencies, incompleteness of spatial composition while referring to a symphony, harmony, rhythm, and melody. I am now thinking that Lou is teaching us to have a conversation with our drawings, our plans, and the spaces we create. He is showing that every instrument in the piece has a role to play. Every note should be essential for the composition. . . . Nothing more, nothing less.22 30 Searching for the Unmeasurable Kahn’s way of introducing a class assignment often entailed a story of a personal experience leading to a realization of some new architectural potential. Tim McGinty (1967) describes the assignment to redesign Philadelphia’s Independence Mall:

The seminar discussion initiated by Kahn was a gentle but earnest request that we think about his story and a request to help him learn from it. Kahn, like most of us, had been devastated by the Kennedy assassination in 1963. He told us he was in despair at the time and hadn’t found a way to show his grief. It really bothered him. He decided to take a walk and, without making it his destination, found himself walking past Independence Hall. I think he said it was a Saturday morning. There he found a Boy Scout troop performing a flag ceremony. Earnestly there, on their own. Just like he was. He also noticed that there were a few others who had spontaneously made Independence Hall their destination. Kahn and everyone were very moved by the gathering and it brought some solace to him as well as a swelling of civic pride that this had happened. He mentioned that over time it had become frustrating to him that the city had torn down fifteen blocks of neighborhoods to create an urban city park to honor and set off Independence Hall, but the only place he wanted to be was right in front. Our task was to figure out how to change the mall and “move” his experience – his choice of a place to go – further down the mall. Otherwise, why build the mall? We struggled. Only one idea in the whole class stood out. As soon as it was presented we all knew it was the only one that deserved review consideration. The author was Peter Proudfoot from Australia. His idea was that several buildings would be bought along the length of the mall and consolidated into a university or institute for world peace and the mall would be its campus. This would transform the well-intended but “placeless” new urban park into a destination of institutional purpose and youthful optimism.23

The “what” and the “how” As the third aspect of Kahn’s pedagogy, Kahn distinguished between the “what” and the “how.” The “what” was akin to ideal Form; it was without physical presence. The “how” referred to design and construction, the making of a building. The “what,” the realization and expression of Form, should be the architect’s first task. Only when the “what” was understood should design, the “how,” begin. The “what” was universal and its realization was the result of an intuitive search. The “how” was the architect’s response to the A man under a tree 31 particulars of the client’s program, the site, the budget and other “circumstantial” factors. Finding the “what” required intuition; finding the “how” required analysis. However, unless the “what” could first be realized, the resulting building would fall short of its full architectural potential. In an effort to articulate a pedagogical theory, Kahn described his preoccupation with getting to the “‘whatness’ or essence of ideas from which the ‘howness’ or physical being could emerge.”24 The “whatness” was seen as the province of the teacher; it was what Kahn stressed in the Master’s Class. The “howness” was the province of the instructor, although Kahn assumed that in their previous studies his students had already mastered the “how.” In this way he distinguished between the teacher and the instructor and their unique roles. Kahn saw the “what” as the more crucial. The student had to learn that

architecture really does not exist. Only a work of architecture exists. Architecture does exist in the mind. A man who does a work of architecture does it as an offering to the spirit of architecture . . . a spirit which knows no style, knows no techniques, no method. . . . There is architecture, and it is the embodiment of the Unmeasurable.25

“You can’t get a hold on architecture,” he said. “Only a work of architecture has presence, and a work of architecture is presented as an offering to architecture.”26 This essence of “what the building wants to be” was immaterial and unmeasurable. The completed building, the “offering,” should be evaluated according to how true it remained to Form, which determined whether it belonged to the realm of architecture. The ability to teach the “what” required a special kind of individual:

We must not assume that every teacher is really a teacher, because he can be a teacher only in name. . . . One who is just beginning to sense things may emerge to be the best teacher.[27] I think the teacher is essentially a man who does not only know things, but feels things. He is the kind of man who can reconstruct the universe by just knowing a blade of grass.28

In a 1971 letter to Georgia Perkins, wife of Dean G. Holmes Perkins, Kahn elaborated, separating the teacher’s concern for the “what” from the instructor’s concern with the “how.” He also referred to his belief that in the world of nature one discovers a record of natural processes that unfold according to immutable laws:

Teaching is self developing for the teacher. It is a role in which personal knowing is only important when it reveals man’s nature. The “Body of Knowledge” swells seeking its relation to all of “Order.” Whatever of it is in a man cannot be imparted out of context per se except thru his 32 Searching for the Unmeasurable sense of order it arouses in him revealing a sense of the “what.” The instructor, equally important as the teacher, equally concerned with knowing in relation to order orients however to the “how.” “What” – Philosophical – toward man’s nature. “What” – The laws of nature – order. It is “what” that leads to the beautiful “How.” How nature makes is recorded in what it makes. How the rock is made is in the rock. How man was made is recorded in man. When we are born, in us individually are all the laws of the universe, the eternal spirit and the will to express it, which is the basis of our natural talent. We cannot retain what is not already in us.29

Unlike the teacher, the instructor dealt with the “how,” and Kahn described several types of architectural instruction. First were the professional aspects, including the architect’s obligations to the client and to the public. Despite his warnings about the dangers of an over-emphasis on professionalism, Kahn was quick to recognize that architects had obligations to their clients and to the public that needed to be taught in schools of architecture. When he was asked how he would begin the education of an architect, his response was quite practical and down-to-earth with regard to the knowledge an architect must possess:

You have professional obligations in all buildings, since you are dealing with other men and their various interests. You must know the obligations of dealing with the money problems, that clients have the cost of buildings, the paying of bills, speciﬁc space requirements, and so on. You must know obligations like this, and understand the super- vision, the honesty, that must be there to see that the man is given the full value. . . . Your obligations as a professional are those of a man who is entrusted to do a work which is of interest for the people, for, after all, an architect doesn’t dish it out of his pocket.30

Second was instruction in the technical aspects such as structures and acoustics. Third was preparation of the student to find himself profes sionally, based on his specific talents and interests.31 Of these three, professional practice was probably the least important.32 Kahn’s pedagogy did acknowledge the importance of the student’s learning the “how” – but as taught by others. Kahn concerned himself exclusively with teaching advanced students who could already search the book of knowledge for the “how.” Kahn taught that architects have a higher duty to constantly pursue the elusive “what,” the right thing to do. A man under a tree 33 As his remarks reveal, Kahn was skeptical of the value of an education that stressed analysis and knowledge over intuition, the “how” over the “what,” and for him this was a major fault in the Modernist program- oriented approach to design. His comments also reflect his lifelong unease with a system of education, such as he experienced in high school, that emphasized knowing facts over an intuitive approach to learning. For Kahn, discovering the right thing to do was the necessary precursor to turning one’s mind to the application of knowledge in order to solve the problems of program, design and construction. He taught that the right thing done poorly is superior to the wrong thing done well, and that once one discovered what to do, doing it was easy. He observed:

Knowing things is not the thing that will help you most . . . he who analyzes only loses the world. Knowledge is in man because he is made out of nature. . . . Knowledge is that which you draw out of things that already exist. . . . I like to feel that knowledge is not in man’s mind, but stands outside of man’s mind, like a book, which he can go to.33

J. Michael Cobb (1970) explains:

He also viewed himself, and architects in general I think, as custodians of some great obligation for producing originality. . . . In some ways I do think he was trying to dismantle the ideas and methods of design which we as students initially brought to the class. In other words, to get us to “re-tool” our minds about what architecture could or perhaps should be about.34

As Kahn himself put it, the students’ biggest challenge in the Master’s Class would be to “rapidly unlearn much of what you have been taught at your own architectural schools.”35 This goal of challenging students to question their previous point of view was one of the most memorable aspects of the class, although the extent of success was not always apparent. As articulated by Norman Rice:

The nature of the teaching and the philosophy causes a transmutation of all students, to varying degrees, and often means rejection of previous learning and viewpoints. Within the short time of two semesters the teachers cannot determine in any absolute way that the so-called poor performer has, or has not, imbibed substantial inspiration that will transform him in years to come.36

In the opinion of some, Kahn’s intuitive approach had its limitations. His teaching almost never touched on the “how,” the realities of putting buildings together, meeting deadlines, or adhering to budgets. “I am unable to recall him addressing any socioeconomic issues,” relates David Bernstein 34 Searching for the Unmeasurable (1962), “even in relation to . . . ideas for the center of Philadelphia, where these issues could not fail to be of fundamental importance.”37 Kahn saw it as the role of others to deal with such concerns. However, Komendant, his engineering consultant, considered this a shortcoming of Kahn’s pedagogy. Komendant likened the nature of Kahn’s view to that of the artist who “considered art as the making of life.” He believed that Kahn failed with respect to knowledge, but excelled at inspiration, and that while he was unable “to teach design in a practical sense,” he was “superb for inspiring and criticizing a design.” For Komendant, his strength was in “what,” not “how.”38 Komendant also criticized Kahn for his idealistic, largely intuitive approach to teaching, considering it a disservice to the students. “Kahn never discussed economy in class; it was a dirty word for him.” Referring to Kahn’s radical admonition that the architect’s first job was to change the program, to put it into “the realm of architecture,” Komendant noted that many students who had experience working in offices were troubled by this advice. To them it seemed unrealistic and went against their previous learning, and Komendant argued that it made students “arrogant.”39 The argument between Kahn and Komendant revealed two fundamentally different world views. For Kahn, intuition and feeling were superior to knowledge and were not subject to verification using empirical means. Martin E. Rich, Master’s Class of 1964, describes how

Kahn often spoke about the “why” of a project and the act of “sensing a belief.” It was essential to search for a client’s emotional and psychological motivation, which ultimately deﬁnes the programatic requirements of a project. . . . This “belief” was a shared realization of the human institution, which translates into a tangible and passionate aspiration for a place to satisfy it.40

Komendant, the pragmatic engineer, argued that knowledge is needed to determine whether an idea is right or wrong, not feeling.41 Perhaps the truth is to be found somewhere between these polar opposites. Certainly the soundness of intuition is based on knowledge gained through experience, and intuition without experience is suspect at best. Despite his rhetoric, Kahn himself emphasized the Socratic testing of ideas and would no doubt have agreed, when pressed, that intuition is not infallible and must be tested to determine its validity. He admitted a painful awareness that an intuition could be mistaken, and that when in the act of design the architect discovered that it was invalid,

the whole theory collapses. Everything is shattered, and we have to start again. Analogies, appearances have deceived us, and, half blind, we proceed along stumbling steps. This inglorious, painful and slow process is nothing else than the true process of learning – creating our A man under a tree 35 own knowledge and experience instead of annexing somebody else’s work.42

In his later years, Kahn began to reconcile the roles of these two ways of knowing, saying that knowledge could be used in an artistic, intuitive way, relating it to the search for Form. This realization seems to have been brought about in part by Kahn’s appreciation of LeRicolais’ experiments in structural engineering. As Norman Rice observed, Kahn eventually “realized that you might have a kind of knowledge, which he didn’t have, but that it might be used in a way or exercised in a way which was even artistic or you might call it intuitive. . . . So it indicated, at least to me, a development or let us say a change in his viewpoint.”43

Notes 1 David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1991), p. 94. 2 Kahn, as quoted by Martin Meyerson in Richard Saul Wurman, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), p. 305. 3 Norman Rice, as quoted in Wurman, p. 288. 4 Brownlee and De Long, p. 94. 5 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 66. 6 Charles E. Dagit Jr., interview with author, May 8, 2012. 7 Brownlee and De Long, p. 94. 8 Max A. Robinson, “Reﬂections Upon Kahn’s Teaching,” unpublished essay, September 15, 2011. 9 Alexandra Tyng, as quoted in Wurman, p. 300. 10 Fikret Yegul, “Louis Kahn’s Master’s Class,” unpublished essay provided to the author, 2011. 11 Michael Bednar, “Kahn’s Classroom,” Modulus, 11th issue, 1974, University of Virginia School of Architecture. 12 Dagit. 13 J. Michael Cobb, “Thoughts on Louis I. Kahn,” unpublished essay, 2011. 14 Harry Austryn Wolfson, “Talmudic Method,” Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), available at: http://ohr.edu/ judaism/articles/talmud.htm. 15 Bednar. 16 Tony Junker, letter to the author, November 11, 2011. 17 Yegul. The story is similar to Kahn’s paraphrase of a poem by the Persian poet Rumy as quoted in Wurman, p. 75. 18 Brownlee and De Long, pp. 78–80. 19 Ibid., p. 94. 20 David Bernstein, unpublished excerpts from class notes, 1961. 21 Bednar. 22 Cengiz Yetken, unpublished manuscript, 1966, provided to the author. 23 Tim McGinty, letter to the author, January 2, 2012. 24 David C. Ekroth, letter to the author, October 17, 2011. 25 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 103. 26 Ibid., p. 58. 36 Searching for the Unmeasurable 27 Ibid., p. 108. 28 Ibid., p. 110. 29 Kahn, letter to Mrs. G. Holmes Perkins, April 19, 1971, Architectural Archives, 054.722. 30 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 107. 31 Kahn, as quoted in Louis Kahn: Essential Texts, ed. Robert Twombly (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), p. 241. 32 Wurman, p. 93. 33 Kahn, as quoted in August Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), p. 162. 34 Kahn, as quoted in Cobb. 35 John Raymond (Ray) Grifﬁn, “Recollections on Louis Kahn,” unpublished manuscript provided to the author, 2012. 36 Norman Rice, letter to Carlos Enrique Vallhonrat, May 6, 1966, Kahn Collec- tion, A-RC/13. 37 Bernstein, letter to the author, August 17, 2011. 38 Komendant, pp. 161–162. 39 Ibid., p. 185. 40 Martin E. Rich, “Photographic Essay from November 1963: Louis Kahn’s Studio Teaching Techniques,” Made In the Middle Ground, Darren Deane, Nottingham University, UK, June 2011. 41 Komendant, p. 171. 42 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 91. 43 Norman Rice, as quoted in Wurman, p. 289. 4 Pedagogy in practice

Kahn would stride across the University of Pennsylvania campus, a small, jaunty ﬁgure in a rumpled black suit, loosely tied bow tie, thick glasses and a beat-up raincoat draped over one shoulder. To a casual observer he might have been taken for a shopkeeper. A closer look revealed a scarred face, badly burned as a child, somehow beautiful in its ugliness. Kahn’s personal aura contributed to his mystique as a teacher. Even his arrival in class was often tinged with an air of mystery, for he had a way of seeming to materialize out of nowhere. As Vincent Scully described him at Yale:

The impression was of deep warmth and force, compact physical strength, a printless, cat-like walk, glistening Tartar’s eyes – only bright blue – a disordered aureole of whitening hair, once red. . . . It was at this time that he began to unfold into the rather unearthly beauty and command of a Phoenix risen from the ﬁre.1

He was worshipped by some of his students as a prophet, or like “Merlin . . . a little old man with a thatch of winnowed hair and wistful blue eyes. . . . His world was the world of the fairies, gnomes and goblins whom he loved, and of magic. . . .”2 For these students the Master’s Class was enveloped in a “general sense of awe; the belief that we were witnessing something truly amazing, meaningful, in the total scheme of things.”3

Students It was said that each class of some 20–25 students was hand-picked by Dean Holmes Perkins from among over 200 applicants from around the world, a 1 in 10 acceptance ratio. They matriculated from 133 institutions of higher education. The Master’s Class was nicknamed the “United Nations of Architecture” with over 40 per cent of the students coming from abroad, especially South Africa, Turkey, India, Thailand, Japan and Germany, as well as the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. The average age was about 26 years,4 and many students were married with families. 38 Searching for the Unmeasurable At various times one might encounter students attired in an array of turbans, saris, tweed jackets and berets, as well as the occasional Kahnian dark suit and bow tie. All had previously earned either the Bachelor or Master of Architecture degree, and many, especially the Europeans, had architectural ofﬁce experience. Martin E. Rich (1964) observed that

The Europeans were also more familiar with Kahn’s importance to movements such as CIAM and Team Ten. A few had left families behind, and endured hardships to study with this man who was revising the way architecture was thought about. The Europeans, in particular, were sensitive to the classical legacy that Kahn so admired and they seemed to have a more immediate rapport with him.5

Members of the Master’s Class had graduated from their previous programs at the top of their class in design, including a total of 60 from Penn’s three-year M.Arch. program. (In 1973–74 the Penn graduates included winners of the Arthur Spayd Brooke gold, silver and bronze medals for design.) Women were few; out of a total of 427 Kahn graduate students at Penn between 1960 and 1974, only 16 were women. Some students were from Penn’s Urban Design program and were enrolled in the Master’s Class for only a single semester, eventually receiving dual Master’s degrees in architecture and city planning.6 With Perkins as both Dean and Chairman of Architecture it was very much his program. Until 1965, he approved studio programs, selected juries and read all applications for admission.7

Assisting faculty: Rice, LeRicolais, and Komendant Perkins’ eventual organization of the Master’s Class included a triumvirate consisting of Kahn, Norman Rice, an architect and an old friend of Kahn’s from high school who had been one of the first Americans to work in Le Corbusier’s office in Paris, and Robert LeRicolais, the French engineer with whom Kahn had previously taught “Architecture and Civic Design.” Although the three men could hardly have been more different, Rice, LeRicolais, and Kahn were close friends, and often gathered together at LeRicolais’ apartment on nearby Sansom Street for drinks and conversation following the studio sessions. In addition, Kahn’s structural engineer, August Komendant, was a frequent visiting lecturer and jury member. Although Rice’s teaching was limited in scope, he was inclined towards the pedantic. The class administrator, he was also seen by the students as the studio taskmaster. To the extent that the loosely organized Master’s Class had a structure, it was imposed by Rice. Although Kahn preferred a more relaxed class format with little formal introduction for entering students, Rice was in the habit of sending a detailed letter to the entering class: Pedagogy in practice 39 We welcome you to the Master’s Studio in Architecture! As many former students have told us, you will find the coming months to be the most stimulating, interesting and important period of your educational experience. Unlike Master’s courses in other fields, this is not a specialists’ course. We are deeply concerned with the discovery, understanding, and realization of some fundamentals and elements of architecture which will put you on the road to becoming a master. In order to accompany us, you may have to unlearn some of what you have learned previously. You may even become deeply disturbed. If your nature and attitude are not too resistant – or not too subservient – you will graduate as a wiser architect with a more questioning and wider ranging mind. . . . Now to some practical matters: In a course with our philosophical viewpoint, it is almost inappropriate, and it is certainly difficult, to give each student a formal grade or marks. However, to comply with University policy and, above all, to let each student know where he stands in comparison with his fellows, we are obliged to make some formal judgments. Each project receives a grade following the consensus of jury opinions. . . . Liberty is not license; therefore you are expected to arrive at class promptly and to attend all classes, even though no attendance records are kept. . . . The teachers expect to be dealing with maturing architects who will work continuously and assiduously, who will be prepared to show their work at frequent intervals, and without fear of the most devastating criticism by teachers or fellow students.

Rice went on to deal with practical matters including class hours, desk selection, and detailed directions for juries:

• Place projects starting at the left end of the east wall, then proceed clockwise to the south wall and the west wall. . . . • Place projects in alphabetical order according to your names. . . . • Each presentation, drawings, and models, should be complete and clear. The delineation should be restrained and simple, but its quality and artistry should be at the highest level. • . . . Mr. Kahn and/or Mr. Rice will give a brief summary of the program, for the information of the Jury and spectators. • . . . the first two or three verbal presentations will . . . cover those features and characteristics which are common to all the projects. Subsequent to these, it is expected that each student will present immediately only those qualities and features which are characteristic of his own concept. • Speak briefly, and make your points quickly and clearly.8 40 Searching for the Unmeasurable Rice’s rules were seen by both Kahn and Carlos Enrique Vallhonrat, Chair of the Department of Architecture, as detracting from the open-ended spirit of the Master’s Class, however. Vallhonrat finally asked Rice to refrain from issuing his detailed introductions:

Lou agrees with me, that we should try to preserve that sense of anticipation, free of deﬁnition, of the new students who are so aware of the very special year they will have. . . . It seems to me that there is little we can tell them of what the course will be; Lou likes to think that he couldn’t either. The course, he says, will ﬁnd its way along the way, and should be kept at that. It is also for him as much of an adventure. As you have in past years so kindly tried to prepare a small write-up as presentation, we would like you to also think that the classes can start without written objectives. This will give greater freedom of improvisation.9

Rice handed out project-related data, set deadlines, organized ﬁeld trips to project sites, and helped select jury members, sometimes recommending potential jurors to Kahn and Perkins. “How about asking Holmes (Perkins) to request Bob Engman to be on the jury for the Roosevelt Memorial project?” he suggested to Kahn, referring to the prominent Penn professor of sculpture.10 On another occasion he invited Edmund Bacon, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Planning Commission, to serve on the jury for the design of the Bi-Centennial Exposition planned for 1976.11 There were also times when Rice played the “bad cop” to Kahn’s “good cop,” singling out the occasional student whose performance was below par or urging the students to work in the studio instead of at home. Occasionally he chastised the entire class:

It is deeply disappointing that several of you are not doing well and are in danger of being placed on probation. However, it is shocking that too many of you are not showing evidence of working as hard as architects should. . . . One might be led to believe that too many rely on words and are reluctant or, possibly, afraid or unable, to come to grips with the problems until the last minute. An architect grapples with the problem over and over again, using pencil on paper, until he prevails. We expect that early efforts will seldom be successful. Also, we know that much can be learned by the exposure and criticism of these ﬁrst unsuccessful efforts. . . . We request each and every one of you to be less the audience and to become more the participant and worker.12

Sometimes, as a deadline approached, Rice felt it necessary to call student performance to Kahn’s attention. “It now seems that the class worked harder and did better in the previous project because they were continuously prodded. Do you think it would be well to steam them up for the last laps?”13 Pedagogy in practice 41 Rice also responded to requests for recommendations for graduating students who had applied for teaching positions. One such request from the University of Kansas prompted him to comment to Kahn: “It brought home to me the need for some basis of judging the students before graduation so that non-competents do not trade on the reputation of the course.”14 Understandably perhaps, given his role as enforcer of academic order and standards, Rice was not the favorite of many students. They tended to see themselves as elite and above oversight by anyone but Kahn himself and chafed at Rice’s criticism. However, given what Komendant characterized as Kahn’s lack of discipline,15 Rice no doubt filled the need to keep the class running smoothly. Max A. Robinson (1964) agrees, seeing the lack of structure as a shortcoming of the Master’s Class, and feels that it would have benefited from a defined curriculum and specific project programs.16 In addition to the studio, students were required to take two electives per semester. Popular choices included LeRicolais’ classes on experimental tensile structures, Edmund Bacon’s “Design of Cities,” Ian McHarg’s “Design with Nature,” Anne Tyng’s class on advanced geometrical concepts in architecture, Romaldo Giurgola’s “Architectural Theory,” and Perkins’ class comparing the development of London and Paris. Perhaps the most challenging among these electives was LeRicolais’ course on structural stress analysis, surface film and tension-grid space structures. The quiet and introspective engineer, who was never without his pipe, was also a painter and a poet. His relationship with Kahn dated to 1953 when he had written to Kahn describing the structural possibilities of hexagonal space frames.17 Kahn described him as always concerned with finding the most economical solution to a problem, as “more concerned about putting things, let us say, on three legs instead of four.”18 In LeRicolais’ classes students built and load-tested scale models of structures they designed. Edward D’Andrea, Master’s Class of 1967, chose LeRicolais’ class as an elective along with fellow Master’s Class student Tim McGinty. As D’Andrea describes the class:

We were into structural design and welding and models, so we ﬁgured this will be far out. Baby, you have no idea. He was so far beyond anything I had conceived of. He spoke quickly and like an engineer, with a French accent. I think I understood about ten percent of what he was saying. Tim and I built this isohedric tower that turned out to be very – way stronger than I anticipated.19

The fourth member of the faculty, August Komendant, was as stern and Teutonic in demeanor as one might expect of a former engineer with the German Wehrmacht in the Second World War. He was described by Kahn as “one of the rare engineers qualified to guide the architect to develop meaningful Form.”20 Students in the Master’s Class were expected to give fundamental attention to the integration of structural and mechanical 42 Searching for the Unmeasurable systems into their design solutions in order to “explore the potentialities for a finer architecture which grows out of a deep and intensive knowledge of the relation of structure and mechanical to significant architectural form,” as Komendant phrased it. His lectures were wide-ranging and might include “structures in earthquake, hurricane, and tornado areas; pollution; advanced concrete technology; philosophy of science and engineering.”21 When it came to structural principles, he was outspoken and opinionated, and was one of the few faculty members with sufficient self-confidence to openly disagree with Kahn. “Komendant is very sensitive to the nature of structures,” observed Kahn. “The fact that he’s an actor and a great performer is of no importance.”22 In addition to Rice, LeRicolais, and Komendant, Kahn’s entourage sometimes included an unofficial fourth member, more mysterious than the others. Gabor Antala Szalontay was a tall, gaunt, eastern European with dark, penetrating eyes and long black hair, who went by the single name, Gabor. Some said he was an architect, and a persistent rumor held him to be a Hungarian count. No one seemed to know who he was or why he regularly appeared in the studio, except that Kahn seemed to invite his presence. Most of the time Gabor held back, listening but saying nothing, but occasionally Kahn would call on him for an opinion. Gabor’s comments were always couched in utterly inscrutable terms. Once Kahn asked him to join a discussion about the roof of a building and its main purpose of shedding water. A long silence followed while Gabor considered the question. “Ah, the reign of the rain . . .” he finally mused. (Perhaps what he meant was “the rain of the rain. . . .” With Gabor, often no one was sure.) On another occasion, while riding in an elevator with Kahn, Gabor asked, “Lou, what lies within the column?”23 Kahn described Gabor as “a man in my office who doesn’t do any work. But I gladly pay him because he helps me think.”24 The studio sessions were not all centered around Kahn, Rice, LeRicolais and Komendant. Often guest speakers were invited to address the class. John Raymond (Ray) Griffin (1964) found some of these to be more effective than others:

I remember Paolo Soleri, who arrived from Arizona with a coterie of his own students and a collection of his brass bells, and Minoru Yamasaki who designed the twin towers of the World Trade Center. A student asked Mr. Yamasaki during the question period, “Why did you decide to use two towers?” His answer was “Well, why not?” To a man, the Master’s Class students realized immediately that that reply would never pass muster with Kahn! Another speaker was the urban planner of Rome, who spoke entirely in Italian when describing his slides, partially translated by Romaldo Giurgola, but who also drew beautiful colored chalk diagrams to illustrate his points. Edward Larrabee Barnes described his high-rise towers in New York.25 Pedagogy in practice 43 Grades Grading was something of a mystery to the students in the Master’s Class for it was never discussed except in Rice’s introductory letter to the entering class. A 1964 memorandum from Dean Perkins to the faculty directed that graduate architectural “design problems are graded Commend, Pass and Not Accept by the jury.”26 Although by 1970 the grading system for graduate students had become strictly pass–fail, the mystery was not dispelled. Students in the class of 1974, for instance, were never informed of the grade they had received on a completed project. Following the jury some projects might be removed, leaving others on display, presumably as an indication of those receiving the highest grades. Rice appears to have taken charge of assigning grades based at least in part on the averaging of the jurors’ evaluations. For one fairly typical project, the 1965 design of the Governor’s Mansion in Harrisburg, out of a class of 26, one student received an A minus, the highest in the class. There were 2 B plusses, 19 Bs or B minuses and 3 Cs, with one student excused for a “non-presentation.” Rice also evaluated for Perkins the overall performance of each student during the year, observing that two “started out well, but have indicated less and less ability in their last two projects.” Another “started out badly, rose up, but has again fallen. By reason of his more mature age and longer ofﬁce experience, he may be too ossiﬁed to have

Figure 4.1 “One shouldn’t judge in a school of architecture. One should criticize, but not judge.” (Louis I. Kahn). (Eileen Christelow Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Photograph by Eileen Christelow) 44 Searching for the Unmeasurable received enough vibrations to enable him to break out; he seems to try very hard.”27 Kahn himself was famously indifferent to grades, once announcing that the entire class would pass. “Nobody is going to ﬂunk this class,” he said. “Everybody is going to pass. But I do require attendance. That’s all, just attendance. Because one shouldn’t judge in a school of architecture. One should criticize, but not judge.”28 Norman Rice echoed this philosophy. “The highly selective admission to the class should presuppose graduation, excepting the rare dismal failure,” he wrote.29 Nevertheless, Glen Milne, Master’s Class of 1964, found that learning under Kahn was “challenging, agonizingly insightful, and exhaust- ing . . . so challenging that in each studio year one or two people would break under his uncompromising scrutiny and go back to their home town.”30 Max A. Robinson (1964) echoes Milne’s description of the rigor of the class, but also notes that the high standards of excellence were largely self- imposed by the students, not by Kahn. There was a widely held belief that

getting accepted was the hardest accomplishment; once you were in, completion of the program and graduation were almost an absolute certainty. All you had to do was to hang on through the yearlong process and you would make it. Maybe so, but nothing could have been further from the truth. After leaving Philadelphia and making other contacts with persons who had knowledge of the school’s history, I found that there had been a quantity of individuals who had simply dropped out, left the program for one reason or another, and were never acknowledged as a part of those numbers. The main problem was not the difﬁ - culty that the school, the program, or even Kahn as a teacher demanded; for in reality, it was actually very minimal. Looking back, the amount of difﬁcult, time-consuming work required for a graduate degree was miniscule compared to what I had experienced as an undergraduate. Instead, the problem was your own self-asserted pressure to meet the extremely high quality standards that you imagined to exist. I suffered greatly because of this, as did the others from one degree or another. A variety of emotional experiences were associated with the workings of the program over those two semesters and there were numerous instances . . . of grown men being reduced practically to tears because of their supposed shortcomings or failures in resolving the projects of the design studio. This, however, was a personal, self-imposed thing and had little to do with Kahn’s ability and effectiveness as a teacher.31

The studio The Master’s Class was originally held in the old Fine Arts Building, also known as the old Dental School, on Locust Walk between 33rd and 34th Figure 4.2 Kahn’s Master’s Class met in the upper ﬂoor apse of Frank Furness’ Fine Arts Library, perhaps the most distinguished building on the Penn campus. (James F. Williamson Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Photograph by James F. Williamson, Master’s Class of 1974)

Figure 4.3 “School is my chapel. I write songs when I teach well.” (Louis I. Kahn). (James F. Williamson Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania) 46 Searching for the Unmeasurable Streets along the central spine of the Penn campus. In 1964 the class was moved to the second ﬂoor apse of Frank Furness’ Fisher Fine Arts Library, perhaps the most distinguished building on the Penn campus. The high, light- ﬁlled space was reached by a wide monumental stair that became smaller as it rose through a central tower. Outside, angry Victorian gargoyles spat rainwater during thunderstorms. In the studio in the “Furness Building,” as it was known, drafting tables hugged the curved walls, and in the center of the room student presentations on yellow tracing paper were displayed on rolling panels. At one end of the room stood a long wooden conference table and a blackboard where, surrounded by students and his teaching colleagues, Kahn would hold forth as everyone strained to hear his soft, rasping voice.

The first day Kahn’s seminar style of teaching, which departed from the traditional individual “desk crits” still typical of most schools of architecture, was one of the Master’s Class’s most unconventional characteristics. The class met two afternoons per week and often continued late into the evening. A third afternoon was reserved for a discussion about structure with Komendant. No one knew what to expect on the first day. The class began with the students crowding around Kahn, Norman Rice, and Robert LeRicolais at the conference table. Kahn would offer a few very general remarks about the process of searching upon which the class was about to embark. He might also make a few comments about the “inspirations” behind the first studio assignment and why it was important. Then Rice or Kahn would introduce the specifics of the project, including the site and the program requirements, if any. Often these requirements would be few, with the determination of the program left to be realized by the class as the design was developed. On the first day of class in September, 1973, after a brief introduction to the course, Kahn simply announced, “I am thinking of a room that would inspire a painter to do a great painting on its walls.” Then he left, leaving some twenty-five students staring at each other in puzzlement over how to approach a project with neither a program nor a site. Sherman Aronson’s, Master’s Class of 1974, solution to the problem was located at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he proposed an outdoor room built into a flight of stairs on a hillside. James L. Cutler, Master’s Class of 1974, proposed a building to “house the institution of marriage.” Another year after a long silence while the students waited to hear him express some profound insight, Kahn looked up and asked simply, “‘What are your questions?’ leaving the class momentarily speechless.”32 Often the initial meeting would involve a question posed by Kahn for discussion. One year, for example, the first assignment was the design of a Boys Club. “‘What was the first Boys Club,’ Kahn asked, ‘and why?’ Pedagogy in practice 47

Figure 4.4 Room. (Student project and photograph by Sherman Aronson, Master’s Class of 1974)

The students were then told not to go to the library and look it up, but discover for themselves the fundamental principles and elements of a Boys Club.”33 The ﬁrst project in September 1963 was introduced with remarks by Kahn about the nature of a society’s institutions:

Through his history man has instituted the realizations of communal needs. Architecture gives spaces to the form of these Institutions. How do you value the prevailing and accepted architectural programs and solutions of buildings for the present institutions of learning, the newspaper, government, defense, religion, home, health, finance, com- merce, transportation, manufacturing, etc.? Do you sense these solutions as fulfilling and belonging to our way of life or do you sense new meanings becoming which could lead to new institutions or the restatement of the old? Our first informal seminar will touch on these remarks and also a design problem will be issued.34

In September 1972, Kahn began one of the introductory class sessions by reﬂecting on a number of general principles that should guide the architect:

One must have the feeling that what you are undertaking is something of extreme importance; it must be worth all of your attention and effort 48 Searching for the Unmeasurable in a valiant, combined effort. If it is not worth this, then it is not worth the slightest glance. The land and climate where your project is determine, in part, the character of the building. In Bangladesh, for instance, the monsoons affect people’s attitude towards water and rain. It is at one and the same time a wished-for blessing and a dreaded evil. And there is the character of the people themselves to consider . . . It is never necessary to have a consistent “style” in your work, for then one is conceding or conforming to other more superficial factors than the search for the nature of the thing at hand. The wall of a building is of necessity an organic entity, much like the wall of a human being or any animal – having layers of fat on the outside for protection from the heat and layers of fat on the inside to insulate from the cold. Thus, a wall is the organic skin of the building. If I love natural light, I will be determined to have it at any cost and by any means necessary. If I cannot have natural light, I would perish in the gloom. In order to begin to build and to search, the process is like that of a farmer starting a new field of crops. He must look about and choose exactly the right piece of land and get to know it thoroughly. He has to lovingly prepare the land – only then can the vegetables grow. A truly great artist is someone who reveals the nature of whatever material he is working with, by means of his point of view. Everyone has their own point of view, their own angle from which they view the world, but this aspect of the artist’s work is only secondary. Of primary importance is that the painter reveals the nature of paint, of color, and that the musician reveals the nature of music. The music of Beethoven is not beautiful because it is Beethoven’s but because it is music. “Ah,” I say, “so this is what music can be.” Once this nature of the thing has been revealed, and once I am able to grasp it, I become released from the artist’s point of view. I no longer need Beethoven, for I have stolen from him (through his generosity) the very nature of music. To feel the freedom is to steal the nature and run away with it. Point of view is a way of reaching the “nature of,” the truth. There is a difference between getting across the nature of something as opposed to having information about it. For someone or something to be considered useful, it means that they are inspiring, helping one to realize the essence of the thing. I don’t want to be “informed,” I want to have the thing itself; not to know about it, but to simply know it. The structure of the Room, its nature, is defined by the light, which is defined by the structure of the Room. One should not be forced to move from one room to another to be able to see the structure. The light will reveal the structure, which will in turn, reveal the light. . . . I must honor the materials that I use, which come from natural sources. I need to be aware of their sources, how far away they had to Pedagogy in practice 49 come for me to use them and how well their new surroundings will respect them. What distinguishes one space from another? The nature of those spaces. The space must be endowed with a particular presence, a sense of always being aware of its surroundings and not falling asleep on you when you’re not looking. The Room must be radiating its undivided attention, which will stimulate the same in whoever is in that Room. Such a space must be one that inspires. If it be a home, it will inspire living. I would enter that space and immediately feel that I would like to live there, because it is truly a space for living in; it is conducive to living. It inspires that quality and no other. Why does one feel at home in some spaces and not in others? In this space I can work, but in this one I cannot. The associations are limited by the space. This is architecture, as opposed to the work of a contractor, who haphazardly throws together odd assorted spaces. You want to feel that the space is your own private shelter; the light inside is your light.35

Initial difficulties The first couple of months could be intimidating. John Tyler Sidener Jr. (Fall 1962), a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, was known to Kahn as “you from California.” Sidener recalls his initial impres- sions after driving across country, “entering darker, smokier, and more oppressive environments, and then coming into humid and coal-smoky Philadelphia. . . . The streets felt closed-in, buildings were dark and dirty, the sky lowering, and West Philadelphia around Penn was an obvious slum.” Finally came the first days of the “Shangri-La” that was Kahn’s Master’s Class:

There we were, mixed in with the hard-core Kahn acolytes. Mr. Kahn sat at the center of the long table, his aide-de-camp, Norman Rice, clucked around, tape recorders from the Japanese students whirred, and Mr. Kahn picked a project to talk about. Our ﬁrst project was based on the program for a house he was doing up in the Wissahickon River valley, and he talked about the house as a sanctuary, a chapel, with a central space ringed with columns like a small Pantheon. I wasn’t ready for that. I’d spent too long on publicly funded school buildings, low- cost housing, and other straight-forward projects. More difﬁcult was the abstract conversation; the hard-core students seemed like they were clustered around a guru under a banyan tree, with conversations only among Kahn, LeRicolais, and a few chosen students.36

J. Michael Cobb (1970) found himself

confused as to what he wanted from me, somewhat bewildered if not intimidated by what I was hearing, and a little pissed-off. After all, 50 Searching for the Unmeasurable I was ﬁrst in my undergraduate architectural class, received the AIA School Medal, and had become thoroughly “socialized” into the profes - sion and brotherhood of architects for the past ﬁve years. But . . . Kahn assumed we could do competent conceptual design – he was about something else.37

John Raymond (Ray) Grifﬁn (1964) remembers how Kahn explained the purpose of the Master’s Class. “I will proceed on the assumption that each of you can design a beautiful building. That is not the point; our focus will be the essential understanding of the ‘nature’ of the building, and how well your design will express that nature.”38 After their initial confusion, most, including Cobb, began to realize that this “something else,” what their teacher wanted, was for them each to adopt the Socratic method, to

critically examine our underlying thoughts about design, and in some ways, to begin developing our own individual approaches – and not so much just about architectural design – but also about the larger humanistic principles and purposes which design could or should seek to reveal.39

Beginnings The start of a project held a special magic for Kahn, and in his teaching he was always more interested in a student’s initial thoughts than in the final product. Master’s Class assignments were thus primarily concerned with beginnings – how do you start to design? In imagining a bookshelf filled with a set of encyclopedias containing the knowledge of the world, Kahn expressed a desire to reach back beyond the first volume to “Volume Zero,” beyond knowledge to the metaphysical origin of things. No detailed drawings of finished buildings were ever produced; simply presenting an original insight or design concept was considered sufficient. Artistic quality and the ability to suggest an original idea were prized above precision, completeness or technical accuracy. This attitude produced some surprising results. For the design of a high school, one student project consisted solely of foundations, instead of an entire building. Kahn praised this approach to beginnings and the notion of “building on the ruins. . . . A good building makes good ruins,” he commented.40 Some class assignments were predetermined by Kahn, while others emerged from conversations among Kahn, the other faculty, and the class. Most of the problems involved the design of institutional buildings. They varied in building type, and assignments ranged from the vague to the concrete. Some assignments were extremely ambiguous, such as “A Room without a Site or Purpose” or a “City Place,” which entailed “trying to find, propose, create, design or redesign an axis, environment, place or space Pedagogy in practice 51

Figure 4.5 Music school. (Student project and photograph by Karl G. Smith II, Master’s Class of 1972)

Figure 4.6 Society Hill housing. (Student project and photograph by David Tritt, Master’s Class of 1972) 52 Searching for the Unmeasurable

Figure 4.7 Society Hill housing. (Student project and photograph by Karl G. Smith II, Master’s Class of 1972) Pedagogy in practice 53 that best represented or symbolized the character or spirit of his beloved city, Philadelphia.”41 Other projects, while still hypothetical, were more realistic, including a site and a program, such as a Music School or a housing project in Society Hill. The assignments were not limited to individual buildings and included urban design projects, such as the redesign of Independence Mall. In 1974 the class was assigned the redevelopment of a large underserved area of North Philadelphia. Sherman Aronson began by studying the pattern of density and vehicle circulation. In order to make residential streets more like pedestrian-friendly rooms and less like high-volume roadways, he proposed limiting these to one-way trafﬁc, calmed by capturing the ends of the parking lanes to create wider sidewalks at key intersections. Some assignments were based on Kahn’s own commissions, including the First Unitarian Church and School in Rochester, New York; the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California; the US Consulate in Luanda, Angola; and the Phillips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire. Dean Perkins sometimes offered recommendations for studio projects. These were not always followed by Kahn, who once assigned his commission for Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, the capital of Bangladesh at Dacca, to the class instead of the previously assigned Market Street East project in Philadelphia advocated by Perkins.42 On another occasion, Komendant suggested that Kahn assign the design of a new expressway, the Delaware Speedway through Philadelphia, a politically controversial project then in the news. While some interesting ideas were generated by the class, Komendant considered that “the results of the assignment as a whole were a complete disaster” due to an ignorance on the part of both the students and faculty of bridge design and trafﬁc engineering. After LeRicolais joined in the criticism, Kahn suggested that from time to time Komendant deliver lectures on contemporary structural

Figure 4.8 Redesign of Independence Mall. (Student project and photograph by J. Michael Cobb, Master’s Class of 1970) 54 Searching for the Unmeasurable

Figure 4.9 Redesign of Independence Mall. (Student notes by John Raymond (Ray) Grifﬁn, Master’s Class of 1964) Pedagogy in practice 55

Figure 4.10 North Philadelphia redevelopment. (Student project and drawing by Sherman Aronson, Master’s Class of 1974) systems, materials, related construction methods and comparative economy as they pertained to the assignments.43 Kahn’s highly theoretical way of introducing a new project did not originate in the Master’s Class and can be seen in the wording of an earlier assignment to his undergraduate studio at Penn in 1958, which required the redevelopment of an urban neighborhood in West Philadelphia:

One must work inversely, from a conception of a totally new environment, slowly back in time to the present. Thus changes however small will have qualitatively the direction of the complete project, not of additive design. Therefore there must be superimposition of a framework which is rigid, fundamental, of a nature allowing for individual initiative and needs; with particular emphasis upon accessibility (movement systems) and recognizable boundary of the grouping. A progressive step by step redevelopment of an area, within an established framework, incorporating useable elements now existing. Assumption that this is the only realistic, organic approach. It leads to a self-generating process.44 56 Searching for the Unmeasurable Fikret Yegul (1966) remembers: “During the first few weeks nobody was allowed, or encouraged, to design anything on paper. We explored the problem and its meaning by talking about it.”45 Kahn presided over these discussions, asking Socratic questions to guide the students’ observations and frequently indulging in a lengthy monologue. In subsequent studio sessions once the students had begun to generate design ideas, each class consisted of a group critique of drawings and models. Before the class was relocated to Furness’ Fine Arts Library, these were simply laid out on the large seminar table. In the Furness Building studio, sketches were “pinned-up” on freestanding movable partitions by those students who felt they had made significant progress since the last class. Kahn, surrounded by students, quickly took in all the drawings, finally focusing on one that caught his interest and bypassing those he seemed to deem unworthy of detailed discussion. He might speak briefly to the specific ideas addressed by the student before moving on, but often the selected drawing would serve as a point of departure for an extemporaneous lecture on some general principle such as “beliefs,” “aspirations,” or “beginnings.” In the Master’s Class, no time was spent on teaching practical professional skills such as compliance with the requirements of a program, graphic presentation techniques or construction documentation, since acceptance into the program was based on the demonstrated ability to do those things already. Some students with a background that stressed the final product experienced difficulty adjusting to Kahn’s emphasis on beginnings. Karl G. Smith II, Master’s Class of 1972, was accustomed to working in an office environment where speed was valued over a careful search for beginnings. On the first assignment of the year, involving the design of a housing project in Center City Philadelphia, he presented a fully developed design at his first pin-up. Following the presentation, Kahn asked, “What are you going to do for the next five weeks?” He then suggested that Smith use the time to explore a more thoughtful alternative approach to beginning the assignment.46 A problem involving the design of a monastery provides an illustration of Kahn’s pedagogy, including his misgivings about beginning with a program of requirements, which he believed stifled creativity. It also illustrates the way he enlisted his students in the exploration of the same ideas he was, himself, struggling with in his own practice, and how difficult this could be. As Kahn described it: “We began by assuming that no monastery existed. . . . We had to forget the word monk, the word refectory, the word chapel, the cell. . . .”47 Fikret Yegul (1966) describes the approach:

We talked about the meaning of being a monk or a priest, belief, dedication – all in a non-religious but spiritual way, while munching on apples our class was given from a real Jesuit Monastery near Philadelphia we had visited. Kahn did not think much of the way real Pedagogy in practice 57 monks thought about the spirituality or the meaning of monastery, neither did we – they had narrowly functional minds and materialistic wishes. “They would not know, after all, they are only monks!”48

At ﬁrst the students made slow progress in Kahn’s opinion:

For two weeks the students tried to extricate themselves from the knowledge they had of monasteries as they are known. One young Indian girl ventured, “I believe the cell is the nucleus of the monastery. The chapel earns its right to exist because of the cell, the refectory has a right to exist because of the cell. The retreat is the same, the place of work is the same.” . . . Another Indian student who had never been in a monastery said, “I agree completely with Nina, but I have this to add: Once the cell gives the right for the chapel to exist, the chapel becomes equal to the cell. The school becomes equal to the cell, and the school becomes equal to the chapel. The refectory becomes equal to the cell and to the chapel. Nothing is more important than the other.” The refectory was not a restaurant; it wasn’t just a place of eating, it had special significance. The Indian students weren’t the best designers in the class, but they were certainly feeling-filled people. The feeling of their beautifully thoughtful statements inspired one of the students, who is by far the best designer, to make a design in which he placed the refectory half a mile away from the center of the monastery. . . . He also had a very large fireplace, larger than what is practical, symbolic of fire – never to lose the beginning, the wonder of fire. We were very excited. . . . Constantly the question What is a monastery? What inspired the first monastery . . .? We worked on, and it was one of the most exciting experiences I had in teaching, to see the unraveling of thoughts that were not bound by any tradition other than a spirit, which is really what tradition is.49

For some of Kahn’s students including James Nelson Kise, Master’s Class of 1960, speciﬁc lessons about rather arcane topics remained memorable after many years:

I also remember vividly a discussion about spheres and how one could enter: NOT a door into the side, but at the polar end of the bottom. Light, and how it illuminated space, was another memorable subject. A central overhead source could be “accusatory.” I never cease to be amazed at how I am aware of that lesson when I enter rooms. Topics of this nature would consume an entire afternoon of back and forth discussion, with whatever drawings we had for review used as the basis to further the conversation. These were unforgettable lessons in the essence of design, and fostered in me a lifelong suspicion about “style.”50 58 Searching for the Unmeasurable John Raymond (Ray) Grifﬁn’s notes from a single class session in 1964 provide another revealing glimpse of Kahn’s pedagogy:

There must be principle behind everything. . . . Bathe in the problem. . . . The Pantheon: a place for a single person; a place for a group. Could a single person go into the large space alone? Or is an ambulatory needed, to walk around it? The main space should be so powerful you don’t feel like being in it alone; you prefer to walk around it and look at it. . . . Criticize only what is worth criticizing. An architect should be unconcerned with whether or not a building is sculpture. . . . The process of design: 1.) Disregard all restrictions. Think about the nature of spaces. 2.) Study examples. 3.) Look at restrictions. 4.) Make decisions.51

Fikret Yegul (1966) points out that not all of Kahn’s teaching was theoretical, however, and on occasion his criticism of student projects could be disarmingly down to earth:

One afternoon, Kahn was reviewing the project of an Indian classmate. . . . The project might have been the monastery. . . . He had designed a very large garden, all formally divided into walkways and parterres. Kahn liked gardens and was sensitive to their design. He looked, and looked, and asked: “How do you water this garden?” Obviously, designing the garden, the student had never thought that flowers and plants need water; there was no consideration for irrigation. He fidgeted a bit uncomfortably, and blurted out: “I will use a hose.” Kahn took out his small scale and measured the huge distances involved in this irrigation scheme, looked up, smiling: “You better call the fire department!”52

Drawing and models The curriculum of Penn’s Graduate School of Fine Arts stressed freehand drawing as a means of communication, but more importantly, as a way of thinking, seeing and understanding, since validated by the study of the psychology of creativity. “Oftentimes you imagine you are thinking,” observed Kahn, “when you are not, and this often happens when you are not drawing.”53 Students were encouraged to develop a lifelong habit of sketching, and strong drawing skills were always commended at juries. A few selected students in the Master’s Class were awarded a graduate teaching fellowship that entailed helping undergraduate architecture students learn to sketch rapidly using pen and ink, a skill that requires patience, discipline and commitment. This emphasis on drawing was strongly reinforced by Kahn, whose powerful sketches in charcoal and pastel were widely admired. “While clay models Pedagogy in practice 59 were the thing we knew of Kahn in his studio, we also saw his genius in drawing,” John Tyler Sidener Jr. (Fall 1962) explains. “On the classroom blackboard, on student boards, on tracing paper we learned how important diagrams were in design as a way of getting to conversation and thought, and drawing as Kahn’s way of telling his story, which is what he was doing all along – telling a story about creating architecture. I was so glad to see in Philadelphia that drawing was central to Kahn’s way of thinking and creating. He said, ‘Drawings are the expressions of one’s striving to reach the spirit of architecture.’ And I would add, the spirit of place, the spirit of people, and the spirit of process.”54 At the final jury it was not unusual to see presentations consisting of freehand drawings in charcoal, pastel, ink, or heavy black or sepia pencil on yellow tracing paper – traditionally used by most architects for preliminary sketches only. Models were also emphasized, and student presentations were generally expected to include a scale model in addition to drawings. Often these were “sketch models,” quickly constructed from inexpensive chipboard. For projects involving complex topography, or with a large site, an entire neighborhood, or an urban district, clay was favored. John Raymond (Ray) Griffin (1964) describes the instructions for the presentation of the first project of the semester:

Kahn explained that we would develop and present our designs with clay models, and “reverentially, carefully drawn” plans. He usually advised that the scale be 1″ = 40′, or 1″ = 60′. He explained that working at a small scale allows your brain to see all parts and their inter- relationship. . . . “It keeps everything in your cone of vision.” He told us to go down to the school basement workshop and take some clay carving and smoothing tools and cut out a base for our model from school wood material. The clay he wanted us to use was Italian jeweler’s modeling clay, called Roma Plastilina, which we could get at Zinni Artists’ Materials on Chestnut Street. This came in small, wax paper- wrapped blocks, and was a cream color, and could be molded and remolded, was not greasy, and could carry a sharp edge. There were the muttered odd smart-aleck comments like, “OK, I guess we’re back to kindergarten and plasticine,” but in a way, we were. I loved working with the clay, at that small scale, and wondered why in my previous 5 years at architecture school, this had never been suggested!55

Kahn’s teaching methods could sometimes be surprising. On one occasion, following a discussion of symmetry in which he compared its presence in nature with its use in architecture and after referencing Leonardo da Vinci’s ability to draw with both hands, he made a demonstration of a curious ambidextrous drawing technique. Turning to face the blackboard and holding a piece of chalk in each hand, he proceeded to make a ﬂuid, perfectly symmetrical drawing of a large ﬂower-like object. He seems to have intended 60 Searching for the Unmeasurable

Figure 4.11 Turning to face the blackboard and holding a piece of chalk in each hand, he proceeded to make a fluid, perfectly symmetrical drawing of a large flower-like object. (Martin Rich Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Photograph by Martin Rich, Master’s Class of 1964) Pedagogy in practice 61 this exercise as a way of energizing his teaching, as well as a demonstration of how balance, hand–eye coordination, and physical effort are part of the creative process.56 Stan Field, Master’s Class of 1969, recalls that he once asked Kahn what he preferred to use for his drawings, “and he promptly showed me his thick clutch pencil, removed the dull black lead and gave it to me – which I treasure to this day.”57 Anne Tyng, Kahn’s former associate, Penn faculty colleague, and the mother of his daughter, described one small but telling detail that illustrated both Kahn’s love of drawings and his respect for his students and employees. “In giving criticisms in the office and in his teaching, Lou never drew right on another person’s drawing, always on tracing paper over the drawing.”58 While this may have been true for the most part, there were exceptions to the rule. Edward D’Andrea (1967) recalls how “one day he started drawing over my yellow tracing paper preliminaries. First on my stuff, then started drawing the plans for a project he was working on. They were pieces of art. I think it was charcoal pen-pencil and he would smear a little to show a point.” On another occasion, one of the few when Kahn became angry, D’Andrea’s pinned-up sketches had fallen on the floor where they had accidentally been stepped on by one of the other students, leaving a footprint on the paper. When Kahn saw the footprint, he “went off like a volcano about how could anybody present such a thing, professionalism, duty to your client, and respect for others’ opinions. Then he stormed out of the room.”59 Another account of an instance in which Kahn became angry with a student describes Kahn “repeatedly urging one student to abandon his dutiful imitation of Le Corbusier’s style in the design of a particular roof detail. When the student showed no sign of exploring the problem in a creative way, Kahn strode to the display wall, tore down the offender’s drawing, crumpled it into a ball, and stomped on it.”60

Juries At the completion of each project a jury, composed of faculty and practicing architects, was held to evaluate student work, as has long been customary in schools of architecture. After each student explained his approach to the assigned project, the jury members proceeded to discuss its strengths and weaknesses. Jury discussions among the faculty, which often led to animated arguments, were another essential aspect of learning in the Master’s Class. The students “listened, learned and even participated” and “enjoyed and even provoked such collisions . . . (in order to) have a hell of a good time.”61 Some of the interchanges were memorable. Stan Field (1969) recalls, “My ﬁnal studio project, a high school, generated a powerful interchange between Kahn, Norman Rice and Robert LeRicolais as to whether there could be an abstract architecture – can Form have presence or remain in the realm of existence? I’m still grappling with this question 44 years later.”62 62 Searching for the Unmeasurable

Figure 4.12 Final jury, 1970: Perkins, LeRicolais, Kahn, and Rice reviewing student projects. Jury discussions among the faculty, which often led to animated arguments, were another essential aspect of learning in the Master’s Class. (Courtesy of the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Photograph © Swetik Korzeniewski)

The ﬁnal days leading up to a jury were intense. Students who arrived in the studio early in the morning were accustomed to ﬁnding one or two of their colleagues asleep on their drafting tables after a long night of work. As the deadline approached, the pace of the class quickened:

With one week remaining, the pin-ups would shift in character from the general design to the speciﬁc translation of the student’s ideas into architectural form. . . . The unresolved plans and ugly facades would be transformed into architecture by Kahn’s insightful criticism and charcoal sketches, as he emphasized that “composition is the dealing with elements, design is a matter of working within them so they become perfection.” During this last week the students, who mainly worked off campus, moved into the studio for the ﬁnal project charette, which provided an opportunity for collective synthesis and mutual reinforcement.63

Kahn’s juries were often treated like celebrity appearances and were sometimes documented by photographers and television cameras. In addition to Kahn, Rice, and LeRicolais, the jurors might include prominent architects such as Romaldo Giurgola, Robert Geddes, Robert Venturi, Pedagogy in practice 63

Figure 4.13 Final jury, 1970: Kahn’s juries were often treated like celebrity appearances and were sometimes documented by photographers and television cameras. Sculptor Robert Engman was among those who served as guest jurors. (Courtesy of the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Photograph © Swetik Korzeniewski) 64 Searching for the Unmeasurable Denise Scott Brown, Timothy Vreeland, Dean G. Holmes Perkins, engineer August Komendant, landscape architect Ian McHarg, or sculptor Robert Engman. For Kahn a jury was a forum for his architectural philosophy, but it was also an opportunity to explore ideas through the lens of a variety of disciplines, including some not ordinarily considered directly relevant to architecture. Kahn believed that painters and sculptors such as Engman offered an especially important perspective as highly expressive individuals. “Our schools fail because there isn’t an element about them that brings out the artist . . . (without art they) don’t instill the will to work, to discover, the will to produce something coming from inside yourself.”64 The engineers, including LeRicolais and Komendant, brought a different perspective to the jury. Kahn believed that “the engineer, like the scientist, is ‘concerned with measures, with the nature of nature,’”65 always evalu - ating architectural ideas against the natural world and its laws. Kahn’s students sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with the jury format. Like other students then and now, some may have found it arbitrary, subjective and an opportunity for the jurors to show off at the students’ expense. However, Kahn was unable to come up with a better system. “I think we had better continue having the juries because at least I know that the Dean likes them.”66 The room was usually ﬁlled with other Penn architecture students and visitors standing on the mezzanine. On occasion students from Yale or Princeton would also be present.67 Edward D’Andrea (1967) recalls the profound impact left by his ﬁnal jury for a class assignment based on Kahn’s library at Phillips Exeter Academy:

After spending at least three nights up working on the model and the drawings, I arrived at the school’s larger presentation areas. My wife had to calm me down after I saw the scene in front of me. It’s not enough to present a project to Mr. Kahn and a few other teachers; no here were all the architectural press, the balcony was filled with the undergrads and planning guys, and . . . the jury includes Eero Saarinen’s wife, Robert LeRicolais, and who knows who else. I was reeling, but somehow got up and did my presentation, just hoping I could make it back to my chair. I sit down and Kahn turns to me and says, “Do you see what’s wrong here?” I can barely see my model in the site model we had all pitched in to build. I think I shook my head, “No.” He says, “Really? Come and sit here.” He gets up, moves everybody around and makes me sit in his chair! “Now can you see it?” I nod, “Yes.” It took me to a place so far beyond my little perception of architecture. Having survived, I felt an immense calm and self-confidence that has never been shaken after 45 years of presentations. . . . After that experience, I never got nervous or questioned my abilities.68 Pedagogy in practice 65 In many ways, these juries were the most interesting part of the Master’s Class. Often they lasted from early afternoon until after midnight. Komendant and LeRicolais, who were not afraid to challenge Kahn and played the part of the “bad guys,” asked loaded questions, ostensibly for their own education as ignorant engineers. Often the animated dialogue among the jurors with its give and take had a playful quality in which “the aim is not so much to score points but build agreement on topics of shared interest. The basic premise was that different professional viewpoints would be mutually enabling.”69 When a juror’s negative criticism seemed unfounded to him, Kahn would often step forward to defend a student’s project. This may have been motivated in part by self-defense, since the idea had after all emerged from his teaching, but it may also have been an indication of the importance Kahn attached to his students’ being allowed to find their own way and to explore new ideas. In their presentations, the students often began by explaining the value of their designs in convoluted humanistic terms. Like Rice, Komendant considered that some of these students intended to pass not by “concept and quality” but by talking. At one jury, Komendant’s criticism of a student for a “high-handed explanation” of a mediocre design in terms of its “human aspects” led to a lively exchange. As Komendant recalls the conversation, he began by explaining his own philosophy, couched in deliberately provocative terms:

“I believe an architect has only the obligation to serve architecture, as I serve engineering, which is everything to me, or as Professor Kahn would say, architecture is my religion. When I design I do not give a damn for humanity or anything else and so should an architect.” My last statement created an explosion, I was interrupted and called inhuman, egoist, technocrat, dictator, etc. To restore peace, Kahn jumped up and said angrily, “Komendant, we architects are not egoists or dictators; our concern is humanity!” Now it was my turn and I said, “Any excellent professional is an egoist and dictator. I know a very special architect here in Philadelphia who is an extreme egoist and dictator, but highly admired by everybody.” “I do not believe that such an architect exists!” “Professor Kahn, he exists all right, maybe you would like to know who he is, if so I will tell you. His office is on Walnut Street, 1501, and his name is Louis Kahn.” After the laughing and screaming was finished, I continued. “The architect’s work serves humanity but not the architect, and to be excellent he has to spend all his time at architecture and not talking about humanity; it would be egoism. As far as the dictator is concerned, in Kahn’s office only he makes the decisions, nobody else. They have to obey only. I call it a dictatorship. . . .” 66 Searching for the Unmeasurable After the students quieted down Kahn stood up and said laughingly, “Komendant is absolutely right. One’s line of thought should not be interrupted before he has revealed all his thoughts. Komendant is a very provocative man, he guided us smoothly upon a slippery road and now we all have experienced the most devastating results.”70

After Komendant criticized Kahn’s poetic and often obscure way of explaining his ideas, what Komendant referred to as “Chinese philosophy,” Kahn learned to refer questions about structure and materials to Komendant and LeRicolais, who would not hesitate to “cut him to size” if he was wrong in engineering terms.71 Kahn “was very sensitive to any negative criticism”72 of this sort, although it was rare, for it took a strong-willed colleague like Komendant or LeRicolais to voice it to his face. As Komendant observed:

Nobody has challenged Kahn’s statements for their truthfulness. Students, fellow professors, and interviewers wrote down his statements which sounded excellent, true or not true. They always agreed with whatever Kahn said. The same was true with his own employees, artists and fellow architects. . . . who can challenge a poet?73

Although many students received criticism of their work in the Master’s Class quietly and even passively, there were others who did not. At one jury, the assignment was the design of a church:

It was very interesting to see about twenty-ﬁve or so church designs. Mostly the general layout foresaw a huge parking lot close to the church. One student did not provide parking at all for the congregation. One of the jurors considered it an inadequacy of the design. The student explained that he believed church is a most holy place; he could not imagine hundreds of cars around or close to it. The juror agreed but insisted, there should be a parking lot. One cannot force people to walk so long a distance, especially up a hill where the church was located, it would be too inconvenient. The student answered quietly and politely, “Professor, if you consider it inconvenient to walk about 100 to 150 yards, you do not belong to my church.”74

Notes 1 Vincent Scully Jr., Louis I. Kahn (New York: George Braziller, 1962), p. 16. 2 B.V. Doshi, as quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), p. 271. 3 Karl G. Smith II, “Influence of Kahn’s Teaching: How It Influenced My Career in the Architecture Profession,” unpublished essay provided to the author, 2011. 4 See Appendices. 5 Martin E. Rich, AIA, “Recollections on the Master Degree Class, University of Pennsylvania, 1963 to 1964,” unpublished essay, 2011. Pedagogy in practice 67 6 See Appendices. 7 Ann L. Strong and George E. Thomas, The Book of the School: 100 Years, The Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1990), p. 137. 8 “Architecture 800,” Norman Rice, letter to entering students, September 7, 1965, Kahn Collection, 086 VII B 1. 9 Carlos Enrique Vallhonrat, letter to Norman Rice, September 1, 1967, Kahn Collection, 030 CEV to NNR 9–1-67. 10 Norman Rice, memorandum to Kahn, April 9, 1966, Kahn Collection, A-RC/06. 11 Norman Rice, letter to Edmund N. Bacon, January 10, 1967, Kahn Collection, A-RC/11. 12 Norman Rice, letter to the Master’s Class, March 11, 1964, Kahn Collection, A-RC/20. 13 Norman Rice, letter to Kahn, November 29, 1965, Kahn Collection, A-RC/15. 14 Norman Rice, letter to Kahn, May 18, 1964, Kahn Collection, A-RC/17. 15 August Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), p. 185. 16 Max A. Robinson, interview with author, September 23, 2011. 17 David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1991), p. 56. 18 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 43. 19 Edward D’Andrea, letter to the author, August 1, 2012. 20 Kahn, letter to Eero Saarinen, March 23, 1959, “Master File, September 8, 1958 – March 31, 1959,” Box LIK 9, Kahn Collection. 21 Komendant, p. 178. 22 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 27. 23 Gavin Ross, letter to the author, October 11, 2011. 24 Kahn, as quoted in Robert Gutman, “Buildings and Projects,” Architecture from the Outside In: Selected Essays by Robert Gutman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), p. 118, n. 40. 25 John Raymond (Ray) Griffin, “Recollections on Louis Kahn,” unpublished manuscript provided to the author, 2012. 26 Memorandum, G. Holmes Perkins, Dean to Faculty of the G.S.F.A., April 7, 1964, Kahn Collection, A-RC/33. 27 Letters, Norman Rice to G. Holmes Perkins and Mrs. Rucker, May 11, 1965, Kahn Collection, A-RC/16. 28 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 31. 29 Norman Rice, letter to Carlos Enrique Vallhonrat, May 6, 1966, Kahn Collection, A-RC/13. 30 Glen Milne, letter to the author, September 7, 2011. 31 Max A. Robinson, “Reflections Upon Kahn’s Teaching,” unpublished essay, September 15, 2011. 32 Kahn, as quoted in Strong and Thomas, p. 232. 33 Max Underwood, “Louis Kahn’s Search for Beginnings: A Philosophy and Methodology” (Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architec- ture, 1988). 34 “Notes for Seminar, Monday, September 16, 1963, Studio of LeRicolais, Rice, Kahn, Architecture 700, Monday, September 9, 1963,” Kahn Collection, 030.II.A.59.1. 35 Kahn, as quoted in John Cava, “To Steal the Nature,” unpublished notes made while a visitor to the Master’s Class, 1973. Provided to the author, June 9, 2014. 36 John Tyler Sidener Jr., “Me and Lou,” unpublished essay, 2011. 37 J. Michael Cobb, “Thoughts on Louis I. Kahn,” unpublished essay, 2011. 68 Searching for the Unmeasurable 38 Griffin, “Recollections on Louis Kahn.” 39 Cobb. 40 Charles E. Dagit Jr., interview with author, May 8, 2012. 41 Miguel Angel Guisasola, “Architectural Principles and Memoirs,” unpublished manuscript, 2011. 42 Brownlee and De Long, p. 81. 43 Komendant, pp. 178–179. 44 “Powelton-Mantua Plan, Studio of Louis I. Kahn, Fall 1958,” Kahn Collection, A-RC/49. 45 Fikret Yegul, “Louis Kahn’s Master’s Class,” unpublished essay provided to the author, 2011. 46 Smith. 47 David E. Leatherbarrow, “Beginning Again: The Task of Design Research,” Ensinar Pelo Projeto, Joelho: revista de culture aarquitectónica (# 04, April 2013), pp. 194–204; (Portuguese and Spanish translations, in Summa+ (no. 134, February 2104), pp. 88–93). 48 Yegul. 49 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, pp. 21–22. 50 James Nelson Kise, letter to the author, February 1, 2012. 51 Griffin, class notes, January 29, 1964. 52 Yegul. 53 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 101. 54 Sidener. 55 Griffin, “Recollections on Louis Kahn.” 56 Martin E. Rich, “Photographic Essay from Nov. 1963: Louis Kahn’s Studio Teaching Techniques,” Made In the Middle Ground, Darren Dean, ed., Nottingham University, June 2011. Kahn may have learned this drawing technique at either the Fleisher School of Art or the Philadelphia Public School of Industrial Art. 57 Stan Field, letter to the author, October 11, 2011. 58 Anne Griswold Tyng, as quoted in Wurman, p. 301. 59 D’Andrea. 60 Peter Clement, as quoted in Carter Wiseman, Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 2007), p. 85. 61 Komendant, p. 178. 62 Field. 63 Underwood. 64 Kahn, as quoted in Leatherbarrow. 65 Leatherbarrow. 66 Kahn, as quoted in Michael Bednar, “Kahn’s Classroom,” Modulus, 11th issue, 1974, University of Virginia School of Architecture. 67 Griffin, “Recollections on Louis Kahn.” 68 D’Andrea. 69 Leatherbarrow. 70 Komendant, pp. 186–187. 71 Ibid., p. 187. 72 Ibid., p. 167. 73 Ibid., pp. 164–165. 74 Ibid., p. 187. 5 Kahn and his students

Interaction with students There is some disagreement among Master’s Class alumni about the extent of Kahn’s interest in his students and their efforts. Tony Junker (1964) considers Kahn a master teacher and remembers that Kahn “looked at each student’s work with tremendous concentration and insight. He could penetrate to what the student was trying to do, and begin his criticism from there.”1 Dennis L. Johnson, Master’s Class of 1961, disagrees:

He had many disciples, but few got a very thoughtful critique of their work. . . . He was almost indifferent to the work of other students, many of whom had put in weeks of work in preparing their designs. An ending jury was also cursory, and students wondered if their work was even being looked at.2

“The only occasion where Lou seemed to really appreciate any of my thoughts and work in his studio (that is, where he smiled and said ‘yes, yes’ about my drawings, model and words),” recalls J. Michael Cobb (1970), “was my solution to the Philadelphia Independence Mall Redesign project. . . . After my presentation, Lou came up to me and said ‘You changed my mind about something’; gave me his shy smile, and handed me a small sketch he had just done, he said ‘as a present.’”3 Despite his ability to inspire, as a rule Kahn did not seem interested in encouraging his students and did little to foster personal relationships. A number of Master’s Class alumni have noted that Kahn didn’t seem to know their names. Few students felt comfortable calling him “Lou” to his face, not withstanding familiar references to him in later years by some of these, and even by others who never knew him. John Tyler Sidener Jr. (Fall 1962) remembers: “We called him ‘Mr Kahn,’ and were totally awed by those students from the East who dared call him ‘Lou.’ I actually never did, except to myself.”4 70 Searching for the Unmeasurable Many students found Kahn to be rather impersonal. There was “a remoteness about him. He held his own territory.”5 He “hung out with nobody as a buddy. Lou marched to his own drummer.”6 Others, like Charles E. Dagit Jr. (1968), remember that Kahn’s degree of interest and interaction depended more on the student:

While Kahn often appeared to be impersonal and or preoccupied, he took an interest in you if you contributed to ideas. He would often spend an hour or two on good thought and inspirational ingenuity. If on the other hand you failed to inspire, well you fended for yourself and were often ignored.7

For many it was not apparent at ﬁrst that the Master’s Class was not about developing a personal relationship with their teacher, but was instead about the arduous process of ﬁnding one’s own way. Only later did it begin to dawn on J. Michael Cobb (1970) that Kahn’s apparent lack of interest in encouraging their efforts was not an indication of indifference:

The ﬁrst part of the year I thought that perhaps he should be more “encouraging” to our efforts as students. Later that year, however, after I “got it” as to what he wanted from us, and for himself, I began to see that we had to ﬁnd our own “encouragement” – that is, our own voice, which I thought was his purpose and approach with us. When we did present our work, he most certainly listened very carefully, and actually thought about what we said as well as what we presented as design ideas. He also didn’t seem to come with “predetermined” ideas as to what a solution should be – but . . . wanted to possibly hear something new or insightful that he may not have considered before.8

While some students were troubled by the lack of personal attention they received from their teacher, Kahn nevertheless held a magnetic appeal for most, including one who felt intimidated by Kahn’s strong personality and initially turned down acceptance into the class. “You know, it’s amazing, he never even bothered to know our names,” he wrote, “then he comes up to us, and puts his hands on our shoulders, and he looks into our eyes. . . . What more do we need?”9 Fred Linn Osmon, Master’s Class of 1962, had come to Penn hoping for a one-on-one relationship with Kahn and was disappointed to find a “quality of distance” in Kahn, which he attributed to his deep involvement in his own work. Instead, Osmon learned to appreciate Kahn as a “force” that helped him find his own way.10 This was typical. With few exceptions it was not their personal relationship with Kahn that left an indelible mark on his students. Instead, they learned to appreciate him for the sense of freedom and confidence he instilled, even if sometimes it meant going against the grain of the architectural establishment. Kahn and his students 71 Due to the distance that usually separated them from Kahn, students didn’t always know the extent of his interest in them, and there are accounts of ways in which he unexpectedly exhibited respect, generosity and concern. Miguel Angel Guisasola, Master’s Class of 1970, remembers Kahn’s “subtle kindness with girls” in the class.11 As a planning student, Denise Scott Brown (Fall 1964) recalls that her Independence Mall project included a network of diagonal paths connecting shops and points of interest on opposite sides of the Mall with surface parking in round piazzas similar to those in Rome. Kahn initially disliked this concept and said so during his critiques in the studio:

He and I fought all the way. I accused him of making irresponsible design decisions that gave architects a bad reputation with planners – for example, to close Walnut, Chestnut, and Market Streets as they crossed Independence Mall in Philadelphia. The result was that we widened and digniﬁed these streets as they passed through the Mall and created parking lots! Beautiful and ceremonial ones, to be sure. I think Lou enjoyed it and so did I.12

Kahn eventually came to agree with Scott Brown, however; and at her jury when she was too groggy from lack of sleep to present her ideas, Kahn did so for her, energetically defending the same ideas he had initially opposed.13 Most Master’s Class graduates seem to agree that Kahn was usually patient and kind, especially with his foreign students’ language problems. Michael Bednar (1967) describes how “he was never unwilling to listen to a student’s ideas or look at his drawings. He never lost his temper with us, despite the fact that he had to look at a lot of marginal work.”14 David C. Ekroth, Master’s Class of 1971, feels that “if anything, he was probably not critical enough of poorly thought out work. He used to say, ‘never judge another architect.’”15 There were from time to time instances of students who found themselves simply unable to rise to the occasion and respond to Kahn’s challenging way of framing class assignments. Karl G. Smith II (1972) recalls one such instance:

One of our classmates was having trouble or was intimidated by Kahn, for no apparent reason. . . . At one of the pin-ups in the studio, (he) hung a piece of blank paper on the board. . . . Kahn, Rice, and LeRicolais approached the board where he was presenting. They said nothing! We waited! Kahn finally opened his mouth and said, “There is room for poets in my class, but I would like to think that poets write poetry. I would also think that poets aspire to do architecture. Do you?” He then moved on to the next person. I recall that at the final presentation, the student wrote a poem, a very thoughtful one. I think Kahn accepted that!16 72 Searching for the Unmeasurable Kahn welcomed fellow searchers who shared his dedication to learning, but overtly cultivated no disciples, although there were some perhaps inevitably who were accused of becoming “little Kahns.” There were even those among his students who imitated his dark suits and bow ties, and affected his soft, hesitant way of speaking. Kahn disapproved of any attempts by his students to appropriate the trappings of his style, such as his trademark charcoal drawings or the emphasis in his floor plans on simple geometric shapes. Nevertheless, there were times when the temptation to satirize their teacher proved too strong for his students to resist. Brian Dudson, Master’s Class of 1964, describes a class party following an end of semester critique:

It was held in the area where our drawings were still on display, but was starting rather slowly as some of those involved had temporarily gone home, in some cases to get friends or relatives. In order to get more life into the proceedings, it was suggested someone should do a crit of the work on display in the manner of Kahn. This was taken up by an Irish student, who, like many of his countrymen, had a good sense of the comic. So he brushed his hair, tied a bow tie, and imitating the voice and mannerisms of Kahn, proceeded from drawing to drawing. Then one of the overseas students came in – one of Kahn’s disciples. He already had the hair, the tie, and many of the mannerisms of Kahn. So he was asked to make a crit of the students’ work, and readily agreed, obviously, very much in the fashion of Kahn. Then Kahn himself arrived, and obliged with a similar request to crit the material on display. Visitors were astounded. How could this be? Cloning at the school of architecture.17

There could also be unexpected moments of levity during the otherwise highly serious seminar sessions, and Kahn was not above taking advantage of the serious tone to set up the class with a humorous but memorable lesson. Cengiz Yetken (1966) remembers how in September 1966 the class was starting an assignment based on one of Kahn’s commissions, the new library at Phillips Exeter Academy. As usual, the discussion involved one of Kahn’s favorite themes, “beginnings”:

“Do you know when the Library started?” Lou asked the class with a smile on his face. All of us knew not to answer this question. He continued, “Library started when the first man caught a fish,” and after a short pause, “and he did not know how to eat it.” Well, this was funny; a ripple of amusement and smiles went through the class. Here it is, a clear picture of how Lou teaches design, I thought. He is going to the “beginning” again, to self-discovery, to silence. The Information Age at its beginning – catching fish – not knowing how to eat – Lou was challenging our minds with his characteristic clarity. He was pointing us to a road map, I thought.18 Kahn and his students 73 Sometimes Kahn could find himself on the receiving end of a humorous situation, as described by David G. De Long, Master’s Class of 1963:

One Japanese student tended to mispronounce the letter “l” as an “r.” When the student proposed the addition of a “play room” to a house project assigned to the class, he was misunderstood by Kahn to be advocating a “pray room.” With the utmost seriousness, Kahn called the class to order and began to expound on the implications of a place for prayer in the home. Although the students tried not to laugh, it soon became too much for them and when Kahn ﬁnally realized his mistake, he joined in the merriment.19

Michael Bednar (1967) remembered a Master’s Class jury when his wife brought their infant son. Kahn remarked, “When the baby screams, we will know that it is a good project.”20 In February 1966, after a difficult first semester, the students wrongly felt they had failed Kahn. To help make amends and to cheer him up the class decided to throw a surprise sixty-fifth birthday party in the studio, decorating the room with helium-filled balloons and baking a cake, which they inscribed “The Cake Wants To Be Eaten.” Kahn was delighted, “danced a little jig . . . and went straight to the wine bottle and poured wine for everybody.”21 The semester often ended with a party for the class, sometimes at Kahn’s row house in Center City, sometimes at Norman Rice’s, sometimes at a student’s apartment. Kahn could be a delight to be with. On these occasions he would reveal another side of the remote philosophical persona he usually presented in class, conversing casually over a glass of wine or the straight gin he preferred, showing that he was “a human at last.”22 He might even entertain the group by playing a bit of Bach on the piano. John Raymond (Ray) Griffin (1964) remembers one after-class party:

The Master’s Class students and faculty were invited, and a few of the wives prepared hors d’oeuvres, and my friend’s wife baked shortbread “Louis Kahn cookies.” These were shaped like the arched windows of Kahn’s US Embassy in Luanda. The shape was a square surmounted by a larger half-circle. Some of us had a ﬂeeting thought this just might insult Kahn, but when the server passed the cookie tray around, Kahn and Norman Rice each took one, and with only a hint of a grin, took a bite out of the arch, and carried on with their animated conversation, cookie in one hand, wine glass in the other.23

Originality was greatly prized in the Master’s Class, and Kahn was gracious and generous in his praise when he encountered a new and worth - while idea in a student project. There were, however, students who failed to understand that Kahn expected each to search for his own way, testing 74 Searching for the Unmeasurable their intuitive design ideas in order to conﬁrm their validity. For these, the Master’s Class could be a frustrating and disappointing experience, for nothing displeased Kahn more than an easy or hackneyed solution to a design problem. His typical reaction in such cases was to say little or nothing, simply moving on to the next project, a response that could be devastating. Gavin Ross (1968) recalls how on one occasion Kahn “peered silently and intently for what seemed an interminable time at my latest offerings and then turned to me and with great sadness said, ‘I see no architecture here.’ He was absolutely right, of course.”24 J. Michael Cobb (1970) recounts a similar instance early in his Master’s Class:

I had been working diligently on my “Stern residence” solution. This was to be my first introduction and presentation to the great man and I wanted to show what I could do. I produced what I believed was a very interesting, insightful, fully conceived, executed, complete set of conceptual design drawings addressing the program, the site potentials, materials and other items I believed important in conveying my ideas. After I finished presentation, I remember Lou at first said nothing. He then pulled up a small blackboard and handed me a piece of chalk. He then asked me to write or draw the one thing I knew to be “true” about my solution. He said if I could do that, he would know that what I had presented was good. Regarding all the drawings I had done, he simply said he already assumed I could do those things before I came here. Saying nothing more, he then went on to the next student.25

A thick skin was often required, for Kahn never shied away from blunt critiques and could sometimes be quite brutal when students fell short of the mark. When “confronting an overblown ego (we had at least one in the class), he could demolish the person with a few words,” remembers Tony Junker (1964).26 His classmate, John Raymond (Ray) Griffin, remembers that “Kahn could be scathing and cruel in his criticism, not in just ignoring a student’s work, but actually denigrating it in no uncertain terms.” Griffin recounts Kahn’s comment about a student’s clay model that “it looked like a turd,” explaining that he found it to be shapeless, without geometry or form.27 There were also occasions when Kahn either found a student’s question inappropriate or when he was simply not in the mood to answer. Tony Junker (1964) recalls how “In larger lectures, a person in the audience might challenge him, especially his poetic language, thinking to make Kahn look foolish, or make himself look good. Kahn had a ready phrase, ‘That’s not a question,’ and would say why, simply, and move on.”28 It was known that he did not like to be closely questioned about his own work. Denise Scott Brown (Fall 1964) recalls a student who asked questions that implied criticism of Kahn’s projects. “If you’re going to ask Kahn and his students 75 me questions like this,” Kahn replied, “I don’t see why I should teach you.” Then he added, “I have given you a golden plate and you have asked for knives and forks.” He later apologized for choosing an inappropriate analogy but not for wounding the student.29 On the other hand, outright praise from Kahn was unusual enough that it could be remembered for a lifetime. Glen Milne (1964) recounts an inner city urban renewal assignment in which he couldn’t bring himself to raze the site, at odds with the guidelines and an unusual position for an American student to take in 1964 at the height of Urban Renewal in American cities. Before his presentation had been completed, Kahn nudged him aside. Pointing at Milne and addressing the class, he said, “The rest of you can answer to him.”30 Anthony E. Tzamtzis, Master’s Class of 1974, who was from Greece, still remembers that “I was particularly proud when once he told me that my siting of the project was so unique and special, ‘just like the work of the ancient Greeks when locating buildings on a site.’”31 Gavin Ross (1968) tells how Kahn first complimented a student on his work, only to follow quickly with a challenging question:

I remember him looking long and hard at another student’s work one day, and then turning to him and saying what he had done was better than what Kahn had done (referring to the Kansas Ofﬁce Building project). Kahn then said that whilst he could say why this was so he wondered whether the student could enlighten us as to why the work so impressed him. Not so easy! This was an example of what we also took from the studio: an ability to prepare a real critical understanding of a work of architecture through developing an understanding of its nature.32

Relationships among students Most Master’s Class alumni remember relationships among students as generally collegial, and by the end of the year some classes had solidiﬁed into a rather tightly knit group. Despite the presence of some conﬂicts and skepticism, most, like Fikret Yegul (1966), recall the spirit of community encouraged by Kahn:

In architecture schools elsewhere, then as now, students built their own little cubbyholes, little personal castles made of cardboard and such, and inside these paltry realms they “created” they jealously guarded their design from their classmates’ eyes. Kahn encouraged a “community” where such jealousies were simply seen as stupid and juvenile. And we rose to it. It hurt more, of course, when your ﬁrst sorties into design, ﬁrst sketches, were shot down in view of everybody, but we were all in the same boat, and we were trying as a group to reach for something, 76 Searching for the Unmeasurable to some universal spirit of architecture, greater in its shared totality than mean personal creations. When we worked together (nobody ever took design home) long and hard into the night in the Furness Hall studio, there was a sense of the sacred, and an almost overpowering presence of Kahn himself.33

The Master’s Class experience was not entirely a “Shangri-La,” as John Tyler Sidener Jr. (Fall 1962) described it, however. Denise Scott Brown (Fall 1964) recalls: “There were some jealousies, particularly of those Lou seemed to favor”34 and more than one student found fault with the personality cult that developed around Kahn. Perhaps it was inevitable that from time to time cliques formed and conﬂicts arose. A number of these seem to have involved the French students, whom Kahn tended to enable through preferential treatment. These included a group of French disciples who closed off a corner of the large, open studio with sheets so no one would steal their ideas, which consisted of copying Kahn’s complex grid concepts for the redevelopment of Phila- delphia’s Broad Street. There were also conﬂicts of a more serious nature, such as when Bernard Huet, one of the Frenchmen, challenged another student, a Texan, to a duel after the Texan’s wife “broke the Francophones’ code by speaking French herself.” Fortunately, the affair was broken up before any harm resulted.35 Despite the positive reaction to his philosophy and methods by the majority of students in the Master’s Class, there were some dissenters and skeptics. Komendant relates how Kahn declared and his single-minded pursuit of his work demonstrated that “For me, architecture is not business but a religion, devotion and dedication for human enjoyment.”36 Dennis L. Johnson (1961) was among those who were suspicious of this quasi-religious attitude, however. He describes how Kahn would

use a sketch to begin a long discourse on the nature of architecture in a very poetic, almost religious style. In his appearance and manner he assumed the persona of a monk, without a habit, and his students would gather in a circle around him as disciples. They listened with wonder and rapt attention. Being a Swede from the Midwest, my nature caused me to sit on the outer edge of the circle and listen, but skeptically.37

For Johnson, the class could become tedious as Komendant and LeRicolais each lectured on structure and form, with Kahn adding his own thoughts:

A long afternoon of listening in turn to a thick German accent, a heavy French accent, and Kahn’s unique use of English, would leave me with a splitting headache. A few students would speak up now and then, at the risk of being humiliated by Kahn’s admonishments over having an Kahn and his students 77 insufﬁciently devout attitude toward design. Most kept silent, listened respectfully, and we all turned in our designs at the end of the semester. I . . . was never quite sure whether our work was really being looked at or considered very important. I admired Kahn as a strong designer with his own very personal style; I was less enamored of his religious approach to talking about architecture. I was even more troubled by the worshipful adulation of many of his students and followers. A few years later at the ofﬁce I was reviewing a design sketch with Oscar Stonorov and carelessly used a well-known Kahn aphorism to make a point. Oscar responded heatedly, “Architecture is not a religion!”38

Use of language Kahn’s magnetism as a teacher had a great deal to do with his unique way of expressing his thoughts, and any discussion of Kahn as a teacher must deal with his use of language in the classroom and in his writing and lectures. Peter Shepheard, who succeeded G. Holmes Perkins as Dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts, 1972–79, referred to Kahn as the “spiritual father” of architecture at Penn, whose most sympathetic audience was always among the young:

He had magic communication with the young. His language was idiosyncratic to the point where it exasperated the middle aged and the old, but was always lucid and compelling to the young. His gift of communicating his own delight in architecture was to my mind almost a divine gift. . . . This element of being a prophet – perhaps a Jewish element, perhaps a religious element – in the truest sense, made him talk of architecture in an immensely biblical and serious way . . . which I think all of his students understood.39

Shepheard may have glossed over the difficulties of understanding Kahn, who often rambled in his remarks to the class, searching, apparently waiting for an idea to emerge. Once the idea began to take shape, however, his language could be “maddeningly circumlocutory and enigmatic.”40 One of the first challenges confronting students in the Master’s Class was learning to make sense of his poetic use of terms like “Form” and “Order.” These included, when necessary to suit his purpose, the invention of new words such as “darkless” or “intouchness.” Over the years, the same ideas were expressed using different terms, so that the “Unmeasurable,” that which does not yet exist, and the “measurable,” that which has come into material existence, were also referred to as “Silence” and “Light.” The students who came into the class from Penn’s three-year M.Arch. program had less difficulty understanding Kahn. They had previously been exposed to Kahn’s ideas by other members of the faculty who had 78 Searching for the Unmeasurable themselves been students of Kahn’s or who had worked in his office and who could interpret his ideas for their students. These included Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Yves Lepere, Carlos Vallhonrat, Jack Thrower, and David Polk, who was especially adept at interpretation. Even so, it could be frustrating. “We told ourselves we understood what he was trying to say,” recalls Sherman Aronson, Master’s Class of 1974.41 On other days his students would leave the studio scratching their heads and trying to make sense of what they had heard. During his life Kahn was both admired and vilified for his use of language. While he was revered by the overwhelming majority of his students, academic colleagues, and employees, he was also reviled by some among his contemporaries for whom his poetic language and his accomplishments seemed contradictory. They were unable to reconcile his public persona as artist, mystic, and philosopher with that of an architect who also built. Among these, Kahn was often held in contempt for what was perceived as the intentional obfuscation of his rhetoric, and his reticence to speak plainly and directly to the realities of business and construction that consume most members of the profession. His detractors refused to consider that Kahn’s idiosyncratic persona could be anything more than an eloquent subterfuge, an attempt to hide personal insecurities and a lack of confidence. They suspected him of inflating the intellectual content of a philosophy that could seem opaque and inaccessible to all but an elite cadre of disciples. Even some of Kahn’s closest associates were irritated or mystified. Robert Venturi dismissed his former mentor’s penchant for poetic metaphors as “hanky panky.”42 When Kahn wrote a letter of recommendation to the AIA College of Fellows for his old friend, Norman Rice,43 Rice thanked him for writing, but confessed that he was confused about what Kahn was trying to say. Kahn’s “inscrutable vocabulary” alarmed even his champion, Vincent Scully:

Sometimes even I and the people who loved him most found it hard to let him do it, to listen to him talking this terribly vague stuff – and even slightly sort of false stuff. Then, to hear so many people pick it up as gospel, the sort of philosophical gospel of Lou, was distressful because in his later years it had become more of a smoke screen around his actual methods than anything else.44

Jules Prown, Kahn’s client representative for the Yale Center for British Art, was able to “detect the disjunction between the ‘very factual, very direct’ man he dealt with on the job and the man who spoke ‘more abstractly, more poetically’ when he was nervous and trying to impress.”45 Following his year in the Master’s Class, David S. Traub, Master’s Class of 1965, worked in Kahn’s office. He confirms Prown’s observation that with his clients and employees, Kahn was always very “down to earth and practical, and never spouted poetry.”46 Kahn and his students 79 Kahn seems to have had two well-integrated sides to his personality. As Komendant observed, “The public image of a man is not necessarily the real man.”47 Kahn seems to have reserved most of his poetic expressions for academic situations. An alternative to the “smoke screen” characterization suggested by Scully would be that Kahn consciously tailored his mode of language to the situation and to the kind of thinking he was attempting to stimulate in the listener. In the Master’s Class, among students who had already been exposed to many of the practical aspects of the profession and who were seeking a deeper level of understanding, Kahn’s choice of words and his purpose were quite different than with his clients or his office associates. In the studio he was interested in exploring purely philosophical ideas, in revealing an entirely new way of thinking about “the realm of Architecture,” for which he evidently found everyday language to be inadequate. Not only did he find it unsatisfactory for communicating the subtle, intuitive nature of these ideas, but he seems to have felt that to have used a less poetic mode of expression would have failed to stimulate his students’ minds to move beyond their previously learned modes of thought. He once explained that some of his obscurity was intentional, as in his description of his cryptic drawing expressing the concepts of Silence and Light, which was intended “to mystify, to make you look for even a greater source than this. To put nothing in front of you that is thoroughly readable, so that you can strive to find what goes beyond this realization, always looking for a source, a beginning.”48 “The code of the teacher is often remote from the other man,” he said. “He seeks therefore, because of his desire to tell about his mind, words that are as close to his code as he can think of yet not to lose their generative- ness.”49 Considered in this light, Kahn was adhering to the highest purposes of a university. Instead of merely communicating information, which Kahn considered the role of the trade school, he was challenging his students to think deeply and critically and to grapple with larger principles. As he said, the job of the teacher “is to present the yet not said, the not yet made. It is a form of self-inspiring.”50 Kahn arrived at his specialized vocabulary gradually, although his use of language may have been influenced by the poetry of Joseph Albers.51 By all accounts of those who knew him well, “It came with great difficulty, and was eventually fit together as though he were working with great blocks of stone, awkwardly selecting each block, polishing it to gem-like hardness, and manipulating it until it fit properly.”52 “He toiled over the making of words with the same indefatigable energy that he devoted to architecture, crossing out and rubbing out and remaking a phrase or a plan.”53 “In putting his images of architecture into words, Lou was at first rather tentative. He would try out his word images on me,” explained Anne Tyng.54 Denise Scott Brown (Fall 1964) agrees, explaining that he had to learn his own language and that students then had to learn to distinguish between 80 Searching for the Unmeasurable the “gold” of his valid expressions and his less successful experimental expressions of unformed ideas.55 While Kahn’s use of language left many with the impression that his teaching was largely inaccessible, Fikret Yegul (1966) saw it differently, emphasizing Kahn’s enunciation of “simple truths,” sometimes including a “folksy wisdom”:

There was something accessible, practical and pragmatic in his philosophy and approach to life. Most of us then, and his general architectural following (his “groupies” who materialized at every Kahn jury), did not understand that. We thought that his characteristic pausing, thinking, searching for words, then expounding his beautiful ideas in his hoarse voice was the essence of depth and complexity. It was, indeed, depth but an accessible, human-oriented depth full of light and joy. He had beliefs, and he tried to inspire us to believe in our beliefs, but also not to take them too seriously and treat them portentously. While his design has been widely described as formal, coming from his Beaux-Arts roots, his philosophy and his approach to life were not formal. There was a sense of rawness, common-sense and “generosity” (one of his words). . . . Even though we, as his “disciples,” always seeking for “depth and complexity,” did not fully understand, there was ﬂexibility to his philosophy – we tried to complicate things.56

Kahn’s obscure vocabulary may have been, as some have argued, pri marily defensive and unnecessary for effective teaching. If he could have found a less idiosyncratic way of expressing his ideas, ideas that had only begun to reveal themselves to him, there is little doubt they would have gained wider acceptance and engendered less resistance. His “realizations” were sufficiently profound without having to be expressed in such an ambiguous way, had he been able to find another means of doing so. In a subsequent chapter another reason will be suggested for his choice of a poetic, rather than a straightforward way of expressing his thoughts. Based on the discoveries of existential psychology after his death, some of Kahn’s difficulties with language will be explained as a struggle to gain access to the unconscious sources of creativity.

Motivation for teaching As to Kahn’s motives for teaching, Martin Meyerson, a fellow faculty member and later President of the University of Pennsylvania, thought that teaching was deeply ingrained in Kahn’s personality and that

he professed outside the class as much as inside it. He professed in his practice, so that the young from everywhere yearned to work with him. . . . He was recognized very early by the people he most wanted to reach, in the young, in the students. I have, ever since I met him, marveled at Kahn and his students 81 his ability to inspire the young. His ability to teach was a capacity grounded in love.57

In class Kahn was completely engaged. As a student, Denise Scott Brown (Fall 1964) saw this quality in him. “Kahn came alive when students were around,” she observed.58 On a number of occasions Kahn himself described the importance he attached to the Master’s Class and how it energized him. “When I am among my students and teach them architecture,” he said, “I am happy and forget everything else.”59 “School is my chapel,” he remarked. “I write songs when I teach well. . . . Teaching is to represent the yet not said, the yet not made.”60 “I come much more refreshed and challenged from the classes. I learn more from the students than I probably teach.”61 Kahn emphasized the importance of an education that allowed a student to build on his strengths. “I believe in schools of natural talent. . . . You never learn anything that is not part of yourself. . . . School should be the center of freedom. There should be no judgment, there should be no comparing one person with another.”62 This attitude reﬂected Kahn’s own student days. As a boy he had struggled in school, where he learned that he was not adept at study. Instead, he learned to use his talent for drawing as a way of interpreting the world. “You open doors easily with your talent,” he had found, but “you open doors not at all when you are just full of what you’ve been pumped full of.”63 The experience of relying on his talents rather than what he had learned helped shape him into the unconventional teacher he later became. In reﬂecting on this belief that each student must discover for himself his own talents and how he learns most effectively, Kahn referred to his own struggle and how it shaped his approach to teaching:

It bears out the fact that people only learn what is part of them. What I went through has taught me many things about teaching. The position I now hold as a teacher is within the limits of the person, where everything can become. I never looked up a document as a teacher. I never referred to a book that one must read, as a teacher. . . . Never was there a reading list. Teaching is conjuring up the nature of things. . . . It is important to know the base from which you trust yourself as a teacher. This is what I think a teacher is because that’s what I am. . . . There cannot be a deﬁnition such as What is a teacher? It is In what way am I a teacher? I teach best when I never refer to how I did it. The instructor is out of it. Teaching is when the person has gotten from me a sense of common- ality through singularity. When I’m about to leave for school, something passes over me which makes me feel terribly wealthy. It makes me feel as though I am about to go on a pirate ship and have another venture with humans.64 82 Searching for the Unmeasurable By his own admission Kahn’s motives for teaching were based on his needs as much, if not more than the needs of his students. “Actually, I believe that I do not really teach architecture, but that I teach myself,” he explained.65 His students, like J. Michael Cobb (1970), agreed: “He teaches himself – what we get . . . is what rubs-off in the process.”66 Fred Linn Osmon (1962) recalls that on one occasion Kahn paraphrased Le Corbusier, explaining, “You are here to listen to me think.” For those like Osmon, who continued to ask questions, Kahn’s response was likely to be, “Young man, I do not like to be cross-examined.” As Osmon explains: “We all got the message . . . our only option was to accept and enjoy the ride. Now I realize he was in a hurry. He knew what he wanted to accomplish in his remaining years.”67 In discussing Kahn’s pedagogical approach, his teaching colleague, Norman Rice, explained that Kahn was never a teacher in a “conventional, didactic sense.”68 He did not impart information about professional practice or the technical aspects of building construction, for example, and it was unusual for him to discuss his own work. Instead he used the class discussions as a sounding board for the exploration and testing of his own unformed ideas. Perhaps it was because many of the ideas he expressed were still in an embryonic form that he did not like to be questioned too closely by his students about his projects. Denise Scott Brown (Fall 1964) has cited Kahn’s extended monologues in the studio and feels that his need to dominate conversation was a deep-seated urge. She also observed in Kahn a strong emotional afﬁnity for the academic environment:

His two afternoons a week at Penn probably provided the most creative outlet for this need. Studio was an important buttress to his emotional life. . . . I met him at Penn on the day President Kennedy was killed. This was a Friday and not Kahn’s regular studio day, but he came to Penn when he heard the news because that was where he wanted to be.69

There is every indication that Kahn enjoyed his long monologues where he was always the center of attention, and it was a rare student who dared to challenge him. Perhaps taking advantage of this, he dominated the class discussions, using them as a sounding board for the exploration and testing of his own unformed ideas. Kahn claimed that he beneﬁted from “the contact I have with young students who don’t have much of an axe to grind. . . . I am inspired by their sincerity, by their not being in the marketplace, by not taking that position in the battle of wits. Many things are drawn out of you which couldn’t be drawn out otherwise.”70 Kahn’s learning from his students may not always have been as innocent as he represented it, however. Scott Brown relates that he was not above appropriating as his own some ideas that originated in discussions with his students. During the design of the Salk Institute, it was only after Scott Kahn and his students 83 Brown suggested that the housing be moved to the edge of the cliffs that Kahn located it there. And it was she who ﬁrst suggested that “every architect designs a chapel in every building,” an observation that Kahn often repeated. Scott Brown attributes most of his failure to share the source of some ideas to a process of “creative forgetting” on Kahn’s part, although she also observes that “talent plagiarizes; genius robs.”71

The end of the Master’s Class After fourteen years the Master’s Class reached a tragic and unexpected conclusion. The bizarre circumstances surrounding Kahn’s sudden death on Sunday, March 17, 1974 have become well-known, due largely to Nathaniel Kahn’s film, My Architect. However, for those of us in the Master’s Class that year, it also carried a lasting personal impact. It was the middle of our second semester, and most of us had begun to feel comfortable with respect to Kahn’s approach and expectations. The studio had settled down to a familiar routine, convening in the second- floor apse of the Furness Fine Arts Library every Monday and Wednesday afternoon for critiques by Kahn with Rice, LeRicolais, and sometimes Komendant participating. Kahn’s punctuality and faithful attendance were well-known, so when he failed to appear promptly at 2 p.m. on Monday, March 18, we were surprised, but not alarmed. It was assumed that he had experienced a delay while returning from one of his frequent trips to India where the capital of Bangladesh at Dacca was under construction. When he missed class a second time on Wednesday, March 20, however, there was widespread concern, not only in the Master’s Class, but throughout the Graduate School of Fine Arts as well. It soon became known that nothing had been heard from him since he had departed India on his scheduled flight to New York. The truth finally emerged of how he had collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack in the men’s room of New York’s Pennsylvania Station while waiting to board the train home to Philadelphia. According to the New York police, his identification included only his office address and, for some unexplained reason, they failed to report his death for several days. We were deeply shocked and saddened. It seemed such an ordinary, even a sordid, death for such an extraordinary person. That he had appeared to be in good health made the circumstances even more difficult to accept. Most of the class attended Kahn’s funeral on March 22, and that evening we held a hastily organized celebration of his life and legacy. Some twenty-five drafting lamps were all focused on the high ceiling of the studio where they imparted a soft glow to the room, while on the drafting tables were arrayed large sprays of yellow forsythia gathered from the perimeter of a nearby campus soccer field. A student woodwind ensemble played Renaissance music from the balcony that encircled the studio. Current and past Master’s Class students, Penn faculty, Kahn’s office staff, and other 84 Searching for the Unmeasurable colleagues, including Vincent Scully and a contingent from Yale who had traveled to Philadelphia for the funeral, sipped wine, nibbled cheeses and shared anecdotes about Kahn. Following Kahn’s death, new information about his health and his last days slowly began to emerge. Before his final trip to India, his wife, Esther, and his daughter, Sue Ann, had noticed his chronic indigestion and tired- ness. In Heathrow airport on his way home from Dacca, Kahn and Stanley Tigerman, one of Kahn’s former students at Yale, chanced to meet. Tiger- man observed that Kahn was “evidently in distress” and seemed exhausted and depressed. It was learned that a few years earlier he had begun to consult a doctor about a heart condition.72 In addition, he was having financial problems at the office. Komendant had noticed that in the last years of his life after the completion of the Kimbell Museum and the loss of the Baltimore Inner Harbor and Kansas City Office Tower projects Kahn “was sad and depressed. Just before he left for India we met at the university. Kahn was a broken man. His spirit and will had left him, and it would have taken time and some new exciting project to lift him up again.”73 At the time of his death, nothing of Kahn’s personal problems was known to those of us in the Master’s Class. In retrospect, however, and based on a comparison of the experiences of his students in the early years with those in the last years, it seems that towards the end of his life the energy and verve that had characterized most of Kahn’s teaching career began to decline, coinciding with his failing health, financial difficulties and problems with clients. By 1973–74, the lively interactions described by his students from the 1960s were less frequent. He no longer entertained by playing the piano at all-night class parties or gave away quick sketches as presents. In the studio he could be dismissive of questions that did not seem to fit his mood. Sitting around the seminar table one afternoon in the winter of 1974, a student who was interested in teaching after graduation asked Kahn his thoughts about combining teaching with practice. Kahn responded, “What do you think?” When the student hesitated in his response, Kahn abruptly dismissed the question, moving on to another topic. During his last years Kahn increasingly delivered “long, rambling speeches”74 in which his ideas seemed unnecessarily clouded in an opaque vocabulary. Still, in the months before his death there were numerous interesting and memorable observations and interchanges between Kahn and his students. Sherman Aronson (1974) recalls a discussion that touched on the nature of the roof of a building. “A complicated roof is no good,” said Kahn. “A roof wants to come floating down and settle gently over a building,” he said, gently gesturing. “Aah. . . .”75 In the days that followed Kahn’s death with some six weeks left in the semester, it was apparent that the Master’s Class had lost its master. After an unsuccessful attempt at teaching ourselves, we received permission to invite a number of prominent architects to visit and critique our final project, the redevelopment of a section of North Philadelphia. In addition, Jonas Kahn and his students 85 Salk, Kahn’s friend and client, agreed to spend an afternoon with us. Despite the positive impression left by Salk, in the end most of us concluded that the success of the Master’s Class had revolved around Kahn and that he could never be replaced. Following Kahn’s death, the Paul Cret Chair was first awarded to LeRicolais and subsequently to Aldo Van Eyck.76 Today, the Graduate School of Fine Arts, rebranded as the School of Design or “PennDesign,” continues to offer a one-year post-professional degree in architecture. But the prominence of the architecture program during the Kahn years, centring around his Master’s Class, has never been equaled:

Apropos of a “master” like Kahn . . . it is noteworthy how the presence of a dominant ﬁgure in an architecture school can engender a golden age within that institution, only to make it difﬁcult for the school to move on afterward. Such was the case at Penn for many years after Kahn’s death.77

Notes 1 Tony Junker, letter to the author, November 11, 2011. 2 Dennis L. Johnson, letter to the author, September 26, 2011. 3 J. Michael Cobb, “Thoughts on Louis I. Kahn,” unpublished essay, 2011. 4 John Tyler Sidener Jr., “Me and Lou,” unpublished essay, 2011. 5 Wilder Green as quoted in Carter Wiseman, Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007), p. 57. 6 Duncan Buell, as quoted in Wiseman, p. 57. 7 Charles E. Dagit Jr., letter to the author, February 15, 2014. 8 Cobb. 9 Unnamed student, letter to Esther Kahn as quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), p. 281. 10 Fred Linn Osmon, letter to the author, September 23, 2011. 11 Miguel Angel Guisasola, “Architectural Principles and Memoirs,” unpublished manuscript, 2011. 12 Denise Scott Brown, “Between Three Stools,” as quoted in Ann L. Strong and George E. Thomas, The Book of the School: 100 Years, The Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1990), p. 154. 13 Denise Scott Brown, interview with author, May 9, 2012. 14 Michael Bednar, “Kahn’s Classroom,” Modulus, 11th issue, 1974, University of Virginia School of Architecture. 15 David C. Ekroth, letter to the author, October 17, 2011. 16 Karl G. Smith II, “Louis I. Kahn, Stories of My Year in his Master’s Studio, 1971–1972,” unpublished essay, 2011. 17 Brian Dudson, letter to the author, August 1, 2011. 18 Cengiz Yetken, unpublished manuscript, 1966, provided to the author. 19 David De Long, interview with author, May 11, 2012. 20 Bednar. 21 Jamine Mehta, as quoted in Wurman, p. 293. 86 Searching for the Unmeasurable 22 Sidener. 23 John Raymond (Ray) Grifﬁn, “Recollections on Louis Kahn,” unpublished manuscript provided to the author, 2012. 24 Gavin Ross, letter to the author, October 11, 2011. 25 Cobb. 26 Junker. 27 Grifﬁn. 28 Junker. 29 Scott Brown, interview. 30 Glen Milne, letter to the author, September 7, 2011. 31 Anthony E. Tzamtzis, letter to the author, November 16, 2011. 32 Ross. 33 Fikret Yegul, “Louis Kahn’s Master’s Class,” unpublished essay. 34 Scott Brown, interview. 35 Ibid. 36 Kahn, as quoted in August Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), p. 190. 37 Dennis L. Johnson, “Early Years, the Making of an Architect,” unpublished essay provided to the author, 2010. 38 Ibid. 39 Peter Shepheard, as quoted in Wurman, p. 304. 40 David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1991), p. 16. 41 Sherman Aronson, interview with author, May 10, 2012. 42 Robert Venturi, as quoted by Denise Scott Brown, interview with author, May 9, 2012. 43 Kahn, letter to the AIA Jury of Fellows, December 29, 1961. 44 Brownlee and De Long, p. 127. 45 Ibid. 46 David S. Traub, interview with author, May 31, 2012. 47 Komendant, p. 164. 48 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 150. 49 Kahn, as quoted in Robert Twombly, ed., Louis Kahn: Essential Texts (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 203), p. 234. 50 David E. Leatherbarrow, “Beginning Again: The Task of Design Research,” Ensinar Pelo Projeto, Joelho: revista de culture aarquitectónica (no. 04, April 2013), pp. 194–204; Portuguese and Spanish translations in Summa+ (no. 134, February 2104), pp. 88–93. 51 Brownlee and De Long, p. 46. 52 John Lobell, Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn (Shambhala, Boston, MA, 1979), p. 4. 53 Brownlee and De Long, p. 129. 54 Anne Griswold Tyng, as quoted in Wurman, p. 301. 55 Scott Brown, interview. 56 Yegul. 57 Martin Meyerson, as quoted in Wurman, p. 305. 58 Scott Brown, interview. 59 Kahn, as quoted in Komendant, p. 190. 60 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 304. 61 Kahn, as quoted in Brownlee and De Long, p. 62. 62 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p.153. 63 Ibid., p. 68. 64 Ibid., pp. 226–227. Kahn and his students 87 65 Louis I. Kahn: Conversations with Students, (Houston, TX: Architecture at Rice, no. 26, 1969), p. 30. 66 Cobb. 67 Osmon, “An Interlude – The Louis I. Kahn Studio,” unpublished essay, 2014. 68 Norman Rice, as quoted in Wurman, p. 294. 69 Scott Brown, “A Worm’s Eye View,” Having Words (London: Architectural Association, 2009), p. 106. 70 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 123. 71 Scott Brown, interview. 72 Brownlee and De Long, pp. 140–141. 73 Komendant, p. 192. 74 Brownlee and De Long, p. 127. 75 Kahn, as quoted by Aronson. 76 Strong and Thomas, p. 254. 77 Joan Ockman, ed., with Rebecca Williamson, research ed., Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America, (Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 2012), p. 30. 6 Kahn and the psychology of creativity

As we have seen, Kahn’s distinctive philosophy of architecture involved a struggle to realize ideal Form, “what the building wants to be.” Design consisted of bringing Form into physical existence, from the Unmeasurable into the world of the measurable. In his search for ways to express the mystery of creativity, Kahn referred to “Silence” and “Light.” For the realization of Form, Kahn taught that the architect must put aside all preconceptions and embark upon a journey into Silence,1 the source of creativity and “the desire to be, to express,” which for Kahn was an all-encompassing life force. “Silence is not very, very quiet,” Kahn said. “Desire to be. To express. Some can say that’s the ambient sound – if you go back beyond and think of something in which light and silence were together.”2 In Silence one encountered timeless, archetypal ideas infused with energy, an energy that inspired creative action. Once Form was realized, Design consisted of the transformation of Form from immaterial Silence to material existence or what Kahn called Light, the visible manifestation of the true nature of a building, “the giver of all presences.” The creative act, the making of art, was not a predictable linear process, however. It entailed many twists and turns in which an idea that originated in Silence was ﬁrst expressed as Light in the form of a sketch, a “Form diagram,” and then subjected to critical testing. If the diagram failed to adequately convey the original idea, it was necessary to return to Silence for additional inspiration. Thus design involved a series of transitions back and forth from Silence to Light and from Light to Silence. “Light to Silence, Silence to Light has to be a kind of ambient threshold and when this is realized, sensed, there is Inspiration,” he explained.3 Kahn referred to this threshold between Silence and Light, between the desire to be and material reality, as the “Treasury of the Shadows.” Design took place in the Treasury of the Shadows and involved a struggle to adapt the ideal Form to the constraints imposed by the physical world. For Kahn the test of a successful design was that the completed work of architecture suggested the original Form. As he said, “A great building must, in my opinion, begin with the Unmeasurable and go through the measurable in the process of design, but must again in the end be Unmeasurable.”4 Kahn and the psychology of creativity 89 This, for him, was the creative process, which he expressed in an evocative drawing:

I began by drawing a diagram, calling the desire to be, to express, Silence; the other, Light. The movement of Silence to Light, Light to Silence, has many, many thresholds. Each threshold is a singularity. . . . Inspiration is where the desire to express meets the possible. . . . I made this diagram to be read from left to right, and here in mirror writing. . . . 5

Figure 6.1 “Silence to Light; Light to Silence.” Drawing by Louis I. Kahn. (Louis I. Kahn Collection, The University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission)

The parallel between Platonic philosophy and Kahn’s understanding of the creative act is telling. The Platonic tradition held that a sharp divide exists between spiritual realities and the material world. The bridge between these two realms was Logos. This notion of Logos as the link between the spiritual and the material clearly evokes Kahn’s notion of the Treasury of the Shadows as the threshold between Silence and Light. Kahn’s concepts of Silence and Light also recall Lao Tzu’s description of the Tao and the relationship between the “nameless” and the “named”:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.6 90 Searching for the Unmeasurable The creative process as experienced by architects has much in common with the other arts. As Kahn imagined the writing of a book, the author begins with an inspiration, an urge to express an idea that has a universal validity. This realm of intuition, what Kahn calls Silence, leads to a search for the right structure, images, ﬁgures of speech, and mood:

A man motivated not by proﬁt of any kind, just by a sense of offering, writes a book, hoping that it will be published. He’s motivated by the sense that he has something somewhere in there, whether it is deep, deep in the Silence, or whether it is already on the threshold of inspiration.7

The poet John Keats described this search as requiring “negative capability,” a state of mind in which the poet “is capable of being in uncer tainties, mysteries, doubts; without any irritable reaching after facts and reason.”8 The poet struggles, and finally the poem is completed and published. It has taken on material existence. It can be read and understood by others. The poet has brought it out of Silence, through the Treasury of the Shadows, to Light. But in the end, if the poem successfully evokes in the reader the poet’s original feelings and insights, it returns to the realm of Silence. A Chinese poet once described the creative process in a similar way: “We poets struggle with Non-being to force it to yield Being. We knock upon silence for an answering music.”9 As we have seen previously, Kahn’s concept of Form and his understanding of creativity were not without precedent. Kahn mentioned to his students that Michelangelo also subscribed to the Neoplatonic idea that reality lies in the idea behind a work of art, waiting to be revealed through the artist’s skill. Compare Kahn’s journey from Silence to Light to Michelangelo’s concept of “liberating the figure from the marble that imprisons it.” H.W. Janson has described Michelangelo’s process of reveal - ing the pre-existent reality of his unfinished St. Matthew:

We may translate this, I think, to mean that he started the process of carving a statue by trying to visualize a figure in the rough, rectilinear block as it came to him from the quarry. . . . It seems fair to assume that at first he did not see the figure any more clearly than one can see an unborn child inside the womb, but we may believe he could see isolated “signs of life” within the marble – a knee or an elbow pressing against the surface.10

The sculptor Auguste Rodin advocated probing beyond the shallow world of appearances in order to convey underlying reality:

If the artist only reproduces superﬁcial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain Kahn and the psychology of creativity 91 is that of the soul; that alone matters; it is that which the sculptor or painter should seek beneath the mask of features.11

For Kahn the realization of Form requires an encounter with Silence as a prerequisite for undertaking design, the passage over the threshold of the Treasury of Shadows toward Light. For Michelangelo, the figure hidden within the stone must be visualized before taking up the chisel and hammer. For Rodin, the soul must first be glimpsed beyond superficial physical appearances before work can begin. The act of creation as described by Kahn, Michelangelo, and Rodin is fraught with mystery, “a strange and risky business in which the maker never quite knows what he is making until he has actually made it . . . a game of find-and-seek in which the seeker is not sure what he is looking for until he has found it.”12 Although Kahn’s views concerning the realization of Form were among his most memorable contributions as a teacher, his description of the creative process has often been found to be somewhat mysterious and inaccessible. Kahn never explained how one gains access to Silence or develops the ability to realize Form. Other than his advocacy of the quick beginning sketch, he had little to say about his methodology. How does one embark on this mysterious search for the elusive Form? What is the nature of the creative encounter with Silence and the Unmeasurable? For the answers I believe we must turn to existential psychology. Through a synthesis of his ideas and what is known about the psychology of creativity, a strategy will be suggested for making Kahn’s approach more accessible for teachers, students and practitioners of architecture, opening new pathways for creativity.

The psychology of creativity Attempts to understand the mysterious process of creativity and the uncon - scious mind extend to ancient times and were among the concerns of the pioneers of modern psychology. Plato observed the operation of unconscious mental processes and argued that much of our knowledge is latent within the psyche. In the nineteenth century Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer wrote about the influence of unconscious, irrational mental processes on human behavior. However, it was not until Sigmund Freud, followed by Carl Jung and others, addressed the issue that theories about the unconscious began to be systematically developed.13 In 1926 the psychologist Graham Wallas identified four stages in the creative process: (a) preparation, consisting of investigation of the problem; (b) incubation, during which unconscious processes are at work even though no conscious thought is being directed toward the problem; (c) illumination, during which the “happy idea” or breakthrough occurs from the unconscious; and (d) verification of the validity of the idea.14 92 Searching for the Unmeasurable Since Kahn’s death, existential psychologists have continued this research and made important contributions to a deeper understanding of creativity. Many of these insights illuminate and reinforce Kahn’s theories and suggest a way of applying them in the study and practice of architecture. In the psychologist Rollo May’s The Courage to Create, which explores the mysteries of the creative process, May attaches great significance to the experience of “the breakthrough of ideas from some depth below the level of awareness.”15 He attempts to answer the question, “Why does an original idea in science and in art ‘pop up’ from the unconscious at a given moment?”16 May’s attempt to answer this question has direct bearing on the search for underlying reality as advocated by Kahn. Like Kahn, May is quick to acknowledge that his explanation is incomplete and that creativity will always remain a mystery. However, by understanding something of the relationship between creativity and the unconscious, several new, practical ways begin to emerge that promise to help architects move into Silence to discover the underlying nature of the buildings they design. Silence reminds one of Carl Jung’s “collective unconscious,” a constel- lation of basic ideas and images known as “archetypes” buried in our being. Kahn taught that once realized, “what the building wants to be” possesses an undeniable sense of the universal, the archetypal, a shared quality he referred to as “human agreement,” much like the collective unconscious. May defines the unconscious as “the potentialities for awareness or action which the individual cannot or will not actualize.”17 The unconscious is normally hidden, inaccessible to the conscious, like the nine-tenths of an iceberg that lies below the surface. It is the world of dreams and intuitions, unsubstantial, fleeting, strongly felt at times, but not subject to rational analysis. As Kahn explained it, “dream has no measure, has no language.”18 If Form is to become the basis for a work of architecture, if a sculptor is to release the figure imprisoned in the stone, if a poet is to express his or her deepest feelings, it will be necessary to open a window to the unconscious. May argues that much of the creative process depends on obtaining access to this normally inaccessible material, dredging it up from the unconscious to the conscious where it can find expression. The architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, recognized the importance of this source of powerful new ideas, recommending that the design teacher encourage the student to “trust his own subconscious reactions, and to try to restore the unprejudiced receptivity of his childhood.”19 Subjectively, the experience of the creative movement from the uncon - scious to the conscious – which we may now identify with Kahn’s transition from Silence to Light – comes as a powerful revelation referred to by Kahn as “realization.” Often it is experienced as a sudden, spontaneous breakthrough, the solution to an intractable problem with which one has been struggling. (The phenomenon has also been labeled the “Eureka effect” or the “Aha! Effect.”) At other times, the insight can come in a dream or in an unguarded moment of relaxed reverie. Kahn and the psychology of creativity 93 Many examples of this experience have been recorded by creative individuals. These include the often-recounted story of scientist James Watson’s protracted struggle to understand the structure of the DNA molecule. One night he dreamed of two intertwined snakes, which led immediately to his breakthrough discovery of the double helix. Kahn referred to Form as “dream-inspired”20 and recounted the struggle to design his capital of Bangladesh, “On the night of the third day I fell out of bed with the idea which is still the prevailing idea of the plan.”21 According to the mathematician and scientific philosopher Jules Henri Poincaré, who in 1913 carefully described several such experiences, these kinds of breakthroughs appear to have certain characteristics in common:

(1) the suddenness of the illumination; (2) that the insight may occur, and to some extent must occur, against what one has clung to con - sciously in one’s theories; (3) the vividness of the incident and the whole scene that surrounds it; (4) the brevity and conciseness of the insight, along with the experience of immediate certainty. . . . (5) hard work on the topic prior to the breakthrough; (6) a rest, in which the “unconscious work” has been given a chance to proceed on its own and after which the breakthrough may occur . . .; (7) the necessity of alternating work and relaxation, with the insight often coming at the moment of the break between the two, or at least within the break.22

Perhaps the most significant of Poincaré’s observations for the artist and architect is that this unconscious work only occurs when it is preceded by a struggle, by a period of hard work, often lasting several days, in which it appears that no progress is being made. In reality, though, the unconscious has been activated by the effort and set to work on finding a solution to the problem. Kahn was aware of Poincaré’s realization and mentioned it in class on at least one occasion, noting that “The mind is at work while you are resting.”23 Also highly relevant is the importance of alternating work and relaxation. May points out how difficult many people find it to escape from a world of near-constant sensory stimulation in order to make “constructive use of solitude.” Without solitude one will “find it exceedingly difficult to let insights from unconscious depths break through” into the conscious mind.24 Finally, Poincaré makes the surprising assertion that the reason why a certain breakthrough occurs has to do with esthetics, a sense of “elegance.” That is, it has a certain form that “completes an incomplete Gestalt”:

The useful combinations [that come through from the unconscious] are precisely the most beautiful. . . . Among the great numbers of combinations blindly formed by the subliminal self, almost all are without interest and without utility; but just for that reason they are also without effect upon the esthetic sensibility. Consciousness will never know them; 94 Searching for the Unmeasurable only certain ones are harmonious, and, consequently, at once useful and beautiful.25

As May recounts his own experience of a creative breakthrough on a research project:

The idea, the new form which suddenly becomes present, came in order to complete an incomplete Gestalt with which I was struggling in conscious awareness. One can quite accurately speak of this incomplete Gestalt, this unﬁnished pattern, this unformed form, as constituting the “call” that was answered by the unconscious.26

(Note that May describes how a “new form” presented itself using the same term chosen by Kahn to describe the ideas encountered in Silence.) The breakthrough experience is powerful and demands one’s full attention. It often seems infused with a spiritual quality, as though what has been revealed has a universal validity, as though a window has been opened into ultimate reality. May observes, “This is why many artists feel that something holy is going on when they paint, that there is something in the act of creating which is like a religious revelation.”27 The painter Carlo Carra described this sense of encountering the sacred in his work:

I know perfectly well that only in happy instants am I lucky enough to lose myself in my work. The painter–poet feels that his true immutable essence comes from that invisible realm that offers him an image of external reality. . . . I am almost brought to believe that I am about to get my hands on the divine.28

Kahn’s description of the realization of Form is remarkably similar in its emotional power, its aesthetic appeal, its conviction of universality, and its sense of the sacred. “Realization has no shape or dimension,” he said. “It is simply a coming to a deep, revealing understanding in which the sense of order and the sense of dream, of religion, becomes the transference of I into thou.”29 While Kahn was aware of Poincaré’s observation about the relationship between periods of rest and creativity, and while he seems to have been acquainted to some degree with Jung’s theories of archetypes and the collective unconscious,30 he never seems to have connected these or other psychological concepts with the search for Form or his concepts of Silence and Light. (Rollo May’s study developing the ideas of Wallas, Poincaré, Jung, and others was not published until after Kahn’s death.) Although he had experienced the sudden creative breakthrough as described in the design of the capital of Bangladesh, Kahn seems to have been only partially aware of the psychic mechanisms involved. This may explain, at least in part, why his exhortations to his students to commit their Kahn and the psychology of creativity 95 lives to a search for the Unmeasurable are couched in rather vague, poetic terms. For the most part, Kahn sensed, rather than consciously understood, the process of gaining access to the unconscious as a source of creativity. Even though he seems not to have articulated it in psychological terms, Kahn’s intent was to open his students’ eyes to new ways of thinking by unlocking the power of the unconscious:

Our inspirations assist us when we clear our senses of known solutions and methods. The realization of a yet-unthought-of nature and the elements of its Form can stimulate an entirely new point of view about everything. . . . Everything must begin with poetry and end as art.31

Understood in these terms, it seems likely that Kahn’s “inscrutable vocabulary” and reliance upon poetic rather than straightforward language were not primarily a manifestation of personal insecurity, as some of his detractors have claimed. Rather, his use of language was the result of his struggle to gain access to unconscious sources of creativity – which he sensed but which can never be fully understood. These realizations, often expressed with difﬁculty and only imperfectly understood by his students, were developed and honed by his seminar style of teaching in the Master’s Class. Kahn’s use of the Talmudic tradition illustrates May’s theory that “creativity occurs in an act of encounter.”32 May argues that symbols, metaphors and myths “express the relationship between conscious and unconscious experience, between one individual’s present existence and human history. Symbol and myth are the living, immediate forms that emerge from encounter . . . and they have their power to grasp us because they require from us and give us an experience of heightened consciousness.”33 May concurs with Kahn’s understanding of the power of symbol and myth which, like a Zen koan, relies on the ambiguous or paradoxical as a more effective means of conveying a truth than a straightforward explanation. “When the archaic elements in a poem or picture have genuine power to move others, when they have a universality of meaning – that is, when they are genuine symbols – it is because some encounter is occurring on a more basic, comprehensive level.”34

Critical thinking and intuition Existential psychology demonstrates that the deepest insights are those that emerge from the unconscious. Kahn stressed that for the architect, imagination and intuition alone are not enough, however, and that insights arising from the unconscious must be tempered and tested by critical thinking. (One is reminded of Wallas’ fourth stage of creative thinking, veriﬁcation of the validity of the idea.) Kahn was not referring to data gathering or analysis, what has come to be understood as “left brain” thinking, however. He had in mind the kind of intuitive “right brain” 96 Searching for the Unmeasurable thinking that allows for “transforming ordinary data into a new creation, transcendent over the mere raw materials.”35 Toward this end Kahn emphasized the relationship between intuitive thinking and drawing. Drawing was for him a way of thinking critically. The notion conveyed in some schools that design is primarily a left-brain process in which drawing by hand is no longer relevant has led to a widespread, excessive reliance on the computer among many architects and students of architecture. May warns against the threat posed to creativity by over-reliance on technology:

What people today do out of fear of irrational elements in themselves as well as in other people is to put tools and mechanics between themselves and the unconscious world. . . . The danger always exists that our technology will serve as a buffer between us and nature, a block between us and the deeper dimensions of our own experience. Tools and techniques ought to be an extension of consciousness, but they can just as easily be a protection from consciousness.36

Recent studies of the brain have confirmed the relationship between drawing and creativity. In Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards describes a teachable method for activating the part of the brain associated with intuitive thinking, creativity and the involvement of the unconscious. What she refers to as the “R-mode” has much in common with the more spontaneous experience of activating the unconscious as understood by May. Once learned, the R-mode is recognizable as qualitatively different from ordinary experience. It is a pleasurable state marked by a “seeming suspension of time,” by great sensitivity to visual images instead of language, and by complete attention and absorption in the task at hand so that one feels “at one” with the object of concentration.37 As the artist and poet Edward Hill commented, “To empty one’s mind of all thought and refill the void with a spirit greater than oneself is to extend the mind into a realm not accessible by conventional processes of reason.”38 As many architects and artists have discovered, however, the intuitive approach is far from infallible. The inability to perfectly translate an ideal, unmeasurable vision into a building, painting or sculpture can provoke a great deal of anxiety and self-doubt, even anguish. The painter Alberto Giacometti experienced severe distress at his inability to fully realize form. For him the only thing that seemed to exist was this struggle, which seemed to have a life of its own. Nevertheless, “He was committed, he was, in fact, condemned to the attempt, which at times seemed rather like the task of Sisyphus.”39 Kahn was well known for this Sisyphean struggle, for the time and effort he devoted to his work, as he sought first to realize the pre-existent, unmeasurable Form and then through Design to bring forth a work of architecture into the material world of the measurable. He knew how Kahn and the psychology of creativity 97 difficult it could be. “When I place the first line on paper to capture the dream, the dream becomes less,” he admitted.40 He expected a similar level of effort from his students. He wanted them to learn to trust their intuition, but also to subject their intuitive realizations to a Socratic style of critical examination.

The creative breakthrough The understanding of the creative breakthrough as described by Wallas, Poincaré and May, and as experienced by many other artists, conﬁrms the validity of Kahn’s intuitive journey from Silence to Light. The insights of the psychology of creativity make clear that hard work accompanied by “waiting” for the answer is an absolute prerequisite to the breakthrough experience. It is

not to be confused with laziness or passivity. . . . It is an active listening, keyed to hear the answer, alert to see whatever can be glimpsed when the vision or words do come. It is a waiting for the birthing process to begin to move in its own organic time. It is necessary that the artist have this sense of timing, that he or she respect these periods of receptivity as part of the mystery of creativity and creation.41

Notes 1 The term “Silence” was employed by Andre Malraux. David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1991), p. 129. 2 Kahn, as quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), p. 55. 3 Ibid., p. 55. 4 Ibid., p. 262. 5 Ibid., p. 150. 6 John Lobell, Between Silence and Light (Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 1979), p. 64. 7 Kahn, as quoted in Wurman, p. 57. 8 John Keats, as quoted in Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1989) p. 102. 9 Rollo May, The Courage to Create (New York: Bantam Books, 1976), p. 89. 10 H.W. Janson, History of Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall and New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1966), p. 10. 11 Auguste Rodin, as quoted in Jeff Hilson, “Auguste Rodin: Premier Sculptor,” (Counter-Currents Publishing, www.counter-currents.com/2010/09/auguste-rodin/). 12 Janson, p. 11. 13 Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight (New York: Random House, 2012), pp. 14–15. 14 Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926) p. 70. 15 May, p. 57. 98 Searching for the Unmeasurable 16 Ibid., p. vii. 17 Ibid., p. 58. 18 Kahn, as quoted in Louis Kahn: Essential Texts, ed. Robert Twombly (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), p. 63. 19 Walter Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture (New York: Collier Books, 1955), p. 33. 20 Vincent Scully, Louis I. Kahn (New York: George Braziller, 1962), p. 32. 21 Kahn, as quoted in “Remarks,” Perspecta, vol. 9/10 (1965), p. 306. 22 May, p. 71. 23 John Raymond (Ray) Grifﬁn, class notes, February 3, 1964. 24 May, p. 72. 25 Ibid., pp. 73–74. 26 Ibid., p. 66. 27 Ibid., p. 75. 28 Carlo Carra, as quoted in Edwards, p. 57. 29 Kahn, as quoted in Twombly, p. 155. 30 Joseph Burton, “Notes from Volume Zero: Louis Kahn and the Language of God,” Perspecta 20 (1983), p. 85. 31 Kahn, as quoted in August Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), p. 163. 32 May, p. 87. 33 Ibid., p. 99. 34 Ibid., p. 103. 35 Edwards, p. 26. 36 May, p. 76. 37 Edwards, pp. 78–79. 38 Edward Hill, as quoted in Edwards, p. 58. 39 May, p. 95. 40 Kahn, as quoted in Twombly, p. 62. 41 May, p. 92. 7 Kahn in the light of contemporary architectural education

The Master’s Class will never be duplicated, since its success was heavily dependent on Kahn’s personal mystique and its seminar format. It was most appropriate for mature graduate students who had already mastered the essentials of design, for it demanded intellectual maturity, philosophical inclinations, a high degree of abstract thinking and a tolerance of ambiguity. Forty years after Kahn’s death, as the youngest of his students who became teachers begin to retire, does Kahn’s unconventional pedagogy have continued relevance for the students and teachers of the future? Schools of architecture have adapted to many revolutionary changes since 1974, and Kahn would scarcely recognize some aspects of the contemporary scene, including the large number of women, the reliance on computer- aided design, the emphasis on historic preservation and sustainability, and the lingering inﬂuence in some quarters of Post-Modernism and Decon- structivism. Nevertheless, despite sweeping changes in the profession and the impossibility of recreating the Master’s Class, today’s students stand to proﬁt from a rediscovery of many of Kahn’s timeless lessons, which are as valid now as they were forty years ago. These lessons can be grouped into two broad categories: the professional values Kahn instilled and his approach to teaching design.

Values In the Master’s Class, Kahn taught the continuing relevance of history – not as the slavish historicism of the Beaux-Arts tradition – but for what history can teach about timeless principles such as beginnings, order, beauty, the proper use of materials, and the relationship between structure and light. He believed Modernism had lost sight of certain essential qualities, including the spiritual and the monumental, that he so admired in the great buildings of the past. The extreme Modernist assertion that history is irrelevant was ﬁrst introduced as part of the rebellion against nineteenth-century historicism. Given the subsequent damage done by this dogma, the importance of a consideration of the architecture of the past has never been greater than for 100 Searching for the Unmeasurable today’s students. As even the Modernist Philip Johnson recognized, “You cannot not know history.” David G. De Long (1963) believes that although Kahn would have had “deep reservations” about historic preservation,

there is one aspect with which he might have found some agreement: in good adaptive use, pre-existing spaces suggest new uses that are often not part of the client’s program. . . . clients are receptive to modifying their program when these potentialities are brought to light, and in the end the adaptive use is much improved.1

In a consumer society preoccupied by “image” that overvalues exhibition- istic buildings designed by “starchitects,” Kahn’s warnings against seduction by the glib and the trendy, and about the dangers of “being only a profes - sional” have never been more appropriate than for today’s studios and professional practice classes. His observations about insufficient public interest in the quality of architecture continue to explain why there never seems to be sufficient funding for important buildings. As a philosopher of education, Kahn’s idea of a university was, as with many of his other ideas, both unconventional and idealistic. He saw it as a place of pure, unfettered thought. He rejected the notion of the university as an institution increasingly dependent on business interests, the “research industry,” or “the marketplace” for funding and for the justification of its existence, a place where research is valued only when it shows promise for generating a profit. Kahn also opposed the compartmentalized study of the different design disciplines:

They now have divided architecture into about twenty equal parts, all of them unworthy of each other unless they are together: urban design, urban planning, ecology, landscape architecture – each one having its own degree. What is planning? What is architecture? If it isn’t one, then it’s nothing. It’s not divided, it’s one.2

His concern that too many architectural faculty lack dedication and experience, with “no spirit or even realization of what architecture really means,” has lost none of its relevance.3 While Kahn would no doubt applaud today’s rediscovery of sustainable principles, he would criticize as a false idol any suggestion that sustainability should become the architect’s chief focus. As Anthony E. Tzamtzis (1974) observes:

Building technologies and systems along with climatic design have advanced tremendously in the past forty years but the essence of (Kahn’s) teaching is timeless because it dealt with the concept of tackling a design Kahn and contemporary architectural education 101 task from an elemental and basic point of view, which will always be valid regardless of technologies and methods.4

In an age of over-specialization and fragmentation of the design disciplines, Kahn would deplore the proliferation of “construction managers” and “owner’s representatives,” insisting that the architect once more should become the leader of all aspects of design and construction.

Design Especially for mature students and under the tutelage of the right teacher, Kahn’s seminar approach to design with its reliance on Socratic and Talmudic techniques continues to be appropriate. His emphasis on critical thinking, on testing one’s intuition, on the truths that are best conveyed through metaphor, and the importance of ﬁnding one’s own way are timeless and will always be essential for the education of the architect. Despite the advent of computer technology, Kahn’s emphasis on drawing as a means of expression and as the primary design tool for architects has continuing relevance. No doubt Kahn would be sympathetic to Rollo May’s warning about the excessive reliance on computer technology by many of today’s architecture students who prefer the use of the computer over free-hand drawing. As noted previously, freehand drawing as a means of communication was stressed throughout the Penn curriculum, no doubt a result of its Beaux-Arts tradition. Kahn reinforced this tradition, empha sizing to his students the relationship between drawing and intuitive thinking. He taught that drawing was a way of thinking. The notion that continues to be conveyed in some schools that the architect should be simply a satisﬁer of the client’s program and a solver of problems needs to be reconsidered in Kahn’s spirit of a search for the Unmeasurable. Thanks to May, Wallas, Poincaré, Edwards and others, we now have a clearer understanding of this process and the link between the unconscious and creativity. It is appropriate to ask whether it is possible to do what Kahn did not: to articulate, at least in part, a way to move into Silence to discover a deeper foundation for creative work. If so, then Kahn’s approach may offer a newfound relevance for architects.

A case study Using the following case study I will suggest a way to enrich teaching in the architecture classroom and studio based on an adaptation of Kahn’s philosophy and pedagogy informed by what we now understand from existential psychology about creativity and the unconscious. In the University of Memphis’ Master of Architecture program, I teach a graduate seminar and concurrent design studio focusing on Kahn’s theories and bringing to bear his pedagogy. In these classes, learning takes place 102 Searching for the Unmeasurable through an integrated process of reading, discussion and design. In the studio, I favor both the group discussion format favored in the Master’s Class and the traditional one-to-one critique to guide students’ progress. In the seminar we read and discuss Kahn’s lectures as well as books and articles by others, emphasizing an understanding of his theories. Illustrated student presentations analyze his built and unbuilt projects. Discussions are open- ended, emphasizing the Socratic method in which the response to a question is often another question. I frequently interject anecdotes from my own experience and draw parallels from psychology, history, anthropology, religion and biology. In a version of the Talmudic method, I sometimes recount myths and fables to help make a point. These discussions include an introduction to psychological theories of the unconscious and its role in creativity, including the phenomenon of sudden insight associated with a breakthrough from the unconscious into the conscious. As in most schools of architecture, we undertake the design of hypothetical architectural projects in the studio. Typical assignments have included an interfaith chapel, an art gallery and a conference center. Instead of beginning with a program of client’s requirements, however, as is typical in most schools of architecture, we start by inquiring into the essential nature of the project. Bearing in mind Kahn’s warning about the danger of jumping into design prematurely, we first ask, “What does a chapel want to be?” or “What does an art gallery want to be?” Before undertaking research into precedents, the site or regulatory requirements, each student makes a series of provisional, intuitive “Form diagrams,” as Kahn referred to them. These are intended to identify the essential “inseparable parts” of the building type under consideration, including the relationship of the parts to the whole and to each other and an underlying sense of Order. In our search we ask, for example, “What is the Form Chapel? What is the Form Art Gallery?” This is hard work. The students are expected to grapple with the problem, to abandon left-brain analytical thinking and attempt to move into Silence, to gain access to the unconscious. As in the seminar, I also favor the use of the Socratic method in the studio to stimulate the search, questioning design assumptions, values and alternatives. I often use analogies to make a point, for example referring to the relationships between the human circulatory and skeletal systems when discussing the integration of mechanical and structural systems in buildings. In the midst of their search for Form, students are encouraged to be on the alert for the kind of sudden, unexpected insight into the problem described by May and Poincaré. They are instructed to pay close attention to their dreams and to be particularly vigilant during intervals of rest, relaxation or recreation, such as when taking a shower or exercising. The resulting Form diagrams are loose, freehand sketches similar to the Beaux-Arts esquisse. They are also akin to Kahn’s “energy drawings,” made quickly, intuitively and without regard to scale or considerations such as Kahn and contemporary architectural education 103 site, materials, orientation, etc. Use of the computer is discouraged at this stage so as to avoid blocking access to the “deeper dimensions of our own experience” described by May.5 Once some insight into Form has been gained, the students proceed with precedent studies, building code research and site analysis. A program of requirements may now be distributed, depending on the nature of the assignment, to be used only as a guide. Design follows, the process of moving from Silence or the Unmeasurable to Light or the measurable, keeping in mind the prior realization of Form and subjecting it to testing and revision as necessary. It is emphasized that the students are expected to use the program as a point of departure for the translation of areas into spaces, but always remaining open to the opportunity for the inclusion of “unprogramed” space not indicated in the program but suggested by insight into Form. This involves a circuitous feedback loop in which an initial inspiration is tested, refined and revised. The students often find themselves immersed in the Treasury of the Shadows, moving from Silence to Light and then from Light to Silence in search of additional insight. The sudden creative breakthrough is unpredictable and does not always occur, of course. When such insight comes, however, it is usually memorable. One of my graduate students has described how such an insight changed her approach to an assignment to design an art gallery located in a garden. She explains that her initial understanding of Form involved three separate pavilions: the main gallery, a utility structure including restrooms and mechanical equipment, and “building 3,” a vaguely defined “multipurpose” room:

The art gallery and utility structure emerged beautifully. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about building 3. I struggled with it. Every time I tried to design this building, it felt wrong. I found myself avoiding work on that area of the project. I was not sure if it really wanted to be a multipurpose room. It felt without a soul with this function. I started to get really frustrated. I found myself thinking about the project 24/7 and even waking in the middle of the night thinking about it. Then I realized that if I rotated the whole pavilion it would relate more to the garden’s existing surroundings. Once I rotated the pavilion, a new opportunity showed itself: the area between the art gallery and the utility structure wanted to be a plaza. It made sense to create a seating area and a place of gathering. When you are enjoying a garden after a long walk through an art pavilion, you want to eat and drink something. Building 3 did not want to be a multipurpose room. It never did; it wanted to be a café! When I realized that, I felt goose bumps! I felt an urge to go get a piece of paper and start sketching this new plaza and café. It had ﬁnally showed itself to me. 104 Searching for the Unmeasurable Note the similarities between this description of the creative breakthrough and May’s accounts. In particular, notice the student’s sense that she had not invented the solution; it had “showed itself” to her, as though it had always existed. To use Kahn’s terminology, its “existence will” had been realized, accompanied by a renewed sense of energy and purpose. The nature of the building had become manifest as a result of a persistent search for Form. As the students’ designs evolve, a more analytical, left-brain kind of thinking is required and use of the computer may now be appropriate. However, the hope is that by beginning with the intuitive search for Form aided by freehand drawing, design will proceed informed by a deeper understanding. Student evaluations of the seminar and studio seem to validate this approach to teaching architecture. Typical comments include:

I found the idea of starting a project using Kahn’s concept of Form fabulous. I don’t think I can ever start a project any other way. Once we learn about Kahn’s ideas, it is impossible to ignore them. (The instructor) always asks questions instead of answering them. Most of the time I don’t have the answer right away, but his questions motivate me to think. This class has truly helped me understand the way I have been thinking for years but didn’t quite consciously comprehend. (The class) focused on reaching a level of design that is not always reached in the studio setting.

My experience as a teacher suggests that if Kahn’s unconventional approach to design can be to some extent demystified through an understanding of the psychology of creativity, it has continued validity and should be considered as part of a new model for the education of today’s students. An important key to this demystification is to understand Kahn in the light of the relationship between creativity and the unconscious. Drawing on the discoveries of existential psychology, I have suggested an approach for improving access to the creative power of the unconscious by students of architecture. This method emphasizes five pedagogical strategies:

1. An introduction into the relationship between creativity and the unconscious. 2. An understanding of the phenomenon of the sudden creative breakthrough and the conditions required to make it more likely, including alternating periods of intense work and rest. 3. The use of metaphor, myth, and fable to gain access to intuitive ways of knowing. Kahn and contemporary architectural education 105 4. The use of freehand drawings in the early stages of a design project, rather than reliance on the computer, in order to draw on the unconscious as a source of creativity. 5. An emphasis on the testing of intuitive insights.

I have attempted to show that Kahn’s system of professional values and his design pedagogy continue to have validity in today’s schools of architecture. His regard for the place of history and for the role of the architect as a leader in society, his warnings about settling for the merely fashionable and the dangers of a shallow professionalism, and his admonitions about an over-emphasis on technology are especially relevant for our culture. Perhaps the most important lessons for today are to be found in Kahn’s emphasis on questioning, on inquiring into the essence of things, on ﬁnding one’s own way, on thinking problems out from ﬁrst principles. His use of Socratic and Talmudic techniques offers a way to develop these creative, critical thinking skills. Finally, through the rediscovery of Kahn’s approach to teaching design, I believe that today’s students can learn to allow the solution to a creative problem to emerge from the unconscious, thus tapping a richer source of insight. Today’s teachers and students would be well-advised to heed the wisdom of Kahn’s advice to allow the solution to a design problem to emerge from its nature, asking “What does it want to be?” instead of “What do I want it to be?”

Notes 1 David G. De Long, letter to the author, March 26, 2014. 2 Kahn, as quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), p. 31. 3 August Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), pp. 188–189. 4 Anthony E. Tzamtzis, letter to the author, November 16, 2011. 5 Rollo May, The Courage to Create (New York: Bantam Books, 1976), p. 76. This page intentionally left bank Part II A teacher of teachers and practitioners This page intentionally left bank 8 Teachers and practitioners

Many former Master’s Class students have had long, successful careers in practice. Many others have become teachers or combined teaching and practice. Kahn modeled a career devoted to both teaching and practice and believed that each informed the other. It is one of the ways in which his philosophy and professional values most strongly influenced Master’s Class graduates. While no exact figures exist, among the alumni whose subsequent careers were documented for this study, more than half went into teaching. It was, perhaps, as a teacher of teachers that Kahn made his most far- reaching contribution, for through them his ideas and values are still being passed along to the current generation of architecture students. The post-Second World War period saw a new wave of American students “who had acquired a stimulating education in schools like Harvard or Penn” and who began to influence architectural education in Europe. “Alumni of Kahn’s pedagogy, like Bernard Huet, became moving forces in shaping the new schools that were built on the ruins of the Beaux-Arts after 1968, a somewhat paradoxical situation given Kahn’s own training by Cret. . . . ”1 Huet was the founder of the Institut d’Etude et Recherche Architecturale et Urbaine, editor of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and an influential voice in the historic preservation movement in France.2 Kahn’s influence was not confined to the university. David Polk, one of Kahn’s associates in his office and a member of the Penn faculty, said, “I think the sort of upheaval in one’s own mind that Kahn caused was so powerful that it made everybody in school want to work for him.”3 Komendant observed that Kahn’s office was

more like an artist’s study or studio than an architect’s ofﬁce. Young architects working for Kahn, mostly his former students, obtained an excellent education. The most brilliant ones worked for Kahn one or two years and after that usually established their own ofﬁces or became professors.4

Among those Master’s Class alumni who have spent all or a significant part of their careers teaching, Kahn’s influence has been especially pro- nounced. Glen Milne (1964) summed up this lifelong impact: 110 A teacher of teachers and practitioners Kahn set me free in the most incredible way. . . . Many became disciples. I did not. I felt it was a disservice to him and his search for truth to merely imitate his vocabulary and narrative. . . . He was the best teacher in my life. He facilitated a very difficult journey of personal striving for insight . . . and transformed us in the process. I in turn passed his spirit along in 30 years of teaching architecture.5

Max A. Robinson (1964) tells of a 1984 ACSA/AIA conference at Cranbrook Academy where Kahn’s legacy as a teacher of teachers was dramatically demonstrated:

Lee Copeland, Penn’s dean at that time, gave a presentation on Kahn and noted that many of his students went on to careers in academia rather than in practice. He asked those in the audience, which was mainly composed of faculty representatives from architecture schools from all over the country, who had been students in Kahn’s Master’s Studio to stand, and over 40 percent of us did so. The implication was that perhaps the greatest inﬂuence of Kahn’s teaching was the shaping of American architectural education for the next 50 years or so by disseminating his teaching through his former students.6

As Gavin Ross (1968) describes Kahn’s inﬂuence on his own teaching:

Lou was the teacher who articulated the meaning of architecture so clearly and gave an intellectual credibility to and an understanding of what he called the Unmeasurable in our work. In particular, the essential quest for each project was to deﬁne one’s understanding of the nature of the institution to be housed (the Form), and to express that in the design. This fundamental approach was the guiding principle in my teaching. This gave an artistic validity to design rather than the problem solving and aesthetic approach to architecture which had so frustrated me prior to spending my year with Lou. The whole idea of the spirit of place could therefore be striven for and hopefully coherently realized.7

Michael Bednar (1967), reﬂecting on his forty-year teaching career, points out the inﬂuences of Kahn’s use of metaphor and his emphasis on structure and light on Bednar’s approach to the design studio:

Projects undertaken by students in my design studios were often cultural institutions; library, theater, school, museum. The biggest concern was the evolving role of that institution in contemporary society and culture. Students were encouraged to interpret and express the given spatial program in the physical Form of the building design. Metaphors were often employed to create analogous references. For example, the library was considered as a book of knowledge or the museum was considered Teachers and practitioners 111 as a scaffold for art. In the best of examples, the building forms that resulted were new expressions of institutional building Form. In terms of architectural execution, materials and structure were always an integral part of each design. Students were encouraged to consider the physical reality and presence of a building from the initial design conception. They always designed with materials and structure in mind rather than applying them after the Form was conceived. Simi - larly, natural light was always an important and integral consideration. Building designs were responsive to the needs of light in the spatial program. Building sections were invented in response to site orientation to produce natural light of varying quantity and quality. My design criticism was almost always indirect, through analogies, metaphors and examples in nature. This forced students to engage the critique and make it a part of their own design process. Teaching students how to think about architectural design was the real result of teaching, not the actual design produced.8

Reflections on teaching and practice In order to document how the philosophy and professional values of Kahn’s former students who have combined teaching and practice were influenced by their exposure to Kahn, a sample of these alumni were invited to write a critical reflection about the overall arc of their professional careers, beginning with graduation from the Master’s Class. They were asked to consider their goals (both accomplished and unaccomplished), career twists and turns (planned and unplanned), successes and failures. A description of both their professional practice and their teaching career were to be included. They were requested to discuss the motives that led to taking a particular path and whether that path did in the long run seem meaningful or not. And Kahn’s influence as absorbed in the Master’s Class, whether positive or negative, relevant or irrelevant, was to be examined in the context of their subsequent careers. While the reflections that follow, arranged in chronological order according to the year the author spent in the Master’s Class, show a wide variety of career paths taken, they also show a striking consensus about Kahn’s long- term influence.

Notes 1 Joan Ockman, ed., with Rebecca Williamson, research ed., Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America (Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 2012), p. 320. 2 Oxford Grove Art, “Bernard Huet,” www.answers.com/topic/bernard-huet-1. 3 David Polk, as quoted in Tohio Nakamura, ed., “Louis I. Kahn, Conception and Meaning,” Louis I. Kahn (Tokyo: Architecture + Urbanism Publishing Co., 1983), p. 232. 112 A teacher of teachers and practitioners 4 August Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), p. 172. 5 Glen Milne, letter to the author, September 7, 2011. 6 Robinson, Max A., “Reﬂections Upon Kahn’s Teaching,” unpublished essay, September 15, 2011. 7 Gavin Ross, letter to the author, May 26, 2012. 8 Michael Bednar, “Kahn Teaching Inﬂuence,” letter to the author, July 13, 2012. 9 After Lou

John Tyler Sidener Jr., Master’s Class of Fall 1962

Louis Kahn was a mystical ﬁgure to us on the West Coast. Out west we did drawings, models, and even hands-on construction. Talking about the “spirit of architecture” was not something we were used to. Then here we were, me the Kid from Kalifornia, from wide open spaces, from the world of Tom Wolfe’s Kandy Colored Tangerine Flaked Streamlined Baby, sitting in an overheated room listening to this interesting little guru talk about a brick, about procession, and about two institutions at Dacca facing each other across a dry arroyo. Philosophical architecture was a bit of a shock.

Learning from Kahn outside In the fall of 1961, before the first term began, I was able to meet Kahn outside of the school environment. On a visit to his office, thanks to a letter of introduction from Joseph Esherick, I was excited to learn that Kahn was a drawer and a builder after all. He talked of building a house for Joe’s sister in Chestnut Hill, he asked this kid why wood beams twist, and he talked about handling glare on the coast of California. Also outside the studio, there was Progressive Architecture’s issue on the Philadelphia School, books of Kahn’s drawings, and the informative book by Vincent Scully. There was also the Richards Medical Research building under construction, public housing going up at Mill Creek in West Philadelphia, and the Esherick House to visit. That house was something we could grasp, and especially the cabinetry of the Eshericks’ uncle, the wood sculptor Wharton Esherick. Kahn’s drawings in Scully’s book captured me: unselfconscious, rapidly drawn visions of a city; diagrams of urban movement; beautiful sketches of Rome and San Gimignano. However, it was the infrastructure drawings that struck a responsive chord. They were a revelation – drawings and diagrams describing movement and parking as canals and docks. Here was a man I could really listen to and learn from. It would be a year before we Civic Design students entered Kahn’s class. Our two-year program leading to Master’s degrees in both City Planning and Architecture meant a year of Civic Design and planning studios, a summer internship, and then finally Kahn’s studio. 114 A teacher of teachers and practitioners So that first fall we had a Civic Design studio with Dean G. Holmes Perkins; Edmund Bacon, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Planning Commission; and Bill Porter, a designer in Kahn’s office, later to become Dean at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Right away I alienated Dean Perkins and Edmund Bacon by discovering and being obviously enamored by Kahn’s diagrams of movement, “canals and docks,” his Carcassone vision for the very center. For our project area along the Schuylkill River, we were to propose a way of building over the railyards adjacent to campus. My walk from Spruce Street across the Schuylkill River bisected the site, and I had grown to appreciate it as a place where I experienced openness before once again plunging into the constrictions of West Philadelphia or Center City. This sense of openness in a tightly enclosed city and Kahn’s movement ideas brought out an important part of my background: life in California was about movement, not of repose as in Philadelphia and therefore in most of Kahn’s buildings. I grew up in the great irrigated Central Valley of California, descended from a carpenter grandfather who supervised construction and operation of one of the first pumping plants and canals of the Federal Water Projects. My great-uncle was an engineer for the Southern Pacific Railroad. My favorite uncle ran a road grader on state highway projects. Infrastructure was in my blood.

The architecture of infrastructure Excited and inspired by Kahn’s drawings, but not yet his teachings, I plunged right in. I did a sketch for a hotel over a spiraling interchange between the Schuylkill Expressway and the proposed South Street freeway. I was doing “viaduct architecture,” following Kahn’s dictum of revealing the plumbing and ducts even though we hate it so people could understand how the city works. Little did I know that Bacon had fired Kahn for his viaduct plan. Kahn was proposing a whole new “Chinese Wall.” Bacon had spent years getting rid of the original wall, a high solid viaduct carrying multiple tracks from the 30th Street Station across the Schuylkill River into the middle of Center City. And here I was promoting more elevated fantasies – even eventually a world’s fair on the platforms partly inspired by Paul Thiry’s original sculpted site plan for the Seattle World’s Fair just getting underway and by my memories of the 1941 World’s Fair on Treasure Island in San Francisco. The first jury review was excruciating – I was used to gentle California juries, not these abrasive, contentious meetings in which the faculty seemed to use us as focal points for their internecine rivalries. I was flattened. (Later, it was a relief to find that Kahn himself was a gentle and nurturing critic, oblivious to and above the rivalries.) After Lou: John Tyler Sidener Jr. 115 After that first abortive project, I was convinced Perkins and Bacon were going to fire me. I took a quick break and flew to California for the interview for my architectural license, got licensed, and brought back to Philadelphia with me the program for a competition to design a new California governor’s mansion. Dean Perkins assured me I was in the program to stay and graciously allowed me to forego the rest of the studio assignments and work on the competition. While I worked on the competition at my table in the studio, it was actually another “outside the studio” experience. Bill Porter offered to give me private critiques. These turned out to be extremely helpful long tutoring sessions in which he in effect told me how he thought Mr. Kahn might approach the problem. My design, suited for the Sacramento climate but not the Spanish hacienda esthetic of that little city, satisfied me but not the jury. It was more Corbu than Lou, but with the ceremonial paths and scalloped clichés we students were copying at that stage.

The Master’s Class: learning from Kahn inside I was still enamored of Kahn’s Carcassone scheme for Center City, the movement diagrams, and the possibilities for an architecture of movement, and was disappointed to find we’d not be learning more about that in the studio. Instead we had fill-in problems while Kahn traveled. We were stuck with Norman Rice, a long-time faculty member of Kahn’s Master’s Class, but not a good emissary of Kahn’s philosophy. Under him the studio was just another design studio, not an exploration of ideas. Not only was a philosophical, verbal approach to architecture a bit of a shock, so was Kahn’s way of teaching. Unlike our earlier schooling where “studio” meant sitting at a drawing board and having work reviewed right there by the teacher, we met around a seminar table with Kahn in the middle by the blackboard. Mostly he talked about what was on his mind. I felt like I was listening to the guru under the proverbial Banyan tree. But here I was, nonetheless, escaping the draft (the Berlin Wall call-up), learning to live on a dark and narrow street, and listening. Gradually I began to understand the power of the man’s mind, his honesty and frankness, as he revealed what he was thinking as he continued to seek what appeared to be his kind of truth in architecture. He was pushing us to think, not just do. I think it was then that I began my own lifelong search, although I didn’t realize it at the time. His Socratic musings, asking questions before giving the answers, were always worth listening to – and listening again at the next class meeting when he would sometimes contradict his earlier conclusions, as I was recently reminded by a former classmate. In those days Kahn was split between the final work on the Salk Research Center in California and the initial planning and design of the capital of Bangladesh in Dacca. He was gone much of the time, and when he was in 116 A teacher of teachers and practitioners the seminar he was obviously tired, dependent on Norman Rice and the engineer Robert LeRicolais to keep discussions going. Sometimes he would reach for a student project and use that as a springboard to a discussion, mostly with LeRicolais. I gathered we were really supposed to just listen, although one of my Civic Design classmates constantly challenged Kahn, as he did in other seminars. Kahn was obviously disturbed by this. Since Kahn’s discussions were like a foreign language to me, I really didn’t get much out of the studio. It was later, when I had a tutorial with Denise Scott Brown, that I learned through her patient explanations what Kahn was saying, as I had with Bill Porter earlier. Fellow students also were important, especially two students from abroad, Terry Farrell and Marc Emery, son of the editor of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. Terry brought the London sensibility, Beaux-Arts mixed with brutalism. Marc, who’d been Le Corbusier’s on-site assistant at the La Tourette monastery, brought the CIAM grid and a worldview. The world for us got bigger. Meanwhile, our Civic Design heads were being packed with other stuff – Ian McHarg showing us how to find where we shouldn’t build, Paul Davidoff and others on the planning faculty telling us maybe we shouldn’t build at all without asking the future users.

Back to the west Confused and a bit overwhelmed by the antagonism to designers from the planning faculty, I was anxious to get back west. I passed up some good offers in Boston and Philadelphia, and headed back to California, to Sacramento. For a summer I crawled around in the derelict 1850s–60s buildings of Sacramento’s skid row, measuring them as part of the reconstruction of the historic waterfront. After a summer with the winos and bottle collectors (the whole area had been raised a level to get above the Sacramento River floods), I went to Berkeley to the office doing the reconstruction planning. After those months in old buildings, the impact of Kahn on my thinking began to hit home. I began a professional lifetime of saying to myself, sometimes without knowing it, “What would Kahn think about this, what would he do?” I realized he would ask, “What makes it a place?” It occurred to me that the infrastructure was the key to the place, making it a whole; that the streets are buildings, as Kahn said. And, in a sense, it could be a museum of the power of infrastructure. To the important bits of infrastructure, we were adding the modern “docks,” parking garages. The gracious historic buildings where Levi Strauss started selling blue dungarees and Leland Stanford and the others started the Central Pacific railroad were important. But there was also Sutter’s Landing, where goods were brought up the river for the gold fields; the terminus later of the Pony After Lou: John Tyler Sidener Jr. 117 Express, and even later the Central Pacific (later Southern Pacific) railroad; the grid of streets, which were filled with drays as in the aisles of a giant warehouse; and at night, the streets and wooden sidewalks which we rebuilt as if filled with all the boisterous life of the returning flush miners. The buildings were the framers, the backdrops; the streets were for procession and activity, and I understood why Kahn had focused so much attention on the central open space and rivulet at the Salk Center and on the spaces at Dacca which created the sense of place and defined the way the institutions related to that place and space.

Further inﬂuence on my infrastructure thinking Historic Sacramento was hardly a place for “urban visions,” but my next assignment was. This was a new urban design plan for the City of Oakland. Here was an opportunity to frame districts with elevated highways and boulevards, for marking important points either with tall buildings or open spaces, and creating opportunities for innovative mixed-use developments. I couldn’t help but think of the way Kahn redeﬁned the character of Center City’s William Penn plan.

Influence on the architecture of movement and stopping I was asked to design two stations for the elevated Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART). My first thought was what would Kahn do? Would he ask what a station wants to be? That question framed my thinking substantially. A station does not want to be a unique free-standing building; it wants to be a pause in a powerful movement line, a pause where people enter and exit, and where they transition to the ground. My design was in one way symbolically an open hand, welcoming people and light. On the other hand, the glazed openings on either side and the extensions of open platforms for several hundred feet became lined with “fins” – further apart at the extensions and closer together toward the center of the stopped train to indicate slowing and stopping. By now I was also working with some colleagues partnered with Alvar Aalto on a library and influenced by the simplicity of the fins on that and some of his other buildings and by the fins on the La Tourette monastery.

Influence on teaching At this point my career took a new turn – the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley appointed me as a lecturer to teach a small urban design studio. I inherited eight of Christopher Alexander’s acolytes – brilliant students – and I was able to conduct a Kahn-like seminar/discussion. Kahn’s Socratic ways became clear and stuck with me, especially when I had students able to frame the questions. Each of the eight looked at a low-income 118 A teacher of teachers and practitioners neighborhood with the eyes of a different discipline. Starting from a variation on “What does a neighborhood want to be?” the student questions invariably led to the moral dilemma: should we as architects try to impose our views? Later, with University of Washington students we had a seminar prepara- tory to designing a new capital city for Alaska. After researching the processes leading to Canberra; Washington, DC; Olympia, Washington; Brasilia; and others, the design students faced for maybe the first time the questions of “Why” and the moral dilemma of designing something, which could be a drain on public financing, take valuable land, and cause dislocation of many people. The interaction was intense, and even though they (and I) were anxious to design, I think these students carried with them the questions they’d faced. I know I always did. Kahn’s “What does it want to be?” was always paired with the the question instilled in us by the planning program: “Does it need to be built at all?” My design career then took a decidedly un-Kahnian turn. I was asked to join a firm in Hawaii building a new town and The Sea Ranch in northern California. I was doing low-cost suburban housing, working with the super- graphics innovator, and master planning two plantations. This was the 1970s, and I was armed with the Whole Earth Catalog, books on sustainable homesteading, and McHarg’s methodology. At the same time, the University of Hawaii asked me to join the nascent architecture school, and I was teaching a studio – searching again for “What would Kahn do?” in the tropics – and writing about Oahu and Honolulu urban design issues. Hawaii’s architects understood the power of tropical light on buildings – accentuating form with shadows – and for filtered interior light. Kahn’s research pods from the Salk Center would fit happily in Hawaii with their teak screens for light control and natural ventilation.

Research and writing Teaching gave me the opportunity to reflect on what I had learned from Kahn and from the Penn Civic Design program and how it might provide a framework for understanding Oahu’s urbanization, which was rapidly replacing the sugar and pineapple plantations. The University of Hawaii was beginning to contemplate a second campus toward west or central Oahu, which could be what Denise Scott Brown would call a “generator of urban form,” assuming urban development would follow the campus. With some student assistants we prepared diagrams of some of the options. The part of Kahn that influenced me here was graphic. Most former students don’t know of Kahn’s urban community work, illustrating his and Oscar Stonorov’s ideas. Like many things in the world of research, innovation, and urban design, it took thirty years, but one of the options we looked at, a West Oahu site, is now coming to fruition. After Lou: John Tyler Sidener Jr. 119 The local AIA chapter had a terrific monthly magazine, which provided a good forum for my writings on my research. One article, about an idea for a “knuckle” in Kahn-speak, a “node” in Lynch terms, to knit the UH campus and the neighboring community center together stirred a lot of attention. Again, thirty years later, some of it is coming to fruition around a light rail station.

Berkeley again and the Beaux-Arts After a few years going rural, with a stint as government architect/planner in the far western Paciﬁc and the small island of Lanai in Hawaii, I returned to the Berkeley campus as a Ph.D. student and Director of Urban Design for an urban design plan of the campus. Having disliked the Beaux-Arts buildings of the central core of the campus as a child (the monumental scale scared me) and as an undergraduate, I was able to look at them again through Kahn’s eyes. The inﬂuence on his designs of formality, symmetry, columnar façades with deep shadows, and openings for natural light was as if new to me. I partnered with a historian to produce a small research study of the opportunities to help restore their importance to the campus, which was being overrun with inhuman brutalist buildings. The humanity of Kahn came through my memories – not from studio but from what I had learned from Kahn “outside.”

Making architecture with the land At that time I recalled Kahn’s scheme for a building complex above the Berkeley campus, a competition to design the Lawrence Hall of Science up near the Bevatron. I had barely noticed his drawings when they were displayed at Penn – they were in charcoal on yellow buff paper, which apparently irritated the jury and they went for a scheme drawn with many hours of stippling. This, I discovered, was a tragedy. Kahn understood the power of symbolizing the earthquake fault just below the site, by scooping out a trench like a fault-slip. The winner is like a series of cofﬁns, ugly, and very visible from the campus below. Here was an architecture of land shaping, of symbolic geological forms, of metaphorical faults, totally new and unnoticed. I ﬁnally found photos of his model and drawings in a news note in the California magazine Arts & Architecture.

Drawing as a means to architecture In a recent New York Times book review, Stephen Heller made the point that “nothing is more primal . . . than that we routinely use marks, signs, and symbols.” CAD technology has caused a shortcut, where “talking” with 120 A teacher of teachers and practitioners a marker as Kahn did is disappearing in architecture. So every once in a while I thumb through my books with Kahn’s drawings of Rome, hill towns, and Greek temples, and his diagrams of movement, and am awed all over again. The legacy from his Beaux-Arts education was passed on to us in the studio. He taught me to draw an idea with conviction, not to create a perfect drawing, and to use drawing and diagramming to convey ideas to professionals and non-professionals alike. His drawings at our time there were crude, made with large markers or charcoal, probably because his eyesight was failing. There was a moment in a student jury when the master’s students favored extremely hard pencil on white presentation boards, very hard to see. Kahn got so excited about his thoughts that he made vigorous diagrams and notes on one student’s boards, not seeing that there were already drawings there. Lucky student. In my own academic career, I made a point of teaching freehand drawing – an ACSA review at the University of Hawaii commended me for an “innovative” course – as if they didn’t know drawing was at the heart of architectural education for most of its years. I’ve also done several competitions in the last few years, making a point of doing only freehand drawing – the Hong Kong AIA gave me an award for just that.

Kahn on light makes a room Kahn didn’t talk about light much in our studio, but it pervaded his work – dealing with glare at the Salk Center, modulating the exterior of a church. We knew he tried to “reach for the light” with monitors on top of the community building at Mill Creek, and that he was working on a library at Phillips Exeter Academy where the stacks are outside a great light-ﬁlled space with carrels on the perimeter so you “bring the book to the light.” It overwhelmed me with its power when I visited it in the 1970s. As Terry Farrell and I and others from the studio got involved in elevated and subway transit, we all tried hard to bring natural light into all the public spaces. Farrell’s Kowloon Station in Hong Kong is particularly successful.

Music and architecture As an undergrad at Berkeley, I had the good fortune to hear Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s lectures on the basis for design. One was on rhythm, accompanied by bongo drummers. Soon I hid from my Modernist professors and read Wittkower on Greek harmonies and proportion, and took some courses in classical and modern music. Over the years, I helped to design a concert hall for the Berkeley campus, thanks to my boss Vernon DeMars liking my San Francisco Symphony Hall thesis. I even got to help him with a proposal for a new Symphony Hall and did several Opera House competitions. But I never really made a link between architecture and the music within. After Lou: John Tyler Sidener Jr. 121 Seeing Kahn’s Kimbell Museum and its light and rhythms made me wonder if he consciously made the link – I know he did love to play Bach on the piano. I wish I’d had the chance to talk with him about it. As I studied the Beaux-Arts buildings on campus, I realized the importance of symmetry, tonality, and order, and how they inﬂuenced him. Did he go further and think about leitmotifs? I’ve written a few small articles on the subject and am hoping I’ll be able to organize my thoughts and research into a small monograph one of these days.

Kahn the maker of places Many of Kahn’s buildings are hard, almost industrial, not very nice to touch or lean against, not particularly designed for human comfort. The Richards Medical Research building is a case in point – I was struck by the coldness of the interior public spaces, the hallways, the foil on the windows to cut out glare and heat. Critics have had a field day over the years, and we in the studio were no different – how could The Master create such a difficult place to be in? But twenty years later, I was invited to teach for a semester at Penn. One day I was having lunch at the faculty club with a group of deans sitting at the neighboring table. One asked the Dean of the medical school, “How come you haven’t torn down that awful Kahn building? The windows are covered with foil, researchers complain about the narrow halls and the dust from the exposed ducts, etc.” The med school Dean’s response was telling: “No way could we give up that building – the people in it may complain, they have to build dust-free trailers inside, but they love the building because it’s manipulable, it has wonderful light, privacy and sociability at the same time, and it’s a very personal place.” So Kahn may have seemed like a mystic. He was distracted, but fifty years later I’m still learning from that wonderful little man. My career has taken me all over the world – Southeast Asia, Japan, Hong Kong, Moscow – doing design at all scales, including houses, neighborhoods, towns, city districts, rural plantations. And for all kinds of clients, including corporations and neighborhood citizen groups. It’s more peripatetic than consistent, hardly ever definable as architecture in a standard way. But throughout, no matter the scale, I tried to seek order as Kahn taught, to learn and think at the same time, to create an “idea” before leaping into making form, to see design as a way of celebrating functions, materials, processes, people and institutions.

Most important: idea, metaphor, and myth Kahn’s Berkeley Hill Fault idea was a metaphor for an institution arising after a split in the terrain, a very powerful idea. It was, as far as I know, one of his most metaphorical projects, unhappily not built. But it stuck with me, and with inspiration from the landscape architect Grant Jones, who 122 A teacher of teachers and practitioners created a park in the ﬂatlands of eastern Washington based on his imagined myth of an eagle creating a small lake in his image with stones brought in to represent local Native American stories, I did a few projects based on stories. One of the most interesting and appreciated is Central Park in San Jose with hints of the remnants of Spanish artesian wells, the agricultural grid pattern, and the former orchards where now they raise silicon. Another was my entry in a competition for a museum in Fresno building on stories from all of the remnant cultures – Native American, Chinese laborers, immigrant farm workers, Spanish rancheros, and modern corporate ranchers.

So what did Kahn do, and what did I learn? In his gentle way, Kahn led us out of “doing buildings” into asking questions and thinking about the roots of form as defined by light, structure, and finally myth. The capital at Dacca, while most people don’t feel it, includes the two houses of parliament facing each other like two tigers, as he said, across a wasteland. But mostly what I learned from Kahn came from “outside” rather than “inside” the studio. What I learned outside influenced me over the last fifty years of practice, teaching, and writing, and influences me still. I may soon start a large mixed-use project in China, and already I’m beginning to ask myself “What would Kahn do?” And I draw, a little shaky these days, but I draw. 10 Kahn’s voice

Richard T. Reep Sr., Master’s Class of 1962

My undergraduate architectural education in the early 1950s at the University of Minnesota was grounded in Modern architecture. I readily accepted its premise of a fresh, original, new world of architecture. Forms and images of past eras were no longer acceptable in the modern world. Modern walls and roofs were considered to be functional elements that fulfilled a practical purpose, not to carry symbols of status or social position. Modern focused on making a better façade, cleaner, leaner, orderly masses. It produced buildings that were suitable to a growing, democratic society. Applied without emotion or feeling, Modern began to produce sterile forms. Recognizing this, a few architects in the 1960s, like the stylists of the automobile industry, began to apply decorative shapes and forms to the exterior. Their buildings, though more appealing to the public, seemed empty of meaning. My art teacher in undergraduate school, Walter Quirt, challenged Modern’s rationalism. His abstract–expressionist approach to oil painting explored the conflicts between thought and feeling. He discovered, from an artist’s viewpoint, that thought qualified by feeling generated straight lines; feeling qualified by thought generated curved lines. His beginning strokes on a canvas, seemingly aimless curves and colors, were directed by spontaneous energy – feeling. In those images were discovered forms that he then directed by purpose – thought, to communicate an idea. Modern architecture, to him, with its foundation in rigid rationality, negated feeling. These insights awakened me to the limits of the orthodox Modern architecture I was being taught. I wanted to find more depth in the design process. Several years following undergraduate school I applied to graduate Master’s programs, soliciting Harvard, MIT, and Penn. I knew a little about the Boston schools from their reputations and from classmates who had attended. Penn was academically appealing and offered a nice scholarship. The month I was accepted, April 1961, Progressive Architecture published the Jan C. Rowan article “Wanting to Be, The Philadelphia School.” I was pleased and gratified to learn of the intellectual treasures in store that related to the emphasis on feeling and depth that my art teacher had described. I 124 A teacher of teachers and practitioners knew I had made the right choice. Nine months at Penn with Louis Kahn carried the promise of insight to the design process I was searching for. Here was a Modern architect with a philosophy. I learned of Kahn’s philosophy through both the Rowan article and from his classroom comments. I gleaned it also through other courses at Penn, especially Ian McHarg’s “Man and Environment” and Romaldo Giurgola’s “Theories and Criticism of Architecture.” These latter two introduced the philosophies of many other thinkers. In all, an excellent liberal arts education. Although Kahn made no direct reference in class to the language used in the Rowan article, his philosophy came through in everything he did and talked about. His philosophy gave me incentive to intellectually analyze the design process. I dove in headfirst. Following graduation from Penn I returned to practice in St. Paul. Strangely, it was very difficult to design even a simple building. Every time I drew a line I heard Lou Kahn’s soft, thoughtful voice in my head: “What is the meaning of that line? Why did you use that material? Is there another way?” The intense concentration and soul-searching rigor applied in Kahn’s class had not subsided. I needed a period of emotional digestion, and decided to return to the academic field.

Teaching In the Fall of 1963 I had the opportunity to join Harlan McClure on the faculty of the Clemson School of Architecture. Dean McClure had been one of my professors in undergraduate school at the University of Minnesota. Teaching allowed me time to listen again to Kahn’s voice and translate it to my own, in my own way. The Socratic method worked with a teacher who had the personality, the abilities, and some say the mystique, of a Kahn. It was not appropriate in my teaching assignment at Clemson. The School of Architecture was organized by the traditional undergraduate studio method. At the time, the School offered a five-year B.Arch. degree, with design studio beginning year one. My first assignment, with two colleagues, was studio master for forty third-year students. For the first several years my colleagues and I offered typical building design projects with two-, three-, or four-week durations and juried presentations. Inter- actions took place at the student’s drawing table. I asked probing questions (some of the students thought I sounded like a trial lawyer), trying to increase awareness of their design intent. Remarks were intended to help the student understand how their forms were or were not representing their stated purpose, and if not, how they might reconsider their forms, their purposes, or their explanation. I was sympathetic to simple, direct, and sometimes naive expressions of the young products of mostly public secondary schools (like me). I tried to avoid harsh criticism of any design that showed genuine effort, remembering some of those I had received. I did not advocate a style or polemic, either Kahn’s voice: Richard T. Reep Sr. 125 Bauhaus Modern or Kahn. The Penn experience had carried me into a more ecumenical view of design. Third-year students were too young to try to indoctrinate. I am sure I spouted some “Kahnisms” occasionally. The Clemson architecture faculty at the time had several Penn graduates on the staff, and I knew they would all be watching for such cop-outs. I was caught once, I must admit, repeating something Kahn had said about stairs should never have just one tread. One of my Penn classmates happened to overhear it and justifiably teased me. In following years I developed short structured exercises intended to teach practical aspects of buildings through the use of design rather than lecture. One set preceded a high-rise project, a building type the third-year students enjoyed. The first introduced the form-making possibilities of structure as well as fundamental principles of structural analysis. Common conditions for all the students were 100,000 square feet and ten stories. Each student was assigned a structural material (steel or concrete), one of three soil types, lateral bracing method, floor-plan aspect ratio, and either center or peripheral core. Few had the same set. Little instruction was provided on structural design. The duration was a week. Presentation was a scale model. Discoveries began immediately. Buildings have weight. Loads apply both vertically and horizontally. Building shape may help or hinder strength. Form is affected by capacity of the soil. Approximate loads on each footing were required to be listed in the presentation to justify their foundation design. A second one-week exercise for climate control was programed in a similar method. Both of the exercises, eliminating issues of appearance and other “architectural” considerations, brought out very creative forms that were founded in practical analysis. The exercises provided an effective introduction to the main elements of structures and climate control. They also indicated that creative design could be taught through the use of structured exercises. We repeated variations in following years. In 1967 the School of Architecture made the transition from a five-year to a 4+2-year program. I contributed to the preparation of the undergraduate design syllabus. Diverging from the traditional case-study method of design education, the new syllabus described a process approach to design. The concept drew from both previous experience with controlled exercises and from a rational analysis of the design process. The approach deconstructed the design process into three elements or dimensions: resources, actions, and needs. At the time I called them resources, response, and relevance. The concept was presented to the first and second-year students in a lecture in the fall of 1968 and published in the spring 1968 issue of The Semester Review of the Clemson School of Architecture. The lecture began:

If you are hungry and are aware of it, you are motivated. If there is bread and cheese and a knife available on the table, you will probably 126 A teacher of teachers and practitioners make a sandwich and eat it. You have just participated in design. The bread and cheese and knife are resources. The act of making a sandwich is response and the eating of it and satisfying your hunger makes it relevant. All three are interrelated operatives of design.

The presentation described Response Activity as a classic problem-solving process (identify goals, form alternatives, etc.). Resources are the designer’s palette, grouped as constructional, environmental, and human. Relevance presented a Scale of Relevant Values (personal to family to society to history to spiritual to immortality), allowing the designer to become aware of the realm of consciousness or purpose in which he or she was designing. A “Unit of Design” was a cube with the dimensions: a Fact (resource), an Act (response), and a Value (relevance). From that basis the syllabus deﬁned eight problem types of various dimensions of the cube: three were long in one dimension, three were long in two dimensions. Type 1 was short in all three – a small cube. Type 8 was a large cube. Each design studio was urged to select design projects or exercises described in terms of one of the eight types, generally simple ones in the early years, complex in later. The student was to be made aware of the pedagogical goal of the exercise. Two of the Resource studios, Constructional and Environmental, were established in the beginning; Human was to be added later. They were meant to develop a body of knowledge available to all students through lectures, labs, and demonstrations. The studios had the potential to form the basis of an architectural research center. The summary of the lecture was:

One of the goals of the design courses in your undergraduate years is to develop an understanding of design resources so that you may have a body of knowledge of these factors and how they may be used. Another goal is to teach problem solving methods so that you can solve any kind of an architectural or environmental design problem that may come your way in the future. We will teach you how to learn to be designers. Using these techniques and methods of problem solving, I think that you will be able to learn. You will also have experience in a wide range of scales and visual communication methods. In the graduate years, independent study and research and analysis tools are among the goals, so you will be able to go ahead with problems of your own.

The broad goal of the syllabus is to develop in you the ability to use design as a means to express man’s needs and desires. Design is a powerful tool, and you will learn how to use it. The syllabus was applied by me and two colleagues in the first- and second- year design studios in Fall, 1968. A number of exercises were assigned that had limited parameters (syllabus problem types 1–4) and short durations. The second- year studio climaxed with a Type 8 – the design and construction of a toddler’s playground for a day-care center. Though the Kahn’s voice: Richard T. Reep Sr. 127 construction phase of the project turned out to be ambitious, the class hung in until the end and the project had a successful academic outcome. The students not only learned design processes, but recognized the value of the deconstructed approach introduced by the syllabus. The following year I was enticed to leave teaching and enter practice in another city. The objectives of the syllabus were continued by my former colleagues. My family and I left the small town life of Clemson and moved to the city and suburbs of St. Louis to join a small firm in Clayton. A few years later we again heeded a call to change, this time to a larger firm in Jacksonville, Florida, where I still hang out.

Practice Lou Kahn provided as many insights as a practicing architect as he did as a teacher. Our Master’s Class had the opportunity to visit Kahn’s office one evening. He had been traveling a lot and had missed several classes, so graciously offered to provide a few crits at his office. I think he was sorry when a dozen of us showed up with sketches. He had been hoping to get a little of his own work done. During my wait for a crit I toured the drafting room. On one of the boards was a preliminary floor plan of the Bryn Mawr dormitory – the building with three square wings meeting at the corners. The drawing was of an entire typical floor with the room walls in all three wings at right angles to the exterior walls. On the layout table was a plan of the same floor with the room walls diagonal to the exterior walls. Evidently Kahn, once he arrived at the primary diagonal massing, couldn’t yet decide how to orient the rooms. That’s OK. I would have drawn sample plans of each, not entire floors, unless Kahn demanded it that way so he could see the whole. The more likely reason was the drafter probably had not seen Kahn for days and had no other assignment. Kahn told us in class one day of the evolution of the Bryn Mawr plan. He had determined it was to have three square wings, but was troubled by the way to connect them. The expected relationship would have been side by side with corridor connectors, but that meant conscious decisions about corridor width and length, penetration into the cores, etc. His class lesson was how he discovered that if the three wings were each rotated 45 degrees and met corner-to-corner, the connecting corridor issue was eliminated. I related to that story. A normal connection could be simple but require deliberate, “artificial,” choices about length, width, penetration into the core, etc. It would provide no sense of “organic energy,” as Wright would say. The perfect natural relationship may just discover the architect’s equivalent to the unified field theory, the magic formula that explains everything. That’s what Kahn was looking for at Bryn Mawr: an original concept that contains the seeds for growth. My design approach since has been to find those perfect original relationships – the ones whose “form holds.” 128 A teacher of teachers and practitioners My practice career has been with diversified architectural firms. It has been a combination of design, project management, technical applications, and firm management. I consider design as one aspect of a complete architectural practice. Like Kahn, I can’t proceed into the design without knowing the primary materials. Unlike Kahn, I have not worked in concrete except sometimes as a primary structural frame or precast architectural panels. The medieval forms and masses that he loved are not a good source for a practice based on contemporary commercial projects. While at Clemson I designed a house for a young couple. The project related to Kahn’s practice in two ways: the first design was the best, and a project can be redesigned over and over again until the life has been squeezed out. Not that that was a lesson I wanted to learn, but I understand it sometimes happened with him. The couple owned several acres near Clemson, land with lots of trees and topography. We selected a site well away from the main road on a bluff overlooking a small stream. My palette and concept included a combination of frame and rubble stone for the structure, incorporating some of the natural rock outcroppings. In that respect it was probably more Falling Water than Kahn. The client loved it. I went to bid documents. The bids came in well over the budget. They demurred. I redesigned. Many times. Interesting ideas came and went, but none seemed to have the organic spirit of the first. Then the couple decided to have children so their outlook, and the program, changed. The new situation settled everything. Design decisions came easy, the bids were in budget, the home was built, it suited them, they settled in and raised their family. One other experience in common with Kahn was financial, except in my case there were no employee or office expenses. I worked at home and I had a day job. Good thing. Other projects during that period were approached more conservatively. Early design concepts were tempered by the always tight budget. When I wanted to hear my own voice, I entered competitions. One was for a headquarters building for the Blount Brothers Construction Corporation in Montgomery, Alabama, open to faculty of southeastern schools of architecture. My concept organized the plan using a spine, a main street, of circulation and infrastructure. Employees entered the main street from the parking lot and walked past amenity spaces on the way to their offices. Departments were organized on “side streets” that joined the main street. Expansion within departments occurred through the extension of the side street systems. Addition of departments occurred through extension of the main street. In these respects the plan was literally a diagram of the company organization chart. The concept allowed for open-ended company growth, which in Kahn terms was the Form. In this respect, as well as in the use of a precast concrete roof structure, it was one of my more Kahn-like designs. Concrete and concrete masonry materials directly responded to the dynamic nature of a facility for a construction company. Kahn’s voice: Richard T. Reep Sr. 129 One of the first projects I designed in Florida for KBJ Architects was the master plan, hotel, and theater for Marineland in 1974. We designed an expansion program for the park that included new features for their famous dolphins and new performance venues for whales and (amazingly) hippos. The economy, as well as competition from Sea World and Disney, interrupted the project, but not before they built the hotel and 3-D movie theater. The hotel design concept was primarily contextual, inspired by the oceanfront location, which at Marineland features sand dunes and outcroppings of coquina stone. Kahn’s influence led me to think of the design as a form growing out of the beach. The rooms were clustered along the shore, “piled up” near the center like the dunes, avoiding any resemblance to a “building.” The Kent Campus of the Florida State College at Jacksonville was an operating campus housed in small frame buildings when KBJ was awarded the commission in 1977. I led the project team and directed the design. The concept drew from the mature trees and the goal to provide a student- friendly environment. A center mall framed by arcades became the design theme. The irregular site plan, using the mall as a core, derived from spaces between the existing buildings, which continued in operation during construction, and preserved many valuable trees. Though not deliberately drawn from Kahn, his influence was felt in the use of brick as a unifying material, like his design for the First Unitarian Church, and the uniform two- story building height. In the late 1990s I had the opportunity to design a new sanctuary for a Catholic parish in a small town north of Jacksonville. I worked closely with the pastor, the Rev. Ralph Bessendorfer, to express his and the congregation’s worship experience. Parishioners entered the nave from the fellowship hall (the auditorium) and returned after mass for socializing. Father Ralph did not want them to feel they were entering or leaving the nave from behind the altar. Accordingly, the sanctuary, with the altar and pulpit, was placed in the center of the nave, an unusual location for a Catholic church. Seating surrounded the center, thus transforming “front” and “back” to inner and outer. A skylight was located above the altar at the crossing of the gabled ceiling wings. The design drew from traditional church-like forms and motifs, including historic stained-glass windows made available from an earlier Jacksonville church. Kahn’s influence was felt in the thought given to developing the floor plan and in the order drawn from a unifying concept. A project in the commercial idiom illustrates the complex design require - ments of a spa as an addition to a high-end resort hotel, for which I had been the project architect several years earlier. The program for the spa wrapped new spaces around a new outdoor pool. The design expanded the oceanfront resort theme with trellises, water features, and enhanced pool landscaping. The spa project, like the church and many of my other previous projects, was carried through by me from beginning to end with only intermittent 130 A teacher of teachers and practitioners support from others in the office. In that way it was unlike the approach used by Kahn. He, like many other leading designers, focused on the design concept, delegating others to develop the design and see it through construc - tion while he periodically reviewed or resolved conflicts. This method had the advantage of allowing work of a much larger size and volume to flow through the office. Its disadvantage was in balancing conflicts between delegating without losing control, and supervising without micromanaging. Working alone, provided one can take the time to focus on a single project at a time, avoids many of those conflicts. The size and organization of a diversified firm like KBJ Architects allows for both this type of sole practice as well as the resources and staff to design extremely large projects, several of which I have also had the opportunity to lead.

The legacy Lou Kahn brought feeling and poetry to architecture with respect for the aspirations of man. He was grounded in architectural history, skilled in drawing and painting. I have high regard for his work. He enriched my career. I was fortunate to have been his student in the University of Pennsylvania Master’s Class of 1962. I received real and lasting value from that experience. Perhaps the most valuable achievement was the self- confidence in my own work from having been in direct contact with his philosophy, his teaching, and his architecture. During the fifty-some years since hearing Kahn’s voice I have heard and listened to countless others. Thankfully, even through cacophony and conflict, his voice is still available. 11 Learn, do, order, reflect The cycle of a career

Max A. Robinson, Master’s Class of 1964

Let us now praise famous men . . . that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.1

There were no doubts about Lou Kahn’s stature both as a designer and a teacher for his reputation was clearly established and well documented. Much like the situation described in the above quotation, his renown as both an architect and a professor reflected the laudatory acclaim that he garnered and deserved. All of us who entered the Masters’ Studio at Penn in the fall of 1963 were very aware of his notoriety in one way or another. The encounter of that schooling was to invoke life-changing situations for many of us and played a significant role in molding the persons that we were to later become. In retrospect, Kahn’s greatest contribution to his students was to reveal a method of thinking that led to constantly questioning the topic under consideration. His teaching was a process of inquiry, a continuous conversation about significant and generalized issues conducted by persistently probing their disposition. His notion of asking “what a thing wants to be” was indicative of this method, as was his desire to read “Volume Zero,” a search for the very essence of the thing under examination. Concepts attained meaning through an assessment of their nature. That whole experience embodied the development of a methodology regarding how things are to be considered, the investigation that takes place and the standards that one establishes. In looking back over the years while both practicing and teaching, I have better realized the impact of his tutelage upon my accomplishments and have acquired an even greater appreciation for his influence as an educator. Both as an architect and as a professor, I have not sought to do it like he did, nor to think similar thoughts as he would, but to follow his lead by proceed- ing with a rigorously comprehensive effort to delve into the very spirit of what I am taking into account. Mastering that technique was undoubtedly the most important ability to be gained from Kahn’s teaching and even the attempts of a lifetime leave me wondering if I have really done so. 132 A teacher of teachers and practitioners Of all the ideas that Kahn professed, I found the notion of order to be the most broadly influential and generally applicable to my thinking. Order is realized as a state of harmony, unity and completeness; a qualitative condition necessary to a thing’s existence and the essence of its being. It is the raison d’être, the “glue” that enables things to be, and the “existence will” essential to our world of things. It also determines what a thing “wants to be;” how it is and should exist. Order reflects the level of integration in the composition of a thing, i.e. how well the parts fit to form a perfect whole. It implies and ensures that a high quality of organization with an inherent formal logic is evident in the structure of all things. Everything is rooted in a foundation of order that allows it to be and to become even more orderly in its existence. Order is also realized as a degree of approximation with regard to the opposite extremes of absolute perfection and complete chaos or disorder. One might think of it as a condition attained by further development and refinement and this concept has occupied my thoughts even beyond instructing and designing. It is confronted in the processes of nature, in the social interactions of human activities, and in the myriad pursuits of life. As it has many inferences and applications, order acts as an over-arching ingredient that imparts meaning to all objects and thoughts. Order is evident in all things that exist, both material and immaterial, and therefore it prevails in my consideration of everything. By the time I arrived at Penn, Kahn had established a basic understanding of this notion and had moved beyond a direct investigation of it. His poem, “Order Is,” had been published eight years prior and many of the thoughts revolving around this concept had already been ingrained in his thinking and teaching. The word was mentioned quite often but in a way that simply referenced it as a basis underlying whatever else was being considered. One had to carefully listen, ponder, and look elsewhere in his teachings to come to some kind of comprehension about the term for what to him seemed to be a foregone and accepted basis for the topic under discussion. My struggles to understand this idea have continued since that introduction and it has taken a full half-century to arrive at the previous conclusions.

A brief survey of my professional trajectory Before exploring the aspects of my professional life relative to the influences that Kahn impressed upon me, it would first be helpful to sketch the arc of my career to provide a context for these thoughts. It has revolved essentially around the dual activities of practicing and teaching architecture, sometimes jointly and sometimes separately as circumstances warranted. Even during my undergraduate years at the University of Texas in Austin, it had been my ambition to eventually both practice and teach. I knew that many noteworthy and successful architects, including Kahn and other faculty Learn, do, order, reflect: Max A. Robinson 133 members at both my schools, had pursued this particular pattern, although little did I comprehend the changes involved in such an endeavor and the difficulties they portended. Only near the completion of my graduate education did I realize that the opportunity to teach was more than a wistful pipe dream when I was offered a position on the faculty of the Department of Architecture at the University of Kansas (KU). After leaving Penn in the spring of 1964, I spent three years at KU and practiced at firms in Austin, Aspen, and Wichita during the summer months. In 1967, I moved to Knoxville to join the faculty of the new school at the University of Tennessee (UT) where I met Robert Church. Bob had been a graduate student at Princeton when Jean Labatut took a sabbatical, and Kahn replaced him for a year as instructor of his design studio. Bill Lacy, the Dean at UT, assigned Bob as my mentor and paired us to teach third- year design. Consequently, I was also drawn into the work of Church’s architectural office and directly experienced the occurrence of several changes in both the practice and the school over the next five years. Bob Church died very unexpectedly at a young age in the early summer of 1972. I decided to leave teaching to join the office on a full-time basis and became an associate with an equity share as it expanded into a very successful corporation. In late 1981, I joined a newer, smaller venture that seemed to hold a greater potential for personal advancement. It did develop and grew quite rapidly but also struggled with financial problems as it encountered the economic recession of the early 1980s. I returned to the faculty at UT in the fall of 1983 and continued to practice by myself or in joint ventures as a sole proprietorship on a part-time basis. Until this time, it had been a relatively simple, easy, and justifiable process to combine teaching and practice; but after my return, I discovered that the demands of university life, as manifested in the expectations of the institution, had increased significantly and it was more difficult to maintain a balance, or even a connection, between these two complementary pursuits. Practicing architecture as an individual also imposed particular limits on the size and scope of the work that could be undertaken. So with the recession of the early 1990s, I gradually pursued more scholarly endeavors such as writing and speaking about theoretical, academic topics – the characteristics of visual phenomena and the nature of design principles along with the architectural considerations of space and place that they encompassed. This change was also accelerated by my appointment as director of the school in the Fall of 1997, a position that literally consumed my attention for the next decade. In the Fall of 2007, I began my transition toward retirement by returning to full-time teaching and finally left the university in the summer of 2010. Prior to my departure, I had anticipated the vacuum of creative activity that this adjustment would bring. I resurrected my involvement with drawing and watercolor painting to fill the void, and this has occupied my energies to the present. 134 A teacher of teachers and practitioners Practicing architecture With this chronological context as orientation, the comments that follow can focus more directly upon the typological aspects of my career. Turning first to matters of practice, I would offer the following observations. In simple terms, the act of designing buildings is a matter of envisioning and ordering, and order is manifested architecturally in the organization of the space, structure, and form of buildings. Every project I encountered entailed that inevitable struggle to compose its components and integrate its systems in an ordered fashion as best could be realized given the resources and constraints of the circumstances. They comprised puzzles that entwined the aspects of place, purpose, and means in varying degrees of complexity, scale, and interconnection. Ideas that I absorbed during my “pre-Kahn” baccalaureate education influenced some of the more basic motivations for my practice. First and foremost as an architect, you were a designer and design applied to all acts of doing. If you are to design, you should design everything; everything you do should be approached with the goal that it is well designed. However, design is not just a matter of creating something visually attractive and interesting; it is problem solving in its fullest extent and should resolve all issues of contention to be successful. For my first exposure to practicing architecture, I worked part-time for a couple of years in the small, two- to three-person office of one of my undergraduate professors. This is where I came to realize that the design process invariably extended from the conception through to the erection of a building. I quickly came to appreciate the fact that the technical and construction aspects of a project could wreak havoc upon your visions of a beautiful and exciting building, and I realized that these items must be carefully considered and incorporated into the solution for any project. From both Kahn’s teaching and Bob Church’s tutelage, I discovered how to address these matters and what to aspire to in their regard. The connection between technology, production and design, the relation of materials and ornament, the nature of the column and the wall, the place of pipes and ducts and outlets, all achieved meaning when I actually contended with them in practice. I wholeheartedly embraced the prospects of a fully integrated and engineered solution for any project and with any job that I was assigned, a primary goal was to achieve such an end. My penchant for addressing problems with functionally complex and technically involved criteria earned me the firm’s unofficial role of “tech designer,” so consequentially for better or worse, I was fully involved in any work of this sort that happened to be procured. This included projects such as research laboratories for the life sciences, facilities for the veterinary and nursing schools and the student health center at UT, a multidisciplinary clinical services lab for a VA hospital, two complexes of engineering labs and offices for TVA and Boeing, and assorted medical office facilities. There were also numerous multifamily Learn, do, order, reflect: Max A. Robinson 135 housing developments, several office buildings and miscellaneous commercial ventures interspersed within this array of jobs. All of this gave me an opportunity to dwell upon and consider the notion of order that I was formulating relative to design practice. Reflecting upon my body of work, there were several projects that I felt were resolved more successfully than most: a small barnlike museum for Appalachian artifacts associated with other preserved structures in a rural state park near a TVA landmark, the headquarters for a local bank in a coal-mining community in southeastern Kentucky, a stadium and supporting facilities for the intercollegiate tennis program, and academic facilities for the Agricultural Engineering department, both at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Of all the jobs that were completely realized, the College of Veterinary Medicine complex at the same institution was most complicated in programatic and technological issues, as well as being the largest in size and budget. Each of these projects had special and peculiar circumstances to be considered, yet all of them exhibit a clearly defined expression of order in one sense or another. As a colleague once remarked about the tennis pavilion, “You can sense its rigor.” Order can be realized in even the most rudimentary of circumstances and the severest of restrictions – in fact, this often makes the process easier. An inadequate budget or lack of resources is not a reason for an ordinary, pedestrian product from one’s design efforts. Kahn proved with the bathhouses at Trenton that a high level of order could be achieved under the most humble and difficult situations. One should always aspire to the highest of goals and attempt to do one’s best regardless of the circumstances or motivations. Too many people are willing to accept a lack of quality in design if it seemingly succumbs to some other concern, usually an expedient or economic one, but there is no reason to contribute to mediocrity by participating in the rush down the path of least resistance.

Scholarship Before turning to an examination of my teaching activities, it is perhaps more appropriate to first consider my scholarly pursuits, for in a sense, it constitutes my “practice” during the latter part of my career. Kahn’s desire to read “Volume Zero,” his search for the essence of a thing or what it “wants to be,” inspired my own academic investigations that were often an outgrowth of my teaching experiences. One’s education is truly a life-long affair and if one continues to question, it will inevitably lead to such undertakings. My efforts at scholarship were personally quite rewarding although not notably productive in terms of published or widely recognized accomplishments. As in practice, a number of projects are unrealized or simply just not finished. Other influences that contributed to my scholarly endeavors were the writings of Christian Norberg Schulz and the many references that he 136 A teacher of teachers and practitioners imbedded in them. His ideas not only stimulated my interests at a moment when I needed intellectual guidance to make sense of my previous experience in practice to support my academic instruction, but they also clarified my understanding of Kahn’s teaching by their interpretation of his work. This gave me new directions to pursue that were very much needed at the time. Between my study of Norberg Schulz and the development of content for my lecture course in visual design theory, the architectural topics of space, place, and meaning provided the substance for several papers, conference presentations, and scholarly publications. Like my classroom and studio instruction, they generously incorporated references to Kahn’s work and teachings in their contents. One effort was a prolonged investigation eventually producing a paper titled “Space-Making Fundamentals” that examined how space was archi- tectonically defined, organized, and understood. Although ultimately modest in consequence, this effort yielded enough unused material that it could easily be expanded into a relatively lengthy treatise. Another essay, titled “Place- Making: the Notion of Center,” was a theoretical exploration that in the end was published as a chapter in Constructing Place: Mind and Matter.2 This generated many ideas in my mind about exploring other place-making aspects, i.e. edge, domain, path, goal, home, etc., and I seriously regret that I have not followed that inquiry further. One more unfinished instance, “Searching for Volume Zero,” focused upon the idea of archetypes and a hunt for the essence of particular architectural examples. This query rests in an incomplete paper based on an abstract proposal that was not accepted, and again, is another opportunity unfulfilled. An additional project that was realized as a self-published document was based upon my public presentation, “. . . but is it architecture?” archived as a part of the Church Memorial Lecture Series at UT. This produced a treatise titled Searching for Significance that attempted to summarize my thoughts about the rudiments of architecture and how they constitute a basis for its relevance. Although only one of these endeavors was extensively distributed beyond my own immediate academic sphere, I feel that each finished case had a message with substantial content to communicate and they all tangentially contributed in return to my teaching. These investigations also brought me considerable satisfaction and intellectual fulfillment, as they are indicative of the process of questioning that Kahn had instilled within me.

Teaching architecture My experiences in teaching comprised the most substantial portion of my career and varied significantly over the extent of it. At its beginnings, I was able to experience two separate institutions with drastically different academic programs and outlooks within a relatively short time-frame. Even with the intervention of my engagement in full-time practice, I participated in and was exposed to the evolution of a school as it changed over an Learn, do, order, reflect: Max A. Robinson 137 extensive period. During the entirety of that time span, I essentially taught a design studio, in a more or less consistent format and fashion. I was also assigned a host of other professional subjects to instruct, but focused essenti - ally upon courses in drawing, architectural theory and visual fundamentals as secondary subjects. For the majority of my second stint in teaching, I was able to develop the aforementioned course in visual design theory that was an integral portion of the first-year curriculum. While Kahn pursued his role as a teacher through the group dynamics of a design studio, I did not choose to follow his example in this manner. I rarely conducted a studio based upon the same seminar and pin-up critique model that we experienced at Penn as the level and type of students with whom I was dealing was simply too different academically. I did conduct occasional group discussions and project reviews, but most of the time was spent with one-on-one tutorials, “desk crits” and questioning to provoke individual learning situations. For undergraduate students, especially the ones at beginning levels, this was a more effective and productive method of teaching, particularly during the period that we transitioned to the use of personal computers. The undergraduate curriculum at UT during the era of the quarter system had a lecture for theoretical issues linked to the studios that functioned as a separate course, but this was unfortunately eliminated with the switch to semesters in the late 1980s. Late in my tenure, however, I did revert to utilizing concurrent seminar discussions related to the studio projects at the graduate level. This introduced a theory component comprised of readings and analysis assignments into the studio’s content. This approach can enhance the design studio, but it requires the appropriate academic circumstances, such as advanced level students or graduate study, to implement such an offering. One of the primary educational goals driving my teaching efforts was to enable students to think critically and to learn to do things for themselves, especially how to conceptualize, develop, and execute well-designed solutions to architectural problems. Throughout my academic career and even for a couple of semesters when I was director of the school, I instructed at least one design studio, and sometimes two, during an academic term. Depending upon the course and its relationship to the remainder of the curriculum, the assignments consisted of problem-solving exercises structured to engage students in the design process while assimilating information and concepts, mastering skills and techniques, and developing their critical thinking capabilities. My responses to the academic situations were also based upon my inferred interpretations of the needs of students or the courses under consideration. Several examples stand out, one being my focus upon design process with my initial efforts at KU in an attempt to introduce intermediate studios to a systematic approach in problem-solving techniques. Another that occurred intermittently throughout the extent of my teaching career was an emphasis upon problem definition and space programming, an effort to inject an 138 A teacher of teachers and practitioners often neglected but important aspect of the design process into the overall pedagogical equation. My concern for design analysis and conceptual diagramming during the years after my return from practice extended to several different courses – design studios, their corresponding theory and issues courses, and the class in visual design theory that I was developing. Lastly, my emphasis upon design analysis techniques, applied in both studios and an elective seminar, focused upon a concern for making memorable spaces and places, interests that related both my teaching and scholarship efforts.

Administration Having served as director for a decade, including some observations about managing an architectural program would be appropriate. An administrator’s primary role is to oversee a school’s operations that cover a myriad of clerical duties, but at the same time, it also involves facilitating its initiatives, supporting its activities and in particular, guiding its development. The tasks of a director oscillate between housekeeping and leadership. The demands of leadership also pose additional quandaries about its direction and implementation. Should it be a strongly asserted, top–down process dictating what to be done and how or should it assume a laissez-faire attitude in fostering greater participatory governance? Especially in instances when disagreements coalesce or matters stalemate, a more tyrannical imposition is sometimes necessary, but by and large, I preferred that the group as a whole reach a consensus in its agreement and sense being a part of the solution. There were, however, many trying times during the turmoil of internal discord and administrative changes that greatly challenged my vision of an orderly, collegial and constructive world. In dealing with people, order manifests itself in a very different fashion. It presents itself not so much physically as in the products of designing and instructing but as the intangible forces motivating the dynamics of human psychology and social exchange. Working on a daily basis with dozens of faculty and staff, hundreds of students (and parents), numerous alumni, professionals, other university personnel, and the general public involves the almost impossible challenge of understanding the order of their associations and interactions. Addressing these matters requires elevating Kahn’s notions to an entirely different realm and necessitates further assessment to enable structuring events and activities so that they are productive.

Conclusion The resultant careers of the students I encountered can be categorized in the following general terms, but this conclusion is from my limited personal observations and not based upon any scientific surveys or research. I would estimate that half of them did not go on to practice architecture in Learn, do, order, reflect: Max A. Robinson 139 the conventional sense. Many stayed within the building industry but as developers, contractors, and builders, specialty consultants, government or corporate advisors and in business-oriented positions in the construction materials, manufacturing, and supply trades. Some went in other educational directions changing to professions in business, engineering, digital media and computers, interior, graphic and product design, journalism, law, and even politics. I have formed an opinion based on this information that an architectural education can groom students to address a variety of different occupational situations. The organizational and problem-solving capabi lities fostered within the holistically synthesizing exercises of the design studio system are excellent preparation for achieving success in various types of positions. Of the remainder who practiced architecture, I would venture that only half of those were eventually registered, and only about 10 percent of those became design principals or the heads of firms. Based upon my subjective assessment of the competence and quality of their work, their professional recognition, their financial position and/or the acclaim of their community leadership, I consider a couple of dozen to have very successful practices and a few are nationally recognized for their accomplishments. In this light, I am often amused in my acquaintance with a former student, now the principal of a moderately large and successful architectural firm, who often references, but not always quite accurately, Kahn’s projects, concepts or quotations in his public presentations, especially when he knows that I am in the audience. I only hope that others have done a better job of instilling Kahn’s teachings in their followers than I did in this case. Sometimes the consequences of invoking such a formidable and lucid influence have a way of returning with haunting results and momentous reservations. Lastly, I am aware of some former students who are teaching, but I cannot venture a guess at the precise number overall. Many went on to complete graduate studies but one often loses track of former students’ missions until they suddenly appear at some conference or their name is published in some newsletter. I only wonder how many more are continuing to distribute Kahn’s influence to that next generation. I am aware of at least ten with whom I have had personal contact, three that I had the opportunity to recruit and hire. Another from my early years as a faculty member became my longtime colleague in both practice and teaching. He continues to advocate Kahn’s notions as I recently witnessed with his mentoring of a couple of teaching assistants. While this may be a single anecdote, I believe that others are out there and pursuing similar goals. They are like the legions of anon- ymous disciples and followers alluded to in the quotation that concludes this work, spreading the gospel and extending its impact far beyond the source of its origination. These reflections attempt to reinforce the thesis that Kahn’s instruction influenced at least a half-century of architectural education by disseminating his concepts and ideals through his students and then indirectly through their 140 A teacher of teachers and practitioners own. Teaching and practice, the major activities of my professional calling, have constituted the extent of my career but they are no more than the simple acts of learning and doing in attempts to realize the order that prevails. The process of questioning, the seeking of essences and the pursuit of order has motivated my achievements. In doing so, I have employed the lessons that Kahn presented; but more importantly, I have come to realize what a wonderful thing architecture is as it makes places, shapes experiences, and manifests aspirations.

And some there be which have no memorial, who perished, as though they never had been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them. But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten . . . and therefore shall not be blotted . . . Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name liveth for evermore.3

Notes 1 ben Sirach, Joshua, The Wisdom of Sirach, 40:1; Walker Evans and James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1940), unpaginated title poem. 2 Max A. Robinson, “Place-Making: the Notion of Center,” Sarah Menin, ed., Constructing Place: Mind and Matter (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 143–153. 3 ben Sirach. 12 The Kahn connection

Gary Moye, Master’s Class of 1968

Kahn was fond of saying that beginnings are very important. My own architectural journey began when I was sixteen and read an article in House and Home magazine entitled “Three Small Houses by Frank Lloyd Wright.” I recall realizing that architecture was not just about the physical accom- modations that we make for ourselves, but about our ideas and values as well. It seemed as if architecture was about everything. I received a solid undergraduate architectural education at the University of Oregon, 1962–67, during Donlyn Lyndon’s tenure as head of the program. Other professors who had an impact on my training were Philip Dole, Earl Moursund, and David Rinehart. It was my good fortune that the architecture program at Oregon at that time was unaffected by a particular overriding style that prevailed in students’ work. There was, instead, an emphasis on original and schematic thinking, with the expectation that formal development would evolve from the organizational proposition. As a student, I had the opportunity to assist Philip Dole in his scholarly work documenting the early rural architecture and settlement patterns of Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Philip was an expert in this area and one of the most learned men in architecture that I have had the honor to know. He has had a profound influence on how I think, work, and design. On our excursions to various homesteads throughout the valley, I drove while Philip talked. The breadth and depth of his architectural interests and keen design insights were a revelation. In addition to the experiential benefits of documenting houses, barns, outbuildings, and their groupings and sites, I had the unique pleasure of listening to Philip’s commentary about their uses, evolutions, cultural origins, and construction. This became a significant part of my education at the University of Oregon. Influenced by this work experience and by my own rural upbringing, I was strongly attracted to the work of Northwest Modernist architects, particularly John Yeon and Pietro Belluschi, whose residential architecture represented a regionally influenced Modernism. It seemed appropriate to me that building forms should be determined by local environmental conditions, that they should employ natural materials that harmonize with the settings, and that they should be simple and direct responses to the functional requirements they housed. 142 A teacher of teachers and practitioners This work still resonates with me; I am moved when I experience an early Oregon building – particularly barns and other service structures that are based on their functional requirements and need for economy. There is a strong presence and landmark quality that attends these simple forms when seen in the context of the larger natural environment. I have come to see vernacular architecture as one of the ways in which regional character can survive the various stylistic enthusiasms which affect our built environment. This is particularly true of the making of roof forms, their overhangs and details. It was David Rinehart, my thesis critic, who encouraged me to choose the Kahn Master’s Studio at Penn for my graduate degree. Rinehart had been both a student and an employee of Kahn’s and was well acquainted with the man and his work. I knew very little of either. I did feel well prepared for the experience. The curriculum at Oregon placed design at the core of its program, with supporting courses in media, architectural history, structures, building systems, theory and technical documentation. Kahn’s Master’s Class of 1967–68 was an intense learning experience. We struggled with the design challenges he presented to us: how to understand the key fundamentals to a design problem, how do you give them physical presence, and how do you develop an appropriate architectural language to express them. In reviewing student work, Kahn would often be accepting and stimulated by student proposals related to the first two, but never to the third. I don’t think we developed our work sufficiently, or knew enough to design a compelling material and detail entity. I also felt that Kahn had his own materials palette and detail sensibilities when talking about these issues. There was a direct connection between Kahn’s work and his teaching. It can be seen in the problems he assigned in his studios. They were often buildings or planning situations that he was directly involved with or interested in. It could also be understood by listening to him discuss and critique student work. The classroom, for Kahn, was another vehicle for speculating about both the “what” and the “how” of a project he was working on. Kahn taught us that the crucial questions of any project are those that begin with “what” rather than “how.” The questions of “what” are about the general nature of man’s activities and the potential inherent in a specific building task. For Kahn, “what” was always more important than “how.” He said that the right thing done badly was more important than the wrong thing done well. While he emphasized the priority of “what,” his own work shows serious and sustained attention to the philosophy and means of “how,” as well. I began working in Kahn’s office on design charettes in the fall of 1967. Several of us were recruited by Vincent Rivera to work on a site model. Vincent knew that the students in Kahn’s studio would be willing, skilled, and cheap. On discovering us late one night working on the model, Kahn The Kahn connection: Gary Moye 143 seemed a bit taken aback on recognizing his current students. He suggested to us that we should be at school working on our own projects. When I began working full time for Kahn following my graduation, I immediately noted that there was a core group of staff who contributed significantly to the making of the buildings. Aware of my own lack of experience, I gravitated toward this group – David Wisdom, Marshall Meyers, Henry Wilcots, Tony Pellechia, and Winton Scott. Whatever position of trust I achieved in the office was through my association with these people. When they discovered that I was capable, dedicated, and productive, they gave me things to do that brought Kahn to my desk. I became particularly attached to Henry Wilcots, who became an important mentor as well as a dear friend. When Kahn first hired me, he told me to report to David Wisdom. David assigned me to Tony Pellechia, who was working on the Fort Wayne Fine Arts project. Tony was in the process of carrying forward two building components of the larger master plan: the theater and the fine arts school. Because Tony was deeply involved with the theater at the time, he asked me to help develop the school. It was a simple scheme, a bar of studios connected by a T-shaped circulation element to a library and an auditorium. These special functions were given a unique shape and placed to each side of the stem of the T. Within the stem was a stair that needed review and development. Tony asked me to start with that. As I worked on it I couldn’t get the dimensions to work with the proposed configuration, so I began to look at alternatives. I was working with the yellow trace and charcoal when I sensed the presence of someone next to me. It was Lou. As if choreo - graphed, I stood and moved to the side as Lou moved over and sat in my place. He took the tracing-paper sketch I had been working on, and ripped it off the roll. While wadding it up, he looked up at me and said, “I just want you to know, I make the shapes here.” Then he tossed my drawing into the trash. Despite what this introductory lesson would suggest, to work in Kahn’s office was to collaborate. Kahn himself was a diligent worker and his design principles were clear. This made it possible for others to be productively involved in the design process. We all worked under his umbrella, but felt we were working with him, not just for him. His ideas were the generating force, but they were tempered and developed by collaboration in the process of designing the building. Most of us in the core group worked on all projects that were active during our tenure in Kahn’s office. It seemed that each week produced a crisis for a different project. Working there was sometimes like being on a boat where everyone aboard was rushing from one side to the other to avoid capsizing. There were also frequent charettes when we worked 24 hours a day and it wasn’t enough. Despite the time demands and the lack of adequate and timely pay, we all felt it was worth it. We were engaged in significant and meaningful work. 144 A teacher of teachers and practitioners While working for Kahn, I regularly attended the public lectures that he gave in Philadelphia. During these presentations, I realized that had I not been his student or his employee, I would have had scant understanding of what he was talking about. Over the years, his language seemed to become increasingly more poetic and abstract. One day in the office I asked him why he wasn’t more direct in explaining the application of his sensibilities to his work. He responded by saying that he thought his ideas were more important than his own particular way of manifesting them. He was concerned that people would disregard the ideas because of the limitations they saw in his manner of work. There may also have been a measure of self-protection in his indirectness. On another occasion he had remarked to me that when you are highly visible, there are more people who want to see you fail than those who wish to see you succeed. Despite the broad musings and poetic language of his lectures, the content had specific and literal meaning in his work. When working with him, it was revealing to observe the dogged determination of his design process and his ability to design an architecture that substantiated his rhetoric. I marveled then, and more so now, at Lou’s ability to remain open and creatively naive in his approach to a project. He believed in the long-term effectiveness of his design process. He believed that the process would evolve and develop the appropriate solution if at each stage the design was pursued with conviction and focused on fundamentals. I never saw him apply the negative pragmatic constraints to his work that one would expect from an older, experienced architect. Yet Kahn could be eminently practical and was a good problem solver within the scope of the project’s designated means. If one looks at the different stages of almost any of Kahn’s projects, one can see the design evolve and change significantly from beginning to end, usually starting with an array of parts and ending as a simpler, encompassing form. When Kahn passed away, it was difficult to believe that this creative and active life force was gone. Six of us formed a successor group, David Wisdom and Associates, to finish the work that remained in the office at the time of Kahn’s death. David had worked with Kahn for thirty-one years, was known by all the clients, and was deeply respected by all of us. David Wisdom and Henry Wilcots would spend another ten years, at great personal expense, working on the capital of Bangladesh in Dacca. I stayed on for another two years, working on the Pocono Arts Center program and concept design, the Pittsburgh Wind Symphony Barge, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial on Roosevelt Island. The project that I had worked on for five years and that was closest to my heart, Hill Central Middle School in New Haven, was out to bids when Kahn died. The bids came back $1 million over budget. We tried to show that we could cut the costs and build the project, but the project was an old one. It had languished in the office for two years before I began managing it. Given the extended time frame, the political impetus to accomplish something significant in the impoverished Hill Central area of New Haven had diminished. The Kahn connection: Gary Moye 145 The city canceled the project, reduced the program, and reissued it to local practitioners. The mid-1970s were a difficult time. The economy was weak, many architects were without work, and we couldn’t make the successor firm financially viable. I had also lost the opportunity, despite my ardent lobbying efforts, to see something built that I had worked on intensely for five years. In the summer of 1976 I was offered a teaching position at the University of Oregon. It was a timely opportunity in a number of ways. My wife and I were raised in Oregon and felt it would be a good place for our children to grow up. The job would offer the financial predictability that I had not experienced at Kahn’s office, and I would have a more flexible schedule, allowing me time with my family. Teaching would enable me to focus and develop, and share my interests in the theory and design of architecture. Those who teach architecture know that one of its principal benefits is the process of self-realization that it requires. In order to teach effectively, one must understand for oneself what is important in the discipline and want to help others understand and pursue those issues. In interactions with students, especially in design critiques, teachers sharpen their own creative responses to the situations created by the students. This collaborative interaction leads to important realizations by both student and teacher. Like Kahn, I have been interested in establishing guidelines and influencing the attitudes from which student work evolves. It is my conviction that design studio courses are the core of a meaningful architectural education. It is there that the student gets repeated practice in making creative responses directly within the context of a purposeful task. Only in the studio is the student exposed to the problems of project design which require the ability to synthesize rather than deal with independent sets of information. A strong design studio background leads students to the realization that even within given data there are always other choices, that nothing is solely a matter of specific criteria. It is important to think critically about the relative merits of possible solutions. I believe the student learns the design process by designing. Students may take a wrong direction, they may falter or fail, but they must be taught to plunge in. They learn to begin with basic premises, do a hell of a lot of work, and arrive at a viable approach if not a solution to the problem. In this way students are put in touch not with answers to problems but with the process that determines the solutions. It is through this process of proposal and analysis that students develop their critical skills and their ability to initiate broad solutions. While the general emphasis in my studios is on schematic organization and the exploitation of program relationships, I strive to help students bring their efforts to an expressive and particular end. I look for specific situations to act as a catalyst for student design ideas and encourage them to pursue specific means while accounting for the general opportunities and responsibilities inherent in the given problems. 146 A teacher of teachers and practitioners The academic calendar at the University of Oregon makes teaching Design Studio a special challenge. Oregon is on the quarter system (with ten-week sessions). This is a very brief period in which to initiate and develop a design proposal. One of my primary goals has been to help students move beyond the broad conceptual phases of the design to become more involved in the concepts, issues, and characteristics of a building’s physical fabric. In this way one either validates or challenges the ideas that initiate the design process. Materials and their assembly have their own discipline in terms of forms, dimensions, and details. Seeking the right fit between concept and construction engages the student not only in the world of ideas, but in the real world of architectural tectonics. It requires that they hone their sense of what is appropriate and its application to the ideas they espouse. The reality is never that simple, but making students aware of their responsibility to produce a building gets them involved in the physical realities of construction earlier in the process. It has the benefit of making the methods of achieving the design less arbitrary. It also helps students come to the understanding that good design is often just good common-sense building. Here at Oregon in the late 1970s, there were as many as six members of the architecture faculty who had been either students of Kahn, had worked for him, or done both. This group had a significant impact on the design program and on the quality of student work. They made a major contribution to what I consider the architecture program’s zenith in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Of particular importance to this group was Pat Piccioni. Pat and I had overlapped in Kahn’s office during the summer of 1968. It was my first summer working for Kahn, and Pat’s last before moving to Oregon to teach. It was my good fortune to work with Pat on developing the electrical lighting system for the National Assembly Chamber in Dacca. Pat, who had an extensive background with Kahn, took time at the beginning to talk to me about Kahn’s concepts of lighting and to take me on field trips to show me built examples. When we reconnected at Oregon, Pat proved to be an invaluable teaching colleague. We shared a mutual regard for Kahn’s work, along with deep personal commitments to architecture. We met regularly to discuss the work, the people, and the design process we experienced in Kahn’s office. Because of his three separate two-year periods of employment there, occurring over a span of ten years, Pat had a somewhat different and broader view of Kahn’s work and methods. We both saw Kahn’s work as exemplary and thought that students would benefit from a more thorough understanding of it. We co-taught a seminar called “The Architecture of Louis I. Kahn” for students in their final two years of the program. We offered it as an analytical course in which teams of two to three students each selected a Kahn building to analyze according The Kahn connection: Gary Moye 147 to a set of categories that we had established. Each week a different category was discussed. Pat and I chose which Kahn building was most appropriate to introduce the topic of that week. The discussion then broadened to include the other buildings. This was a popular course that helped students gain a better understanding of both the “what” and “how” of Kahn’s buildings. We considered it a primer for showing students how clear principles and a thorough process can produce functional, meaningful and readable buildings. We also stressed that the clarity of Kahn’s design principles and their architectural pertinence make it possible to subscribe to Kahn’s tenets without being imitative. Teaching has been a rewarding experience, providing constant learning opportunities. I value the colleagues who have become friends and the students who have become colleagues and friends over the years, but the teaching itself has never been enough for me. I need to have my own work, to engage in my own creative experience. Louis Kahn provided an example for me of how this could be. Practicing and teaching architecture are both important to me; one draws upon, challenges and edifies the other. Both are means of being involved in and influencing the values which I believe are critical to the realization of good buildings. In 1978 I began working during the summers for BOORA Architects in Portland. I worked there during my first sabbatical year as well, just prior to establishing the University of Oregon’s first Rome studio in the summer of 1984. Returning to Eugene to teach was extremely difficult. Having spent the year working as a project designer in Portland and the summer teaching in Rome, Eugene was not where I wanted to be and teaching was not a priority. At the end of that year, I took a year’s leave of absence to continue working for BOORA Architects. While there, I designed the Seattle University Arts and Sciences Faculty Office Building, with the valuable assistance of Leslie Kuhl. I also worked on concept designs for the Pacific University Fine and Performing Arts Center and a Student Center for Concordia College. It was invigorating to once again be immersed in practice, but the large office with its system of specialization was not for me. In that system, the designers never become more informed about construction and the technicians never become more astute about design. In fact, they tended to view each other as an impediment to getting their particular part of the work done. The experience made me realize that one of the benefits of working in Kahn’s office was working on all phases of a project, from beginning to end. There the design process never ceased and creativity was as valued in the detailing of the project as in its big ideas. Pat Piccioni once summed up Kahn’s attitude about the ongoing endeavor of designing all aspects of a building by saying that for Kahn, “Everything works or nothing works.” In Lou’s work, within an integral whole, each part or system contributes to the whole while maintaining its own identity. The cyclical process of establishing each part, assessing 148 A teacher of teachers and practitioners their impacts, and managing their mutual fit leads to an encompassing physical fabric. In 1986, near the end of my employment with BOORA, I received a commission in Central Oregon through my former student, Craig Kilpatrick. The project was a large residence that was to be sited on a peninsula of land within the meander of the Deschutes River. Though the house was never built, the project allowed me to open my private practice. Once I had my own work, teaching once again seemed a complementary endeavor. Since my firm’s inception, I have chosen to practice in a manner that guarantees my personal involvement at every stage of the work. The number of employees has fluctuated with the workload, but has never exceeded single digits. Influenced by my Kahn experience, my firm is organized in a studio format in which I am lead designer and project architect for each job. In addition, a project manager is assigned, while additional staff and consultants assist with drawing and technical support as required. Design and production, from the overall concept to the smallest detail, are integrated by maintaining the continuity of key personnel throughout the life of the project. My project list represents a wide range of work, requiring responses to different contexts, client needs, and budget levels. This variety of work is healthy in the sense that one does not get caught up in reiterating one’s previous work. In every project I try to produce work of lasting value, regardless of project size or other constraints. To ensure the success of each project, I put special effort into design, thoroughly detailed construction documents, and responsive construction administration. My project opportunities have been very circumstantial. I am uncomfort- able promoting myself and lack the tools or personnel to be involved in the marketing process that larger projects require. I have done some planning, concept design, and programming for university clients, but nothing that has resulted in a building commission. Most of my work is for commercial or residential clients. From the beginning I have maintained a continuous stream of residential work, both new and remodeling. Most of my residential work can be characterized by strong, encompassing roof forms, eventful spaces generously opened to the outdoors, and sensitivity to the treatment of daylight and to the natural setting. I have come to believe that residential projects are the most demanding and complex building projects, but have the highest rewards in terms of their impact on people’s lives and the client’s level of appreciation. Several exciting large projects – a manufacturing facility for a Dutch company, university student housing, and a couple of commercial projects have made it through the design stages, but were never funded or built. I believe that if some had been built, I would probably be managing a larger practice with more project opportunities of a public sort. The Kahn connection: Gary Moye 149 In my work there is an emphasis on spatial composition. Many examples of published architecture have a few visually pleasing images, but what is most difficult to capture in photographs is a building’s spatial qualities. I place this aspect at the core of the design. The spaces, the relationships between them (indoor and out), the movement within and between them, and the quality of their natural light are paramount throughout the process. Architecture is the context we make to accommodate our activities; it is made to be lived in, experienced, and moved through in three dimensions. Making a building is an enormous responsibility. It is a task that requires the architect to have a theoretical overview of his work and his methods. Each new project brings its own challenges and opportunities, but the general principles that guide my design effort are:

1. A clear schematic organization, with emphasis on its programatic meaning. 2. A respect for, and a response to context. 3. An articulated spatial geometry. 4. The importance of structure in the delineation of spaces. 5. The activating presence of natural light. 6. Well-organized and integrated service systems, particularly HVAC and lighting. 7. Careful attention to materials and details in the making of the building.

These are the tenets that are in evidence not only in Kahn’s work, but in the work of other architects I admire. I consider them fundamental to a meaningful architecture. I believe my work is still evolving and developing, and that living a creative life is essential. Since my days with Kahn I have continued to educate myself about Wren, Soane, Wright, Le Corbusier, Aalto, Dudok, and others. What is different about Kahn’s influence is my personal experience with his teaching, my direct involvement with his work, and the corollary influences of my mentors and friends, Henry Wilcots and Pat Piccioni. I have so assimilated these influences over the years and melded them with my own predilections that it is hard to separate them out. Kahn often told the story that underscored his interest in and respect for the work of Le Corbusier. When he was working on a design and felt that he had come to some resolution of the problem he was facing, he would look skyward and ask, “How am I doing Corbu?” Now, in my turn, I look skyward and ask, “How am I doing, Lou?” 13 From the ground

Stan Field, Master’s Class of 1969

I am now the same age that Louis Kahn was when I began studying with him in 1968. The world has changed dramatically, yet I still marvel at Kahn’s core belief that order exists and that our uncovering of its latent potential is what we see as new. At the same time that I was studying with Kahn, and only a few yards away, Ian McHarg was uncovering his visionary ideas with his new book, Design with Nature. He revealed how everything was connected and that we, too, were a vital part of this whole. Inspired by these two views of time and place, I would be drawn back to my native South Africa by my deep connection to nature. I had begun to see Lou Kahn’s powerful philosophical constructs in a new light that embraced ecological dynamics as the shaper of form. While I could still ask brick what it wanted to be, I could also calibrate brick’s answer according to a host of environmental inputs. Kahn would have said that form is governed by laws, while shape is governed by rules – the Unmeasurable and the measurable. There is no question that Kahn awakened in me a yearning to connect the tangible with the intangible. To me, his work is a narrative on the making of architecture formed by typology. I too am striving to create a narrative – a narrative formed by typology and shaped by contextual forces. The United States was in turmoil during the years 1968–69. Enmeshed in an unwinnable conflict in Vietnam, the youth in America were galvanized into a coherent anti-war coalition. Schools of Architecture were burnt and protest was in the air. This dynamic and ever-changing environment was in stark contrast to Kahn’s teachings. Kahn talked about the architect’s role in uncovering and expressing “the order of things.” With our very society being challenged, I was determined to find an architectural language that captured and spoke to the times. On graduating with my Master’s degree, two close colleagues and I from the Master’s class managed to acquire an unused old library space on campus and set about writing a book, “Morphogenesis,” continuing to work in the wake of energy we still felt. We lined up and tilted the desks into lengthy rows along the walls and proceeded to draw on rolls of paper extending for From the ground: Stan Field 151 what seemed like miles. After several months when we felt we were ready, we invited Lou Kahn to view our work. This was truly an amazing encounter. As Lou walked up and down, viewing the vast extent of drawings laid before him, he looked at us with a twinkle in his eye that left us with a feeling that it was now up to us, and then he disappeared. Was this to be taken as acknowledgment that we had grasped his teachings? Or was this a silent challenge for us to create “new” thinking? On reflection of that significant and dramatic encounter, this was the point at which the platform Lou had provided me with became the springboard for my own architectural development. The vision of the arc of my career became the driving force that allowed me to take that leap. I felt the forces of the times and dreamed of creating new structures. Around this time, Edmond Bacon had completed his book, Design of Cities, and he invited my two colleagues and me to join the team to work on the American Bicentennial in Philadelphia. I had to politely turn down his great offer, telling him that I had a burning urge to go back to South Africa to design my first work. Upon returning to South Africa in 1970, I opened my architectural practice in Johannesburg in a grand old Victorian house, within walking distance from the University of the Witwatersrand. I also began teaching design at the School of Architecture there. Those were exciting times, and the flow of students and professors in and out felt like a kind of alternative “academy of architecture” that I still dream of recreating today. I would also realize that the context in which I designed was becoming the defining force of my work. Two works of architecture stand out for me during this period. The first was the Miller House at Khyber Rock, north of Johannesburg, set in a vast Transvaal Highveld landscape. The confluence of a unique outcrop of huge boulders that formed the site and a client who loved the African bush created the dynamic context for this project. The design began with the carving of a model for each boulder in African Imbuia wood to gain a formal understanding of the identity of each of these massive rocks. It was clear at the onset that the architecture would become a dialogue between natural and man-made formation. No boulder would be moved and no built structure would touch them, as both shared and vied for the common support of the ground. The intent of the architectural formation would be expressed through a distinctly man-made geometry in juxtaposition to nature’s organic shapes. The deep spaces between the two became the counter form giving shape to the shadows. Like my first born, this raw concrete building is rooted in that place and every so often it beckons me back. In retrospect, this first built work might well have been a homage to Lou and in the process, liberated me from his formal language. The second work was my competition entry for the Germiston Civic Center in 1972. In an urban setting and at a crossroads in South Africa’s sociopolitical environment, I was deeply intent on creating a civic architecture 152 A teacher of teachers and practitioners that could be transformative. The winning scheme, designed by an ex-Kahn Master’s graduate, was Kahnian in its formal resolution of the brief. Although my entry did not win, it was broadly recognized and published. Plan, the South African Institute of Architects’ official magazine, commented:

There are usually one or two projects in every architectural competition of note which stand out as particularly provoking, reflecting architectural solutions which may have far reaching influence on architecture and architectural thinking. One such project, we believe, is submission entry no. 26, Stan Field, which has taken full advantage of the absence of constraints (other than those built into the brief) under normal competition circumstances. The project explores, in an extraordinary and competent way, the complex requirements of the brief, and the conflicting nature of functional requirements and aspirational or symbolic needs required by a public building of this type in an urban context. The interior arrangement of the various functional areas and spaces has the introspective complexity of a medieval city, scaled to the needs and movement of the occupants and users. The symbolic and speed scales dictate the sculptural simplicity of circular shell, rather like the fortifications of the medieval city, and the generosity of architectonic gesture, bestows focal and reference values on the structure in the visual urban chaos. Only at the major point of entry is the surrounding urban open space allowed to pry the protective shell open and to become part of the intestinal functioning. Viewed against this inherent conflict of scale obligations, the construction, with its differing orders of structural requirements, assumes greater clarity and meaning. In its exploitation of site and setting, in its functional welding of spaces of differing usage and form and in its architectural resolution of the conflict between symbolism and functionalism, we believe that this project has been unequalled.

The sociopolitical environment was so starkly etched on even the urban and city form that it would have been reckless for an architect not to bring these powerful forces into the narrative of the work. These were times of impending change in apartheid South Africa and the 1970s brought the freedom struggle to fever pitch. As an outcast nation, South Africa was isolated from the international discourse in architecture and was condemned to the sidelines. By the late 1970s, the political situation in South Africa had made it virtually impossible for any meaningful work to happen. The white Afrikaner government favored like-minded supporters of the regime while black people were totally disempowered and, in any event, did not want white patronage. So I found myself in a situation of stagnation. From the ground: Stan Field 153 At this time, I came upon a book written by Arthur Kutcher called The New Jerusalem – Planning and Politics. “For three thousand years,” Kutcher observed, “history and faith have shaped Jerusalem. Now its fate hangs on the decision of its planners.” Kutcher explained the dilemma facing the city, how its spiritual significance is bound up with its form and setting, and how these were now in danger of being destroyed by massive new developments but for which alternative solutions were available and which posed a question of world concern. I was drawn by this powerful sense of connection and wanting to be a part of this significant moment in time. And so my family and I emigrated to Israel in 1978 and began our new life in Jerusalem. I began working with a wonderful landscape architect where I literally learnt from the ground up and dialogued extensively with Art Kutcher in the same office. In 1980, I was appointed Chief Architect of the City of Jerusalem. My brief from Mayor Teddy Kollek was to connect East and West Jerusalem. The singular concept of heavenly Jerusalem proved more easily attainable than its earthly counterpart. After two years of heading a team that worked on unraveling this human dichotomy, our planning scheme was finally approved. After completing this public work, I moved on and opened my private practice in a historic building that overlooked the great ramparts of the Old City of Jerusalem. I remember that in one of our studio classes in 1968, Kahn had spoken about the Hurva Synagogue project, which he had just begun. I’d always admired his Hurva project in Jerusalem, which masterfully elevated a sacred structure slightly above the fabric and texture of the Old City. I believed I could build a sacred structure of equal importance. My big opportunity came when I met a remarkable rabbi on Mount Zion. He proclaimed, “You are the architect who will rebuild Mount Zion,” and for ten years we dreamed and planned. Three religions vied for attention on this complex site on the southern slope of the Old City walls – the Tomb of King David, the room of the Last Supper, and a mosque, all intertwined and within a stone’s throw of each other. I developed extensive plans which were ultimately approved by the city and mayor of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a horizontally layered city where one civilization built atop the ruins of the previous one. My plan was to build a wall on the foundations of an excavated early Israelite wall that surrounded Mount Zion, a penetrable wall to bring people in rather than to keep people out – a living habitable wall. This porous structure would maintain the physical and contextual continuity but provide openness and access that could potentially redefine entrenched patterns of interaction. I slowly began to understand, however, that to build anew in this historic and ancient place required either a new civilization or a new mindset, neither of which was within my grasp. During this time, I did build two synagogues outside of the walls of the Old City. A newly established community of diverse cultural backgrounds decided to build a synagogue together on the eastern slopes of Jerusalem 154 A teacher of teachers and practitioners overlooking desert landscape that stretches all the way down to the Dead Sea. So I designed a sanctuary made of 1-meter thick stone walls that unraveled to create a communal courtyard. From a distance, the recog nizable form of its barrel-vaulted silhouette also provided a welcoming sense of arrival coming up the long, windy road to Jerusalem. In contrast with the huge stones of Khyber Rock, South Africa, which wanted to remain untouched, these Jerusalem stones wanted to be touched by chisels, and hands and hearts, and so I too grasped the courage to add my pieces that must surely have been configured and shaped by the same forces that were shaping me. In 1990, with a heavy heart, my family and I left Jerusalem, but with the sense that I had played my part in helping shepherd the planning and design of the new Jerusalem at that critical time in its history. The twelve years that I lived and worked in Jerusalem further reinforced my belief that the contextual forces of the cultural sociopolitical environment were major determinants of architectural form. This twelve-year experience gave me an enormous new depth of understanding on which to build the next phase of my architectural career. Landing in America in 1990, twenty years after leaving Penn, and faced with the challenge of starting again was both exciting and daunting. We headed for California where I had a teaching position at the graduate school of architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. I became deeply involved in discovering my new American context. Everything seemed so much bigger, more complex yet efficient. Berkeley and I entered into a kind of honeymoon, where the students and I seemed to have bonded, and which generated a high level of creativity. I remember the first studio I taught was about equipping ourselves so that we were “fit” to design, as if we were Olympic athletes. It was amazing how they signed up for this course and we set about discovering the mental space that allowed a beginning. I believe Kahn was first and foremost a teacher. I can still clearly remember those jaw-dropping statements he would make where everyone in the class would mutter, “Did he really just say that?” To me, his architectural works themselves were designed to teach. With a limited body of built work at the time, I needed to invent a medium with which to teach. Here at Berkeley, with its less formal and freer structure, I created a studio style where each and every student was a vital part of the learning experience. It grew to be extremely popular and I became invested in each student. Through the work itself, I coaxed and drew the emerging Form out of them and the wonder of architecture was instantly recognized. To the extent that Kahn would have concurred with the idea of an emergent Form, this sense of wonder resembled the spirit of the Master’s Class. I enjoyed hearing this description of my classes from one of my students: “Thank you, as always, for giving us confidence to expand to what is not known before the tendency, in a studio like this, to contract into what is known.” From the ground: Stan Field 155 My teaching contract was for two years and on the day that it ended, I arrived in the courtyard to find an incredible sight. The previous night, the entire student body had dropped strings from all the windows of the five- story architecture school that were then gathered to create a kind of shrine in the courtyard. They afterwards told me that this was an expression of how I had touched them all and that it was a petition for me to stay on. While teaching and learning are intertwined, I began to realize the significance of my relationship with the students of architecture and how instrumental this was in my own development. It defined the very ethos of my work. At this point, a handful of graduates from my class and I were highly motivated to continue the work we had begun at Berkeley. Our goal was to create an academy of architecture that I had always dreamed of. We found a vacant hangar in the Presidio adjacent to a highly public promenade alongside the Bay. I wanted to draw the public in through the studios and workshops and lecture spaces thereby creating a bridge between academia and the real world. Around this time, the Loma Prieta earthquake had hit San Francisco. The elevated freeway that cut San Francisco off from its waterfront was deemed seismically unsafe and had to be demolished, and an international competition was launched to reconnect San Francisco with its waterfront. My solution was to remove the barrier by designing a huge arc that circled out into the Bay becoming a scenic bypass, while at the same time creating a new marine environment. The streets of the city’s grid would descend into the water, becoming canals and the city blocks islands, thus dissolving the edge. The physical wood model was set on a sea level base made of brushed aluminum. With the grid of streets draped over the natural topography of San Francisco, it vividly expressed the essence and magic of the city. This project, urban in scale, revealed to me that it was the ground that was and had always been, the generator. I began to trace all my works, beginning with the Miller House, which revealed that the common thread throughout was the construct I had established – the ground is our base and that architecture could be pulled out of it. In 2006 my son, Jess, graduated with his Master’s in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and joined me to form Field Architecture. With this new multigenerational practice, a rigorous and challenging dialogue developed between us. These were heady times and I was situated in the eye of the Silicon Valley revolution. A spate of new and exciting projects was commissioned that allowed new explorations. Our office in Palo Alto, California, with its workshop-like setting, com- prises around eight dedicated architects and technicians. Our goal is to remain a tight-knit team where our best work is realized through a deep resonance and the art of listening to the client as well as the land until the tune that reverberates can be captured on tracing paper. 156 A teacher of teachers and practitioners A kind of geologic catalog has become my handbook which I dip into for inspiration. I feel in the prime of my career – together with my son as partner, a rare opportunity and sense of extended time and generational breadth are propelling us even beyond my imagined goal. 14 Lessons learned, lessons applied

James L. Cutler, Master’s Class of 1974

What did I learn from Louis Kahn and how have I employed that received knowledge in my own practice? I have come to realize that the lessons I learned from Lou are a natural and pervasive part of not only my practice, but also in many ways of my life. The lessons, for me, have transcended architecture and have found applicability in my understanding of our place in this world. That said, let’s look at what I feel I learned and how I learned it – a little story telling.

Lesson 1: materials – pre-Master’s Studio At the time that I attended the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, it was very much a “school of architecture” in the Socratic sense. There was a way of thinking about what we were doing that was quite consistent and pervasive from class to class and from teacher to teacher. That way of thinking emanated from a room, in a building, across the plaza from the “normal” graduate school. The room was the Master’s Studio and the Master was Louis Kahn. Filtering down to us from on high came many bits and pieces of Lou’s thinking. At that time, the one bit of his world view that struck me as absolute truth was Lou’s famous quote: “I asked the brick what it wanted to be . . . and it wanted an arch.” To ascribe anthropomorphic qualities to an inanimate object like a brick seemed such a clear way to describe both the examination of the physical characteristics of the materials that we employ to construct buildings, and how they are best used to visually reveal their true nature. I instantly adopted this thinking as a core value in all design from that time until the present.

Lesson 2: institutions – Master’s Studio In the fall of 1973, on the first day of the Master’s Class, Lou comes into class and briefly explains that he’s “thinking of a room” and that it would be such a wonderful room that it would inspire a great artist to do a painting on its walls. And then he left. And we – the twenty of us in the class – were left with the question: What are we supposed to do? 158 A teacher of teachers and practitioners After years of being given programs and spatial requirements for specific uses, we were suddenly left to drift with the responsibility to develop our own program. Except for the thought of the painter in the room, we were given no further guidance as to what was expected of us. We all struggled. It must be understood that, in the Master’s Studio, one was required to present a pin-up on the vertical board to the full class, at each class, which met twice a week. Very often, visitors observed from the upper galleries that surrounded the whole room. Several classes and presentations went by without Lou giving a clear criticism of anybody’s work. Those of us who were used to being very successful when given specific requirements found the whole process unsettling. And as the public watched, and our teacher seemed dissatisfied with all of the work presented, it was a bit embarrassing. One evening, two weeks into this frustration, I had a revelation. I realized that buildings were merely garments that were worn by human institutions because, after all, buildings are primarily shelter. And just as our garments shelter us from the weather and the elements, so do buildings clothe institutions. For example, a house clothes the institution of family. And to truly clothe the institution one needs to understand its anatomy. Once that anatomy is understood, one could craft a garment particular to that institution and the physical circumstance in which it found itself. Consequently, I felt that the whole problem posed by Lou had been a false lead. Buildings are not intended for a purpose as frivolous as a canvas for a painting. Buildings grew out of the history of our human institutions. Therefore, I decided to design a building to house a human institution. Being 24 years old, and having been married for a year and a half, I decided to do a building to house the institution of marriage. However, when I began to design the garment for that particular institution, I began to realize it could not be one room but two rooms. One formal room was axial and ordered to represent the formality of the ceremony and the marriage contract. The second room was less formal, had various views into the outer world, and had a fire in the center. This room would represent the informality and the looseness of the relationship over time. I then took the two rooms and set them separate from the world in a pond so they, together, were still one entity connected to the outer social context by a single bridge. I built a small model that evening from paper, and the next day went to class, pinned my drawings up and placed my model on a stool in front of them. When Lou came to my work he said, “What’s this? You’ve made two rooms.” I responded by explaining my revelation: that buildings grew from the history of our human institutions, and I had picked the institution of marriage, and that when I explored the institution of marriage, it became two rooms. When I fully explained my logic, he was silent for a few moments, staring at me through his coke-bottle thick glasses and simply said, “For you, it is two rooms.” He smiled and walked on – the first time I ever saw him smile. Lessons learned, lessons applied: J. Cutler 159

Figure 14.1 Room. (Student project and photograph by James L. Cutler, Master’s Class of 1974)

Lesson 3: the path At Spring Break 1974, Lou went off on a business trip to India and never returned. We came to studio at the end of break and waited and waited, and called his office; his office called all around the world only to find out that his body had been located in the New York City morgue. So there we were, twenty students in the Master’s Studio with no master. Our first effort at solving this dilemma was to “teach ourselves.” This attempt resulted in total failure when, after three hours, we were still arguing over the first presentation. The dean at the time, Peter Shepheard, told us that we could interview new candidates for Lou’s Paul Philippe Cret Chair. We did so. Over the remaining two months of our tenure in the studio, we invited a number of well-known architects to teach us, including Carlos Vallhonrat, Jacob Bakema, and Felix Candela. All had their particular niches of architecture that were interesting, but none displayed the profound comprehension of the human condition that Lou had led us to discover with his Socratic teaching methodology. This left us somewhat disappointed until one of the students noticed that Jonas Salk, the great scientist, was speaking in New York City the next week. Lou had always spoken about the rapport and respect that he had developed 160 A teacher of teachers and practitioners both with, and for Salk while he was designing the Salk Institute. So we elected a classmate to call him and ask if he would come teach us. He accepted. The following week he arrived and we presented the results of work that Lou had assigned us, which was a study of North Philadelphia. As we presented and Salk commented, I began to feel as if Lou was back in the studio. All of the insights, all of the clarity of vision were there. The only difference was that the metaphors were no longer architectural, but biological. At that moment, it struck me that here were two men who had so assiduously pursued an understanding of their crafts that they had arrived at the same, somewhat transcendent understanding of the human condition. This struck me as a path that I might want to follow. While I might not reach the same level that these two great men had achieved, it still seemed a worthy route. In 2014, the thirty-seventh year of my own practice, the lessons that I learned from the Master are still being applied to every visual and physical aspect of my work. As one would expect, I have interpreted and built upon those lessons in ways that fit my own unique personality, just as Lou used his metaphorical discoveries in his own way. For instance, I have extended the lesson about the respect for, and the revealing of, the nature of materials to also apply to “Place.” Lou, who had spent all of his life in cities and was a quintessential urban guy, was also educated in the Beaux-Arts era. We are all products of our genetics and our environment, and consequently, I feel Lou had a bit of a blind spot when it came to fitting things into a more natural environment. Unlike him, my love since childhood has been of the living systems of this world. It was a small extension from the anthro- pomorphizing of materials to doing the same for “Places.” Lou lit the way. I have just walked my own path toward the goal of expressing what is true about our proper place among all other living things on this planet. With that slight broadening of Lou’s way of thinking I can now, by examples of built work, answer the question regarding the application of Lou’s lessons. I will use only one building to exhibit the applications of the lessons. I will go about this in a different order than the sequence in which I learned the lessons. Institution – Place – Materials will be the order because clothing the institution is the real task. “Place” informs the making of the garment. Materials are merely tools to create the shelter that is shaped by the nature of the former and the tangible reality of the latter.

Institution I have chosen a house or, in Lou’s world (as I interpret it), “a garment” to clothe the institution of family. That garment/house finds itself in a warm climate – Hawaii. It is still a garment to clothe a family, it’s just a little lighter and airier than a garment for a family in, say, Alaska – more like a Hawaiian shirt and shorts versus a parka and work pants. Lessons learned, lessons applied: J. Cutler 161 So when we examine the anatomy of a family, we find some simple aspects that are fairly universal. I will use one example to display how this understanding of an institution begins to inform a design. There are public zones which allow all members of the family to informally share and even allow invitees to feel comfortable and welcome. And then there are private zones that are only open to the individual members of the family (I still knock on the door of my 9-year-old’s bedroom before I enter, because it’s her space). At its best, our garment would separate these two zones at an entry. The entry would then provide a choice to each member of the family, to participate in the public area or to slip away to their private space without suffering the company of others (like most teenagers). The entry therefore needs to visually invite into public spaces (i.e. size of openings and a brighter light quality) while visually discouraging the errant guest from accidentally (and uncomfortably) wandering into a private area (i.e. smaller opening and a little dimmer light). In this way, I pick apart the anatomy of a family and tailor the spaces not only to fit the generic “family,” but also the unique individuals who are my clients. From the entry, which opens to the view and living room, a narrow passage also leads back to the sleeping/private area. The building is ordered by the nature of the Institution.

Place On the north shore of Hawaii, the trade winds blow at 10–20 knots, 300 days a year from the Northeast. They carry with them intermittent warm rain. They are omnipresent. Powerful views of the ocean extend 45 degrees counter-clockwise to these winds. Consequently, we organized the com - ponent zones of the building to respond to the wind and views, while still respecting the nature of family. A courtyard with transparent glass walls toward the ocean view, an open end to the sun in the south, a compound pitched roof that angles to the wind, and an organization predicated on the anatomy of the family combine to both reveal and reﬂect the true nature of this circumstance. All these drivers of the design of this building came directly from those early lessons imparted by our Master.

Materials The wind also drove the choice and use of materials. It exerted thousands of kilos of force on the exterior walls and substantial uplift force on the aerodynamic roof. We had to brace the walls and tie the building down, and still feel light (like a Hawaiian shirt). To do this, we first used a massive material (stone) at the base and then tied our light (wood/steel/glass) building to it. This not only fulfilled our engineering requirements, but allowed each material to tell its story. 162 A teacher of teachers and practitioners Stone is massive and “of the earth,” so it sits solidly at the bottom. The wood is light, lineal and visually warm so it provided the bulk of our structure. The steel is immensely strong in tension. We therefore used it to visually hold the building down and to become the link that ties the massive stone base to the light wood roof. At the joints, the strong contrast between the visual scales of these materials reinforced and amplified their different nature. Weighty objects feel heavier when juxtaposed to light objects and light objects feel even lighter when contrasted with heavy ones. Again, all of these devices serve to reveal and honor the materials, just as Lou taught us.

The path I am a bit of a workaholic. I love my work, most of all because the clear logic of Lou’s lessons makes every project an investigation into the nature of all of the circumstances that produce shelter. This makes every project not only unique in its fabrication, but a source of learning for me. Moreover, these simple lessons that ask one to respond to the nature of Institutions, Places, and Materials with integrity has insinuated itself into every aspect of my life. Integrity comes from the Greek word for “one.” In my mind it means that what one says and what one does are one. It is the way I attempt to lead my life. I have told people that at our best, we are not designing at all, but merely listening to the voice of each of the elements of architecture – Institutions, Places, and Materials – and allowing them to sing (like the brick) in harmony with all of the other voices. Investigating circumstances of Institution, Places, and Materials this way for the last forty years has become my natural reaction to not only architecture, but to all of the circumstances of my life. From attempting to puzzle out daily events, to understanding my brief existence on this planet, I continue to learn and have never been bored on this path. I thank Lou for lighting the way.

Teaching I am now passing on the gift that Lou bestowed upon many others and me. Besides the built work (which may or may not be perceived as a gift) I teach, typically once a year at different universities. More recently I have run the summer Studio at the University of Oregon’s Portland campus. Since I have a collage of students ranging from inexperienced second-year undergraduates to mature third-year graduates, my style needs to be more direct than Lou’s. I teach the lessons of Institutions, Places, and Materials, but very often do not have the time, the venue, or the mature students to wait for a “Socratic Discovery” process to happen. I wish that I did because I am certain that a lesson discovered is always better learned than one instructed. Lessons learned, lessons applied: J. Cutler 163 In the Master’s Studio we were given the time to puzzle out the vision of the world through our own unique lenses. Perhaps that was the greatest gift of our time with Lou. I wish it were the same for all students. 15 Becoming and being Reﬂections on a career

Sherman Aronson, Master’s Class of 1974

Introduction I attended Penn as an undergraduate, making the choice to pursue a more complete liberal arts education rather than go into a professional degree program. I loved my time at Penn and flourished in the design courses available. Along with three classmates, I was invited to join the graduate program as part of the senior year, which was a great opportunity. After completing the M.Arch., a few of us were encouraged to apply for the additional year in Kahn’s Master’s Class, yet another great opportunity. That year was cut short by Kahn’s death, but the time spent in his class and working with others from around the world was critical in my own development as an architect and as a person looking at the world with a sense of purpose and humanity. In the reflections that follow I discuss my career experiences and my role as an adjunct professor of architecture for the last twenty-five years. I also discuss specific aspects of Kahn’s teaching and how they tie into my work experience and studio teaching. The influences of his work and teaching are many, both as one of his students and by following the work he developed in his practice.

Practice My first full-time architecture job after Kahn’s class started in the fall of 1974 with a firm in Center City, Philadelphia. It was a very small firm – just two partners, the secretary and two or three staff. The design partner had gone to Yale Architecture in the late 1950s, worked with Kahn briefly, and was very interested in high-quality design and construction. In some ways it was the best possible job for me. As a small practice there was much direct work with the principals, mentoring and training. I picked up the methods of making presentations, working drawings, dealing with contractors, and trying to understand the owners and clients. We worked with the same general contractor, two Italian brothers who did very good work, for some residential and office renovations. They would ask the right Becoming and being: Sherman Aronson 165 questions and check dimensions, and I learned a lot from them. We all worked with precision, laying out spaces, adjusting the installation of wood trim to fit odd corners, and staying on budget with no extra costs that could not be explained as owner requests or very unusual conditions. The firm initially focused on building methods and materials; we understood how to use brick, masonry, wood framing, steel, concrete. When working with public clients we could pursue this understanding and put it into practice. We were inspired by the work, example and teachings of Kahn, to think through the proper use of materials, making a design responsive to the true needs, the location and site, and thinking clearly about light and its effects on interior spaces. Our best projects included two new health centers for the city, a day-care center for an African-American church, and medical offices. We reviewed the program, suggested innovations, and prepared responsive plans to work better than previous facilities. The Strawberry Mansion Health Center had a reasonable budget and schedule, and the city required durable materials and good construction. On the other hand, the program space was tight, and the contract would be public low-bid, with all that entails in quality control. First we visited other city health-center buildings, talked with their managers, and learned the issues from the City Architect’s office. One big problem at that time was people breaking into the buildings through windows and flat roofs to steal medications, as well as the general maintenance issues with flat roofs. The design partner’s insight was that the earlier buildings had extensive interior hallways without daylight, connecting the service departments – medical, dental, psychological, etc. He suggested gathering the circulation space into a central hall and waiting room, with access to all of the health services from one large space, and bringing daylight in from clerestory windows at the top of this space. In that way all of the roofs were sloping, the windows at the high point made a tall center room, and the patients would have a generous, light-filled space while waiting, rather than seats arranged in corridors. The result was very successful and we repeated a similar concept at a second health center. The influence of Kahn’s teachings about the importance of daylight had a direct effect on the design. Also, the walls were real brick and concrete block. To address the problem of windows we used solid glass blocks set into window-like openings. This is not a true Kahn approach, but it has prevented vandalism for many more years. The roof overhangs have kept the walls clean of dust and debris. On the interior, we designed built-in seating and lighting, using white oak boards that are still in good condition. The high ceiling in the waiting room became the site for public art. The balance of budget and quality was achieved, mostly through the careful use of space, making a compact plan. Our difficult challenges were with residential clients. Not all of them wanted modern style design, but that was what we were offering. It was a 166 A teacher of teachers and practitioners struggle to achieve agreement on the essentials with the owners. We often ran into problems with construction budgets, needing to find less expensive materials and structures to meet the client’s budget expectations. A design that started with poured concrete or block walls would give way to wood- framed walls with applied stucco finishes, putting aside long-term durability for reduced initial cost. We were directed to keep the spatial program and floor areas as the primary owner-driven goal.

Reflections on agreement In my early work with the first small practice, I learned the meaning and value of human agreement, a principle stressed by Kahn, at first within our own small team, and later with the owners and construction teams. In architecture there is much work that we must do on our own. We cannot share the old T-square or CAD mouse with another person; no one can literally hold your hand while you make drawings. However, once the drawing is started, then it becomes a tool for discussion, review, revision, and use. The drawings are not ends in themselves, only instructions for others to use to build. These drawings are not like fine art, to be framed and put on the wall; they are not like a clay pot to be used every day. To make the transition into reality, agreement is critical. Inspired in part by Kahn’s words, the partners in my first firm made it clear that they wanted to talk through the design intent and purpose of each decision before going to the client with the proposal. I did not realize how lucky I was to be part of that direct collaboration, first within the office and then with the people who would use the spaces. In many practices the design direction is highly controlled by a small few, who then see their task as “selling” the idea to the client, rather than a collaborative effort of working together all along.

In the 1970s, the building industry was in shock in response to the energy crisis. The costs of fuel, heating oil, and electricity were going up, and clients were looking for ways to save operating costs and reduce energy use. This demanded more insulation in the walls – a new way of building. I remember the first time we saw samples of “Dryvit,” an exterior insulation and acrylic finish system, now commonly called EIFS. First we tested the toughness of the finished surface with a pencil and it fared none too well. At that time one would only use the material at some height above grade, to avoid both vandals and ground moisture. In school we argued about “cavity walls,” using brick veneer with an air space, insulation in between, and a load-bearing concrete block backup. We joked that Kahn would have separated the brick from the block and made a “room” in between. But there was and is a real need for better thermal environment control and to make walls that would drain rainwater Becoming and being: Sherman Aronson 167 better than the old methods. There is no universal solution and the building codes are continually evolving to address better performance. When Kahn did his work in the 1960s in Bangladesh and India, the issue would have been rain, humidity, and ventilation, but not freezing in the walls or interior air-conditioning. He built with solid concrete and brick walls, and they have held up for decades. In the early 1980s we started working with historic rehabilitation projects. One of our first was converting a group of large rowhouses into condomin- iums. We studied the existing construction, found old plans and details, made extensive surveys of existing conditions, and worked with an outside historic consultant. The approval process was rigorous, for both the design documentation and the quality of construction. I recall Kahn’s words that a house is a society of rooms, and so is a city. The plan must recognize the character of each space and how they can live together. We considered carefully how to insert new mechanical services, working out the served and service spaces, grouping the location of risers and supports, to have the least impact on the original building and to make the new rooms as well-proportioned and light-filled as possible. We remembered Kahn’s teaching about finding good uses for good rooms, converting small bedrooms into generous bathrooms with good windows and walk-in closets. I learned about how buildings were made in the nineteenth century, learned respect for the quality of work, double-wythe brick walls, thick plaster, well- crafted wood windows, hardwood flooring, and stairs. Many of these features were very different from Kahn’s way of making buildings. In his work there often was no applied interior finish, no plaster, let alone drywall on stud framing. Kahn used wood as solid paneling and trim, and sometimes as room dividers.

Reflections on working solo During the end of the 1970s architecture, engineering, and construction were hit hard by a major recession. I was laid off for a year and looked for work on my own. As it turned out the parents of a college friend were moving to rural Pennsylvania and asked me to work on the design of an all-new house with passive solar design features, on a southeast facing hillside site. This was an excellent learning experience in all ways, good communication with the owners, a good local contractor, and excellent results. Of course, it involved many three-hour trips, some on train and bus, in all weather. This commission led to a second one for a young family that purchased the opposite hillside from the same owners. In this case, the design was earth sheltered, dug into the northwest facing slope for reduced wind exposure and allowing high southeast light to enter from the uphill walls of the house. The same contractor was used, and the work came in on budget and was well appreciated. 168 A teacher of teachers and practitioners After a year of solo work I rejoined the firm, which in the early 1980s continued to struggle financially. I was an associate partner and managed the projects and new staff. At this time the managing partner also started a small development company, investing money, time, and effort in residential condominium projects. His idea was to allow more control over the design, and lead to a better product. Sometimes this worked out well, but just as often it did not, being dependent on market conditions. In 1982 we started using one of the first CAD systems in the city. We had negotiated an extra fee that included testing new hardware and software for the city. It was both exciting and a big challenge. How to use the system in an effective and timely manner, produce good quality drawings, and stay on budget? We used CAD mostly for the column grids, floor and ceiling plans, elevations and sections at small scale. The details were done by hand drawing. We also used pin-register sheet alignment so that we could draw over a CAD-produced background plan on transparent film, then print them together. Whether we saved any cost is not clear, but the final documents were very good. Despite the new technology, by the mid-1980s the firm’s financial position was not tenable. This was the biggest business lesson for me: to see an entire practice dissolve because of poor market conditions in the residential development business, and poor management of our time and efforts on certain projects, despite the best intentions, high-quality design, and innovative project methods. The reality of running a small practice was more difficult than I had imagined. The stresses on Kahn must have been enormous during those years of working around the world, trying to run a practice by long-distance phone and teaching. One of my career goals at that time was to become a full partner, continue to manage the design and documentation, develop our preservation work, and address energy conservation effectively. Alas, this was not to be. When the first firm closed in mid-1980s, I joined a newly formed independent firm as a senior associate. It was growing and looking for seasoned staff, especially with rehabilitation experience. The practice was led by the sole owner, a strong manager and good designer, whose prior experience was with a large firm. He brought interest and experience in developer-led planning, transportation projects for airports and rail, and residential work. Almost immediately I was deeply involved in a major historic rehabilitation and reuse project for Amtrak at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, where I continued to work for more than twenty years. This rehabilitation was a great experience for me. Working with both classical design and early modern streamline details from the 1920s was a lesson in how our design thinking has evolved and the changes in building materials and methods over time. The station was made with genuine stone and plaster materials, and applied veneers and finishes. It was started by the Pennsylvania Railroad during the boom times but not finished until 1931, the Depression. One of the ironies of “value engineering” was that the first part of the Station used Italian Botticino marble, filled and polished, for interior wall panels. As costs Becoming and being: Sherman Aronson 169 were reduced they used Travertine marble, unfilled and unpolished, clearly less costly. Unfortunately, the unfinished stone surface caught dust and cigarette smoke, and yellowed over time. A major part of the budget was to clean the stone after fifty years’ exposure. Similarly, cleaning and repainting the 95-foot high decorative ceiling was a major effort that brought a great response by the public. One of the most dramatic spatial experiences I know is that of riding up the escalator from the lower level train platform, arriving in the main concourse and seeing the polychrome ceiling high above. This station was the first to use escalators, and among the first to use all electric trains that could run under the main floor. The “modern” designers understood new technology and took advantage of it in the design. Yet, the building and its site have a pre-Kahn aspect of the high Beaux-Arts in their use of symmetry, tall volumes for impact, and organizing circulation into great interconnecting halls, rooms, and passages.

Reflections on preservation For the historic research and technical expertise, our office worked with a preservation consultant, who then joined our firm as a partner. Working with him over those years developed another side of my interest in architecture. Preservation requires patient analysis, research, testing, and writing. I value the importance of finding out how and why decisions were originally made before making decisions about the new work. It is less intuitive and more analytical, but requires similar judgments about what will be best for the building and its new purpose. We had our own small lab and a few preservation-trained staff, who could take apart mortar samples, for instance, and understand each ingredient, whether the sand was brown or yellow, the cement gray or white, the size of the aggregate, or the amount of lime, all to develop a recipe with a good chance of matching the original. Matching was not just for color and appearance but also for performance, for example, making the mortar softer than the brick to allow for movement, the way it did for the last hundred years. This method is different than the teaching from Kahn about how to design, but not contrary to it. I am not sure how much preservation he completed, if any, but his respect for the inherent qualities of building materials, and using them appropriately, asking “what a brick wants to be,” are compatible with using experts to bring these observations into reconstruction.

Later I became a minority partner in the firm, as it had grown over the years. Unfortunately, there were problems of staff growth followed by project cutbacks and income issues, which led to my leaving the firm, which was later bought by a large transportation consulting practice. 170 A teacher of teachers and practitioners I joined my current firm in 2004 as a senior associate. The firm is medium- sized with a staff of fifty. We focus on work in higher education, high-rise residential developments, hospitality, hotel and resort projects, and mixed- use development. Our work has included adaptive reuse of historic buildings and a number of LEED-certified green buildings. We have a fifty-year history in Philadelphia, and the founding partners were teaching colleagues of Kahn on the Architecture faculty at Penn. My passions for green design and preservation have continued to grow. For me, the most rewarding work involves both finding ways to restore and renovate older buildings, keeping their value for a next generation, and using methods that save energy, water and materials, and make better interior environments. I am not sure how Kahn would have addressed either concern since he passed away before either preservation or green building became elements of architecture. One of our completed LEED-NC Gold certified projects was the renovation of an historic 1930 building at Pennsylvania State University. This was a challenging program, to relocate twelve arts departments into a 70,000-square foot building that had been used for agricultural education for sixty years. We succeeded in finding good spaces for each group and outfitting the suites to meet their needs, while making the shared lobbies, hallways and lecture rooms work well for all. We removed later additions and replanted the landscape, saving storm water and introducing native plants. We integrated a high-performance HVAC system, including radiant ceiling heating panels. The overall project is saving more than 30 percent of the energy compared to the base case and compared to prior energy use. This was one of our most rewarding projects, and has been cited by the university as a milestone for showing that their older buildings can be effectively reused and be green. It was one of several great experiences with historic buildings and green design.

Teaching It is difficult to convey a clear sense of what Kahn’s teaching methods were actually like. People usually have a preconception of “teaching” in a profes- sorial manner, or of direct, one-on-one critiques, as in an art studio or music academy. Kahn’s method, as such, was not a traditional format. There were certainly some direct comments to the student who pinned up work, but that work and his initial comments led to other related thoughts, ideas, suggestions, musings, and insights that Kahn shared aloud with the gathered group. He used the individual’s work as a launch pad for his own thoughts and for mini-lectures. At Drexel our teaching environment is different from most architecture schools in that the students work full time during the day and attend our studio classes in the evenings. The class settings are small, with fewer than ten students. I try to make sure that portions of the discussion with an individual student are shared with the whole group. I ask them to gather, discuss the student’s approach, recap our personal dialogue for the larger Becoming and being: Sherman Aronson 171 group, and invite comments from the other students. This method was a direct reflection of my experience with Kahn. It is extremely valuable to share the work of the students; they learn as much from each other as they do from the faculty. I have been a thesis advisor for the most recent five years, and that setting is different. Four students are assigned to each professor and we meet for a four-hour session, each week, often with an introductory guest lecture. It is challenging to balance the one-on-one time that each student needs for their own thesis with the goal of sharing the work among all four. However, our group is unique in that we selected students with projects that all relate to environmental education and research. We share program, siting, visitor expectations, researchers’ needs, and exhibition space concepts for all four. I can point to commonalities among the work – a true Kahn theme – as well as the unique character of each in response to its own site and special requirements. With my students, I use Kahn’s example of the design process for the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York, from the 1960s. Here he started with a powerful, abstract concept of a central worship space, round in plan, with circulation space around it linking to the offices, classrooms and services in four equal corner quadrants. He called this the “Idea” or the “Form.” As he worked with the congregation it became clear that the particularities of the program would not neatly fit into this paradigm. The initial Idea evolved into a central square worship space with four circulating hallways around it, connecting varied groupings of offices, classrooms and service spaces. The main focus was the same but it had a new configuration to meet the real world needs.

Reflection on Kahn’s influences as teacher As I reflect on my professional experiences in practice and teaching, I find myself thinking again about Kahn’s special circumstances when we were his students, and what the teaching experience may have meant to him. One particular phrase or concept that comes back to me is the notion of “becoming” and “being.” For me, when he talks about the “struggle of becoming,” and the “achievement of being,” he is speaking to the artistic battle of first gaining insight, vision, and dreams of what this (new) project might become, in the most idealized way. I think he was in love with those very first glimmers of an idea, the first scribbles of charcoal on tracing paper. He held the notion that between his mind, eye, and hand on paper he could find or will “it” into revealing itself. What an intense, noble effort. But then came the real world battles, which force one to go from these nebulous “becomings” into the realm of actual “being.” First, to get the charcoal sketch ideas into detailed working drawings. Then to make the measurable arrangements on paper and in words that could keep alive 172 A teacher of teachers and practitioners the vision. And then to deal with all the entities, issues, people, schedules, contractors, finances, and other issues involved in actual construction. To do this with multiple projects at once, to be making one idea come into being, while at the same time another new image of “becoming” is com- peting for your attention at the back of your mind, waiting to be born. I try to imagine Kahn coming to our classes while in the throes of all three states of mind, managing the construction (even if from a distance, with assistants), directing the working drawings, and nursing the new ideas that are becoming architecture (let alone keeping up with three families, of which we were only dimly aware at the time). Was our studio a refuge from those challenges? Was it a laboratory for expressing ideas in new ways or testing the old ways to see if they still work? Was his response to our work a way of criticizing his own work, or seeing another direction that architecture could take and have it feed into the recess of future possibilities?

Summary My career has had both a direct, linear path and a number of side excursions. My training at Penn, including the Kahn Master’s Class, was excellent preparation for working in an ofﬁce. In the early years I was absorbing the guidance from partners. I think that kind of experience is essential and I was successfully able to give that same experience to younger people at my second ﬁrm. Kahn’s teachings are relevant and compelling for all generations. Especi- ally important are his insights into the value of light inside the building and on the façade; his lessons about making rooms that work for their needs and for the unforeseen uses that will occur over time; and his respect for human desires, common aspirations, agreement, and the purpose of making places that will last. As the working world becomes more modernized, both in the technology of how we deliver our “information” to the owners and builders, and in the ever-growing complexity of construction methods, systems and processes, some of Kahn’s lessons and approaches may be less relevant to the everyday work of architects. I am still determining how to integrate both “the measurable and the Unmeasurable” into my teaching and practice, and to recognize “the becoming and the being” of our work and our lives. This is a legacy of Kahn that will continue to inspire and guide many of us in architecture professions for years to come. Epilogue A teacher’s legacy

Some ten years ago I began an effort to more clearly understand and document the lasting impact of Louis Kahn’s Master’s Class on my subsequent career as an architect and teacher. As part of this effort I teach a graduate seminar and studio at the University of Memphis focusing on Kahn’s works and philosophy. I have found that it is mainly through my own experience as a teacher and through my students that I have come to more completely understand Kahn’s influence and to believe that Kahn’s most important and longest lasting legacy may well be his teaching. This is an opinion shared not only by many of his other former students but also by many knowledgeable architects, critics and other observers. Always unconventional, even radical in style and content, his pedagogy grew out of his distinctive philosophy of education, which reflected three principal themes: a Beaux-Arts emphasis on history, order, monumentality and the power of intuition; a Neoplatonic view of reality and the realization of Form; and controversial beliefs about the architect’s role in society. His philosophy was instilled in his students through his seminar approach to teaching in the studio. It relied upon two ancient teaching techniques, the Socratic method and the Talmudic tradition, and stressed the distinction between the “what” and the “how.” Kahn’s pedagogy was appropriate to the intellectual capacities of a carefully selected group of mature students, all of whom already held the B.Arch. or M.Arch. degree, and who had already mastered the essentials of design. Whether its rarified nature would also have been effective for undergraduate students is doubtful. The Master’s Class demanded persever- ance, intellectual maturity, philosophical inclinations, a high degree of abstract thinking and a tolerance of ambiguity. The initial search for Form that Kahn advocated – independent of considerations of site, program, materials, structure or economy – did not necessarily lead to a practical architectural solution, and Kahn’s philosophical observations were not very helpful to his students in solving studio problems. As Komendant observed, “He never faced difficult problems directly but avoided them with state ments like, ‘Keep the cars out of the city, or simply close the streets for traffic.’”1 174 Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy Kahn’s pedagogy was not without its shortcomings. His moods could be unpredictable. The seminars were often more monologue than dialogue. His ideas were sometimes obscured by his idiosyncratic vocabulary, opaque metaphors and inscrutable parables. He ignored or downplayed the importance of most aspects of architectural practice, including the client’s program and budget. He could play favorites among his students and his criticism could sting. For John Tyler Sidener Jr. (Fall 1962), the class was initially “a bit of a bust. When Kahn was there, it was a unique experience; I think he reveled in the adulation and imitation by many of the students, even though they were imitating . . . forms he had gone beyond.” It took Sidener another year after completion of the Master’s Class to begin to understand much of what he had heard but had not fully absorbed.2 David Bernstein (1962) is one of those who continues to be skeptical about the lasting value of some of what Kahn taught and about Kahn’s influence on his students:

Rereading my class notes of some of the things he said, I am bound to say that much of it now sounds like dubious poetry with an elusive meaning. Even so it seems to me that what he was saying over and over was we must search for the essence within a problem that would transcend relevant practical and technical issues. This seemed valuable to me then as it does now, but it is not enough. Kahn’s work was so powerful that it was bound to influence our designs, although that was not his intention. I have discovered only one drawing of mine from that time of a small chamber music venue and music school. It is embarrassingly Kahn derivative and naive. . . . It illustrates that Kahn’s influence upon us may have been more stylistic than substantive.3 Brian Dudson (1964), who was older than most of his classmates, shares some of Bernstein’s skepticism. For him, Kahn’s buildings made a more lasting impression than his teaching. He recalls his reaction to Kahn’s critique of one of his class projects and how he was among the few students who were willing to challenge their teacher’s judgment: He criticized a design I had which located a parking basement . . . under a concert theatre, asking how a musician could possibly perform sitting on top of cars. I think a lot do, but at the time I had the temerity to ask how could they possibly perform if they happened to think about what was happening in their digestive tracts. (Muttering from other students.) . . . It was his buildings rather than his thoughts that mattered to me, and I would expect when it came down to it, to most of his students. . . . So to be as honest as I can, yes, I was greatly influenced by his architecture, but I’ve always been something of a skeptic and never, Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy 175 could never, adopt much of his way of thinking; after all, I was thirty years old when I took his semester and, I judge, of a more matter-of- fact disposition.4

Fred Linn Osmon (1962) eventually concluded that the main value of the Master’s Class was to bring him to the realization that he did not want to be like Kahn:

I didn’t want to be like him, couldn’t be like him. I didn’t want to do monumental buildings and couldn’t do them. I didn’t want to be great – just a good architect. And in contrast to Kahn, I did believe that good architecture placed the client, his building’s function, and context as the primary design parameters.

After Penn, Osmon went on to MIT, where he encountered Christopher Alexander’s “Pattern Language,” which “ﬁt beautifully into the gap left in my thinking since I had abandoned Kahn’s ‘wants to be’ as being too personal and intuitive.” Nevertheless, Osmon concluded that his exposure to Kahn had value:

His wonderful metaphors regarding what a building wants to be drew me to study with him. Although I never found myself comfortable with his heroic results, I found the experience of studying with him to be pivotal in my evolution as an architect.5

Despite these well-founded criticisms, I submit that Kahn’s contributions as a teacher far outweigh his imperfections. Reﬂecting on the timeless character of Kahn’s inﬂuence, the architect Moshe Safdie commented:

As time goes by, Kahn somehow stands apart as the measure, the standard, something to compare to, to evaluate by, to give sustenance. As the journals spin out page after page of trivia, we remember Kahn’s words about the nature of school, a place for work, a room with light, and the making of a window.6

Alison and Peter Smithson observed: “No architect with a memory of a Kahn lecture can not be aware of another level, another pattern of architectural thinking.”7 Graduate School of Fine Arts Dean G. Holmes Perkins wrote of Kahn’s teaching: “There is a sense of integration which unites Kahn’s architecture and his teaching. Working from the program as interpreted by himself, Kahn searched his inner self to give meaning to his architecture [. . .].”8 Dean Peter Shepheard felt that Kahn was

above all other things, an ideal university man. And how rare it is to ﬁnd someone who has devoted all his life to putting up buildings, and 176 Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy actually doing things in the world itself, who will give that kind of devotion within the walls of an academic institution. He simply said that the university is one of the most beautiful places to be in [. . .].9

Many of Kahn’s students, having reached the mature stage of their careers, have found that with the passage of time his inﬂuence as a teacher has lost none of the relevance of that memorable year spent with him in the Master’s Class. Stan Field (1969) echoes the thoughts of many of his fellow alumni:

I have come to believe that Kahn was first and foremost a teacher, and that architecture was his medium. Each one of his works clarifies and reinforces the underpinnings of his philosophy and collectively read as a kind of timeless manifesto, equally applicable to architecture’s beginnings, its present and future. Very few have managed to span generations with such relevance, despite the enormous advances of technology and globalization. The underpinnings of Kahn’s teachings remain as fresh to me as the sense of wonder he exuded when he first gave expression to his realizations. Kahn awakened in me the unique role of the architect, that could not come from any other discipline and that it was up to each one of us to define and express. Today the use of the word “architecture” has often been enlisted to imply a design strategy, the structure of a computer chip, or even a plan of a political campaign. This linguistic misappropriation, that leverages the hidden meaning and power of its true source, reaffirms the need for a Kahnian understanding of the rightful custodians of the institution of architecture. Kahn’s evocation of creativity that resides within “the treasury of the shadows,” was an incredibly personal almost mystical way of uncovering Form, and yet it touched us all as if we already knew it. This sense that Kahn imparted, that a realization means that it belongs to someone else, as well as you, was both deeply humbling and em- powering. The years 1968/69 were tumultuous. Vietnam, going to the moon, assass in ations, Woodstock – unrest all around. Yet Kahn was talking about Order. I have since come to see Kahn’s timeless views more as universal truths, unaffected by the times. My work has since evolved, drawing inspira tion from the dynamics of the times, thus being affected by them and in turn affecting them.10

For Gavin Ross (1968), Kahn’s concept of the Unmeasurable could also be applied beyond the ﬁeld of architecture:

We live in a world where it is the measurable which has credence and where that which is unmeasurable is contorted so that in a spurious way it can be purported to have been measured and thus be credible. A good Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy 177 example in our world of higher education in the UK was when the funding agency determined that the quality of universities was to be measured and then graded into categories to inform the public of the relative quality of universities. This was to then inform the funding. I remember being present at the launch of the system of summative assessment . . . where the categories of excellent, highly satisfactory, satisfactory and unsatisfactory were to be applied. I asked for a definition of “quality,” to be told that quality could not be defined, but that one knew it when one saw it. I then asked if it cannot be defined then how can it be measured? The question was ducked; clearly I was one of the awkward squad! What Lou taught me was to have belief in the Unmeasurable provided one really had challenged one’s thoughts about it.11

For many students, especially those from the 1960s, before Kahn’s failing health began to take its toll, the most memorable part of the Master’s Class was the transmission of energy Kahn seemed to radiate, an ability to inspire through his spirit and enthusiasm for architecture. As Donald Leslie Johnson remembers Kahn in 1961:

It was the enthusiasm of a young, inquiring spirit possessing a profound humility. This spirit, and Kahn’s desire to give unselﬁshly to the student, make him one of the ﬁnest and most provocative teachers. Although one may sit around a rather dingy table in a depressing room, as a student one feels the coolness of shade under a giant tree against the trunk of which Kahn sits, eager to give, willing to discuss his “realization,” architecture.12

For Fikret Yegul (1966), Kahn’s inﬂuence has only increased:

Because I became more knowledgeable, mature, or simply older, his influence continued to be more relevant with the passing of time. I could understand better what he meant, why he was unique in American architecture and art. . . . The memory of his joyous mind continues to supply a sense of enlightenment. I still understand architecture through Kahn. And, sometimes, I am saddened to think how little architecture students now know or care about Kahn and his design. It is true that externally, computer-generated designs of these days look a lot different than what he or we his student followers did – yes, Kahn would appear old-fashioned to most now days. But, in the minds of young students, architecture has always been somewhat a matter of fashion, a matter of who is hot and who is not. It was so in our student days, too, but not in Kahn’s Master’s Class; there, we tried to find some timeless principles or truths about architecture – that elusive “Form is. . . .”13 178 Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy Gavin Ross (1968) sums up Kahn’s lasting influence in the way that he

revealed to me the very nature of the art of architecture and in so doing the intellectual and intuitive beginnings of a work of architecture. It’s all there in his talks, of course, which I constantly read even now. I also saw his humility in the face of the art of architecture, and when he talked about his own work, and the extraordinary respect he showed to us in our own creative struggles [. . .].14

Similarly, Max A. Robinson (1964) feels that while his fellow students saw Kahn’s teaching as highly inspirational and meaningful,

most of us did not really appreciate how much so at the time that we experienced it. This is something that . . . grows out of later reﬂection upon those events. . . . Kahn’s greatest contribution as an educator was to reveal a method of thinking that led to constantly questioning. . . . His notion of asking “what a thing wants to be” was indicative of this method, as was his desire to read “Volume Zero,” a search for the very essence of the thing under examination.15

Michael Bednar (1967), reﬂecting on Kahn’s contributions as a teacher shortly after Kahn’s death in 1974, found that Kahn’s principles had become so widely adopted that he was not always recognized as the original author:

If he did not start the trend toward social consciousness in architecture, he certainly contributed to it in large measure. The current interest in the relationships between psychology, sociology, anthropology, and architecture certainly was given impetus by Kahn’s concern for the responses and needs of the user. Although he did not formally introduce these disciplines into architecture, he established the attitudes for later interdisciplinary cooperation. He was in many ways an interdisciplinary man. He brought to architecture, once again, a humanistic direction which has been lost in many schools of design. His architectural approach embraced human concerns and problems rather than ignoring them for the sake of “good design.” The curricular trend in architectural schools today in placing more emphasis on the humanities and social sciences was strongly fostered by Kahn. Another curricular development to which Kahn greatly contributed is that of environmental design, the notion that all design disciplines need some common basis of agreement. Kahn was very much against specialization in design; he saw no need for urban designers, landscape architects, interior designers, and city planners. All were fundamentally architects and should be educated as architects to be comprehensive in their design approach. . . . Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy 179 . . . he was able, as was no other man, to instill in us a sense of the wonder and fullness of architecture. In fact, he treated architecture as an unmeasurable deity to which he offered his works. Architecture, for Kahn, was an eternal spirit.16

David Bernstein (1962) explains how Kahn’s inﬂuence remains relevant today, even in a mode of practice very different from Kahn’s:

The main body of my work in England (since 1964) has been concerned with social/public housing. My practice, which came to include seven partners, was founded with a commitment to providing a public service, often in consultation with local communities. In time the practice designed new buildings and large groups of housing, but initially we found ourselves converting and repairing humble Victorian houses for low income families. . . . Now in retirement, as a trustee of a charitable housing association for the elderly with another former Kahn student, Marius Reynolds, we ﬁnd ourselves at one in our approach. As client representatives we have been trying to reﬁne the work of our architect, removing current architectural clichés and, we hope, arriving at the “essence” of what the building should be.17

Martin E. Rich (1964) echoes this evaluation, explaining that he was profoundly inﬂuenced by Kahn’s emphasis on the search for “beginnings” and “beliefs,” and the ways in which this inspired an inclination to “probe for the psychological and emotional connections between a client and a project.” Rich was able to list several ways in which the Master’s Class experience permanently affected his subsequent careers in teaching and practice:

Kahn suggested that each of us should find a way to practice architecture for ourselves. He said the value of being an employee in another architect’s office was the fundamental experience one gained in the process of making drawings and putting buildings together. When the opportunity presented itself, I remembered this message and took the risk of opening my own practice. Kahn believed that one should be a teacher whether in school or in one’s own office. This reinforced a desire to teach in architectural schools which I did early in my career. In my own architectural practice, I sought to create an environment of learning and interaction that had a positive impact on many of the young architects I trained. . . . Lastly, I found a rapport with clients which evolved in part from the awareness and sensitivity that I experienced in that class. The search for the unexpressed needs and passions behind each commission has guided me to some meaningful work and a satisfaction with how I have impacted others’ lives.18 180 Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy Attempting to integrate the Master’s Class experience with his previous background, John Tyler Sidener Jr. (Fall 1962) eventually found that Kahn’s work was best considered as Kahn considered it himself, as “high art,” rather than as a rejection of the Modernism to which Sidener had been exposed as an undergraduate:

I looked at what he talked about, of the brick and the light, and at what was being built at Richards (in 1961), and saw the future: reﬁned, not rough, concrete; repetitive forms; articulation of private and public spaces; articulation of joints and services; and light, always light, into every habitable space.19

However, Sidener also felt that after the Master’s Class he needed to broaden his approach to include more than just architecture with a capital “A,” as Kahn taught it, to include a more interdisciplinary approach with more consideration of the larger context and that included relationships with other buildings and urban design. As a Penn graduate “versed in the language and passion of Kahn, the analytic environmental methods and philosophy of McHarg, the openness to citizen groups that Davidoff taught,”20 Sidener would move into the ﬁelds of advocacy and environmental planning, as well as architecture. J. Michael Cobb (1970) also credits the Master’s Class with encouraging him to adopt a critical approach to design and to think independently about his future career, which eventually shifted away from architecture:

I believe I incorporated from him his questioning approach to creating “Form” for the spatial world – and to move beyond what he called the “seemingly obvious.” From him I also learned to trust my instincts and to chart my own path in my professional life. . . . Kahn influenced and reinforced my belief in finding my “own way” of looking at the world in my work and my career, somewhat regardless of what the prevailing professional norms seemed to stress. This is best exemplified by my work with the global engineering and development corporation Bechtel, where as a reasonably young man at the time, I became one of the company’s youngest executives and a global technical director . . . for the firm’s worldwide project develop ment work. . . . In some ways, being in Kahn’s studio was perhaps one of the key factors that helped me in my gradual moving away from being an “architect,” per se, and moving toward being an urban designer [. . .].21

As noted previously, Kahn incurred the animosity of some critics and especially those practitioners who failed to understand his idiosyncratic expressions and who were cynical about the “smokescreen” in which he sometimes seemed enveloped. Even though he spoke with the authority of an accomplished practitioner, Kahn’s ideas have often seemed impossibly Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy 181 idealistic and even naive to those architects involved in the grim daily struggles of what Kahn referred to as “the marketplace,” consumed by the demands of professionalism and the constant pressures to compromise ideals. Implicit in Kahn’s lessons was a constant focus on imparting the value of a lifelong search, a quest for an understanding of the essentials of architecture. He emphasized the importance of recurring concepts such as wonder, joy, knowledge, realizations, the measurable, and the Unmeasurable. Most Master’s Class students aspired to being artists and philosophers as well as architects, and Kahn’s idealistic attitude encouraged this ambition. “Every work of art is a joyous thing,” Kahn said. “No work of art comes from sadness. The initial thing is the capability of joy.”22 As a result of this emphasis on architecture as art rather than problem- solving, some of his students came to consider themselves members of an elite cadre of artist–architects. Komendant felt that this aspect of Kahn’s approach made students arrogant, and there was probably some truth to this accusation. Shortly after graduation, students who had occupied the top of the pecking order at Penn, esteemed as young philosophers and highly talented designers, entered the workforce where many found themselves assigned to the same lowly jobs as other intern architects. Under these circumstances it could be difficult to conceal from co-workers the impact of what they believed to have been an extraordinary experience. Some found it impossible to convey a sense of the Master’s Class without resorting to some version of Kahn’s obscure terminology, which could alienate them from their less philosophically inclined colleagues. Perhaps this is one reason why so many of his former students gravitated to teaching as well as, or instead of, professional practice, for it is in academia that Kahn’s ideas have always received the most sympathetic ear among those who are by disposition less threatened by the power of unfamiliar ideas. Like Sherman Aronson (1974), many Master’s Class alumni whose later careers have combined both practice and teaching found that while Kahn’s ideas were significant personally, they had limitations when it came to application in the marketplace. Aronson found that to effectively sell his ideas to his clients, Kahn’s language was ineffective and that practical arguments had to be found in defense of the philosophical ideas he had absorbed in the studio. Especially with budget-oriented clients, some of Kahn’s concepts, like the importance of expressing structure in the making of a room, were difficult to justify economically. In order to have any hope of being realized, it was important to explain Kahn’s abstract references to the Unmeasurable attributes of architecture in more concrete terms. In the design of a school, for instance, the importance of natural light had to be justifiable in terms of increased student performance and reduced energy costs. Despite his outspoken criticisms of some aspects of Kahn’s approach, in the end Komendant acknowledged his enduring contributions as a teacher. “Kahn’s powerful ideas and high spirit were and will be guidance and advice for many young architects, especially for those who studied under 182 Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy him. His teaching has fallen like golden dust which, if touched, gives the power of anticipation.”23 Kahn served as Robert Venturi’s thesis critic at Princeton, and Venturi later worked in Kahn’s office and served as his teaching assistant. In reflecting on his and Denise Scott Brown’s relationship with Kahn, Venturi noted that through Kahn they had been able to find their own way:

As Kahn’s young students we were able to evolve out of him . . . to do as Kahn did as he evolved out of Paul Cret, Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller, and also out of his own students toward his way.[24] He was also a great teacher; I speak, I think, as a true student of Kahn – that is, not as a follower but as one who evolved out of him and his work – was liberated by him rather than converted by him.25

Venturi found Kahn to be an idealist. “His emphasis on esoteric metaphysical pronouncements concerning mind, spirit, body, and timeless universal absolutes involved things as they should be rather than as they are.”26 Despite her differences with Kahn, Denise Scott Brown (Fall 1964) concluded that he was a good teacher, and that on balance, his strengths as a teacher outweighed his faults:

Dealing in basic principles and searching for essences, he lets his students see and join in the development of his thoughts over time, until a clarity is reached. In this way they come to sense the searching nature of his thought; to know that there is little room left for (the) capricious and the superﬁcial, when the architect in humility, tries to draw the solution from within the problem itself rather than to impose it from above.27

As a teacher, Anthony E. Tzamtzis (1974) found Kahn to be

very clear and profound at the same time. Every moment being around him was memorable as far as I am concerned. Like a good psychologist identifying a hidden problem in a patient, he had a way of recognizing and extracting from students’ design presentations the essence of the values that were the basis of his personal philosophies about archi tecture and in that manner assisting better project design understanding and further growth. For me, the abstractness of the design assignments and the individual students’ revisions of their own work following his evaluation were very memorable.28

Richard Saul Wurman concludes, “Perhaps there was no better teacher, as he allowed us to be more of ourselves.”29 For many students the Master’s Class was a jarring departure from the functionalism they had absorbed in Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy 183 their previous studies. As the year progressed, however, most were left with a greater appreciation of the signiﬁcance and scope of architecture that was carried into their subsequent careers as teachers and practitioners. While the Master’s Class was not for everyone, for those students who were willing to accept the challenge Kahn began to reveal the existence of a hidden world, a realm of architecture that changed their approach to their life’s work. In the 1960s and early 1970s, many in the Master’s Class and elsewhere had become disenchanted with what Venturi and others referred to as “orthodox Modernism.” For these, Kahn’s approach offered to open new doors, particularly in its inclusive attitude towards history and an architectural tradition of more humanistic values. He taught students to go beyond the sterile functionalism that characterized much of mid-century architecture and to see instead a reawakened potential to express the deepest longings, the noblest strivings of the spirit. Much Modernist architecture of this period has been justly criticized for its coldness, blandness and seeming indifference to the needs of those who inhabit it. Without abandoning Modernism, Kahn found a way to inject a human touch, which he instilled in his students. As Richard T. Reep Sr. (1962) sees it:

Kahn gave Modern architecture feeling and love. He understood the positive qualities of light, spatial relationships, and basic architectural forms from the past and searched for the underlying nature of each element. . . . His was a humanistic, rather than a rational, architecture. Modern in the sense of its originality and timeless in the sense of its humanity.30

Norman Rice summed up Kahn’s signiﬁcance as a teacher:

He was an ardent missionary of architecture. . . . the discussions in the studio, with their give and take, helped Lou fight out and resolve many of his architectural battles. He fascinated students by his poetic visions and the veritable flood of his images, the analogies with music, his evocation of primary essences. For the first time they saw the essential nature of a stairway, of a column and a beam, and a wall – and the differing natures of brick and concrete. He urged them not to become mere satisfiers of so-called building programs, mere problem solvers. Above all, he tried to inspire them, by his own example to become architects of the nature of a building as well as the architects of its plan and configuration.31

In the end, the lasting legacy of Kahn’s teaching in the Master’s Class lies not in knowledge, the “how,” and not in the answers to the questions he raised. Rather it is to be found in the questions themselves, timeless, enduring 184 Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy questions regarding the “what,” the underlying essence of architecture that Kahn posed to himself and his students. The lifelong habit of searching for these essential realities, along with the conﬁdence he inspired in his students to become the best they could be by trusting their intuitions and feelings, is his best and most enduring contribution. For those students who became practitioners, Louis Kahn did indeed “set the strongest free” to ﬁnd their own way. And through those who became teachers, and through their students who will in turn become teachers, Kahn’s legacy continues to be passed down to new generations of young architects.

Notes 1 August Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), p. 175. 2 John Tyler Sidener Jr., “Me and Lou,” unpublished essay, 2011. 3 David Bernstein, letter to the author, August 17, 2011. 4 Brian Dudson, letter to the author, August 22, 2011. 5 Fred Linn Osmon, “An Interlude – The Louis I. Kahn Studio,” unpublished essay, 2014. 6 Moshe Safdie, as quoted in Richard Saul Wurman, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli International Publications, 1986), p. 295. 7 Alison and Peter Smithson, as quoted in Wurman, p. 298. 8 Alessandra Latour, ed., “Louis I. Kahn: l’uomo, il maestro” (Rome: Edizioni Kappa, 1986), p. 371. 9 Peter Shepheard, as quoted in Wurman, p. 304. 10 Stan Field, letter to the author, October 11, 2011. 11 Gavin Ross, letter to the author, December 20, 2012. 12 Donald Leslie Johnson, “Recollections of Lou Kahn,” Progressive Architecture, August 1961. 13 Fikret Yegul, “Louis Kahn’s Master’s Class,” unpublished essay. 14 Gavin Ross, letter to the author, October 11, 2011. 15 Max A. Robinson, “Reﬂections Upon Kahn’s Teaching,” unpublished essay, September 15, 2011. 16 Michael Bednar, “Kahn’s Classroom,” Modulus, 11th issue, 1974, University of Virginia School of Architecture. 17 Bernstein. 18 Martin E. Rich, AIA, “Recollections on the Master Degree Class, University of Pennsylvania, 1963 to 1964,” unpublished essay, 2011. 19 Sidener. 20 Ibid. 21 J. Michael Cobb, “Thoughts on Louis I. Kahn,” unpublished essay, 2011. 22 Kahn, as quoted in Komendant, p. 173. 23 Komendant, p. 191. 24 Robert Venturi, Iconography and Electronics Upon a Generic Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996), pp. 86. 25 Ibid., p. 87. 26 Ibid., p. 89. 27 Denise Scott Brown as quoted in “Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania,” Terence Farrrell, ed., Arena (London: Architectural Association, vol. 82, no. 910, March 1967), pp. 216–219. Epilogue: a teacher’s legacy 185 28 Anthony E. Tzamtzis, letter to the author, November 16, 2011. 29 Wurman, Introduction. 30 Richard T. Reep Sr., “The Icon: Memories of Lou Kahn’s Master’s Class, 1961–62,” unpublished essay. 31 Norman Rice, as quoted in Wurman, p. 294. Appendices Kahn’s Master’s Class: design problems and student demography, 1955–74

Today, Louis Kahn’s legacy as a teacher lives on through the work of his students. At the University of Pennsylvania, the room in which he taught on the fourth floor of the Furness Library was renamed in his honor and remains a place of pilgrimage. Kahn’s archives, saved from dispersal by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania which acquired the collection and placed it on permanent loan with the university in 1977, are housed on the ground floor of the same building in the Harvey and Irwin Kroiz Gallery of Penn’s Architectural Archives. Photographs, drawings, and even audio and video recordings help to shed light on the activities of the Master’s Class, but to get a fuller picture of the work one must come to know something of the students who participated in it. Kahn suggested that he learned more from the students than they did from him prompting the question, “Who were his students?” An answer to this question can be found in the records of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.1 Contained therein are the transcript cards for the school, including a total of 427 records for individuals who received a second professional degree following advanced study with Kahn. In addition to basic information about the students, such as age, gender, birthplace, address, and previous degrees, the transcripts provide a window into the diversity of voices present in the class. Such diversity was meaningful to Kahn, providing him a multiplicity of viewpoints from which to confront the questions that most intrigued him about architecture. Students ranged in age from 21 to 54 years, with the average falling between 26 and 27 years. Graduates matriculated into the Master’s Class from 133 institutions of higher education and, not surprisingly, a total of 60 rose through the ranks of the University of Pennsylvania. While the majority received degrees from American universities, over 40 percent traveled from abroad. The École des Beaux-Arts in Paris sent a total of fifteen graduates – a notable reversal of the flow of Americans to that city from Philadelphia during the first decades of the twentieth century.2 Significant numbers journeyed from South Africa, Turkey, India, Thailand and Japan, as well as Germany, United Kingdom, and Canada. Remarkably, only Appendices 187 sixteen of the graduates were women – fewer than 4 percent – and of those, only three were born in the United States. Perhaps the most interesting information gleaned from the transcripts is the list of design problems undertaken by Kahn and his students. Topics generally emerged in the first days of class out of a conversation between the students, Kahn, and his collaborators. Occasionally, Kahn assigned a one- week sketch problem to assess individual ability, as he did in the fall of 1957 using the program for the commission he had recently received from Herbert and Roseline Gussman of Tulsa, Oklahoma.3 Often, some of his earliest considerations for a commission were undertaken with his students – as was the case with the parliament complex in Dhaka – assigned immediately upon returning from his first trip to the site in March 1962. The program as distributed to the students draws directly from information that Kahn received from his client just weeks before.4 Subjects favored typically focused on institutions with complex programs or spatial relationships. Totally absent from the list is the subject of an art museum, surprising given Kahn’s own, well-known achievements. Poignantly, the final problem on this list, and the one Kahn gave most often, is a “school,” left unassigned in this case due to his death on March 17, 1974, at mid-semester. Compiled here is a selection of information gathered from the transcripts and other sources held in the Architectural Archives. Appendix A provides a listing of Kahn’s Master’s Class problems with a demographic summary for each group of graduates (averaging twenty-four students per class). Spikes in enrollments during 1961, 1964, and 1966 respectively were due to large classes in Penn’s Urban Design program. These students, a total of 10 percent of the Master’s Class, studied with Kahn for a single semester, receiving dual Master’s degrees in architecture and city planning, following the completion of the curriculum. Appendix B describes the global draw of Kahn’s Master’s Class, and Appendix C the institutions of higher learning through which this international mix was funneled. William Whitaker Curator and Collections Manager The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania

Notes 1 Access to transcript records is restricted to authorized personnel employed by the University of Pennsylvania. Research inquiries should be addressed to the Architectural Archives where a database of individual graduates is maintained. This database, compiled by William Whitaker in 2010, is the basis of the summary published here. 2 Caroline Maniaque-Benton, “French Connections: Learning from Penn,” presented at the conference, “Architecture Education Goes Outside Itself: Crossing Borders, Breaking Barriers,” University of Pennsylvania School of Design, February 8–9, 2013. 188 Appendices 3 Marius Reynolds, email to William Whitaker, August 7, 2011. 4 Arch.700. Studio of LeRicolais, Rice and Kahn. “Program for Second Capital of Pakistan in Dacca,” call #086.VII.B.1, LeRicolais Collection, The Architec - tural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Appendix A Class problems and student demography, 1955–74

1955–56 Arch.600 Fall University of Pennsylvania skating rink Spring No class Graduates 6 men, 1 woman (Germany: 1; Japan: 1; Thailand: 2; US: 3)

1956–57 Arch.600 Fall Arena for the City of Philadelphia Spring Faculty Club for the University of Pennsylvania Graduates 10 men, 1 woman (Austria: 1; Thailand: 2; UK: 1; US: 7)

1957–58 Arch.600 Fall House in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Problem 2: student’s choice Spring Fine Arts School of the University of Pennsylvania Graduates 16 men (Australia: 1; Austria: 1; Germany: 1; Syria: 1; Namibia: 1; Turkey: 3; US: 8)

1958–59 Arch.600 Fall Problem 1 and 2: student’s choice Spring City High School and City Center Graduates 13 men (Belgium: 1; Ireland: 2; US: 10)

1959–60 Arch.600 Fall Unitarian church Spring Problem 2: student’s choice Graduates 16 men, 3 women (Australia: 1; Argentina: 1; Belgium: 1; Canada: 1; Germany: 1; Japan: 1; South Africa: 1; Thailand: 1; UK: 1; US: 9; Yugoslavia: 1) 190 Appendix A 1960–61 Arch.700 Fall Salk Medical Research Center; house in Chestnut Hill Spring Luanda consulate and residence; performing arts barge, River Thames, London Graduates 31 men, 1 woman (Argentina: 1; Australia: 1; Botswana: 1; Canada: 1; Columbia: 2; Egypt: 1; France: 1; India: 1; South Africa: 2; Syria: 1; Taiwan: 1; Thailand: 2; Turkey: 1; US: 15; Venezuela: 1)

1961–62 Arch.700 Fall Market Street East Spring Parking garage Graduates 25 men (Canada: 2; Egypt: 2; Germany: 1; South Africa: 3; Turkey: 1; US: 16)

1962–63 Arch.700 Fall Science building for California; Benedictine monastery Spring House in Hatboro, PA; second capital for Pakistan Graduates 22 men (Denmark: 1; Egypt: 1; Japan: 1; Portugal: 1; Southern Rhodesia: 1; Turkey: 1; UK: 1; US: 15)

1963–64 Arch.800 Fall Fine Arts Center, Fort Wayne, IN; private school, Philadelphia, PA Spring Urban redevelopment, Philadelphia, PA Graduates 38 men, 1 woman (Belgium: 1; Canada: 5; Egypt: 1; France: 2; Germany: 1; India: 1; Ireland: 1; Japan: 1; Korea: 1; New Zealand: 1; Panama: 1; South Africa: 1; Turkey: 1; UK: 2; US: 18; Venezuela: 1)

1964–65 Arch.800 Fall Fine Arts Building, University of Pennsylvania; place of wellbeing Spring Governor’s mansion, Harrisburg, PA Graduates 26 men (Argentina: 1; Estonia: 2; Germany: 1; Iran: 1; Japan: 1; Thailand: 1; Turkey: 1; US: 17; Venezuela: 1)

1965–66 Arch.800 Fall Benedictine monastery, Valyermo, CA; Allen’s Lane Art Center Appendix A: Class problems 191 Spring Benjamin Rush Junior High School, Philadelphia, PA; monument to F.D. Roosevelt, Washington, DC Graduates 27 men, 3 women (Australia: 1; Canada: 2; Germany: 2; India: 5; Thailand: 1; Turkey: 1; UK: 2; US: 16)

1966–67 Arch.800 Fall Library, Phillips Exeter Academy; Planning for Central and East Central Philadelphia Spring Greek Orthodox church and school; Boy’s Club Graduates 21 men (Argentina: 1; Australia: 1; Canada: 3, France: 1; Korea: 1; Japan: 1; South Africa: 1; Turkey: 2; US: 10)

1967–68 Arch.800 Fall Center City block development; ofﬁce building Spring Comprehensive plan for University of Pennsylvania Graduates 20 men (Argentina: 1; Germany: 2; India: 1; Peru: 1; UK: 3; US: 12)

1968–69 Arch.800 Fall University Center; Eastwick High School Spring House in Washington, DC; “Philadelphia” Graduates 24 men (Belgium: 1; Bolivia: 1; Denmark: 1; France: 1; Germany: 2; Italy: 1; Japan: 1; Lebanon: 1; Portugal: 1; South Africa: 1; Switzerland: 1; Thailand: 2; US: 10)

1969–70 Arch.800 Fall N. Independence Mall, Philadelphia, PA; middle school Spring A City Place Graduates 26 men (Argentina: 1; Australia: 1; Belgium: 1; France: 3; Iran: 1; Ireland: 1; Jamaica: 1; Netherlands: 2; Thailand: 1; Tunisia: 1; Turkey: 1; US: 12)

1970–71 Arch.800 Fall Philadelphia Forum; street and row house; Bicentennial Expo building Spring Public bath house; problem 2 Graduates 24 men, 2 women (Ecuador: 1; Ethiopia: 1; France: 3; Germany: 1; India: 1; Iran: 1; Ireland: 1; Thailand: 1; US: 15; Yugoslavia: 1) 192 Appendix A 1971–72 Arch.800 Fall House development, Society Hill; Byberry site Spring Music school; room Graduates 20 men, 2 women (France: 4; Greece: 1; India: 1; Netherlands: 1; South Africa: 1; Thailand: 4; US: 10)

1972–73 Arch.800 Fall Girard College; shopping mall Spring Graduate Theological Union Library, Berkeley, CA; city Philadelphia Graduates 21 men, 1 woman (Bahamas: 1; India: 1; Iran: 3; Iraq: 1; Japan: 2; Kuwait: 1; Norway: 1; Portugal: 1; Taiwan: 1; US: 9; Yugoslavia: 1)

1973–74 Arch.800 Fall Development at 17th and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia; room Spring Rejuvenation of North Philadelphia; School (not assigned due to Kahn’s death) Graduates 26 men (Belgium: 2; France: 3; Greece: 1; Japan: 1; Korea: 1; Netherlands: 1; Saudi Arabia: 1; Taiwan: 1; US: 15) Appendix B Country of origin

North America (245 graduates): United States: 230; Canada: 13; Bahamas: 1; Jamaica: 1 Europe (73 graduates): France: 18; Germany: 13; United Kingdom: 10; Belgium: 7; Ireland: 4; Netherlands: 4; Portugal: 3; Yugoslavia: 3; Austria: 2; Denmark: 2; Estonia: 2; Greece: 2; Italy: 1; Norway: 1; Switzerland: 1 East and South Asia (44 graduates): Thailand: 17; India: 12; Japan: 9; Korea: 3; Taiwan: 3 Middle East (29 graduates): Turkey: 12; Iran: 6; Egypt: 5; Syria: 2; Iraq: 1; Kuwait: 1; Lebanon: 1; Saudi Arabia: 1 Africa (15 graduates): South Africa: 10; Ethiopia: 1; Tunisia: 1; Namibia: 1; Botswana: 1; Southern Rhodesia: 1 Central and South America (14 graduates): Argentina: 5; Venezuela: 3; Columbia: 2; Bolivia: 1; Ecuador: 1; Panama: 1; Peru: 1 Australia (7 graduates): Australia: 6; New Zealand: 1 Appendix C Institutions of higher education attended prior to enrollment at the University of Pennsylvania

Academie van Bowkunst, Amsterdam, Netherlands Academy of Fine Arts, Istanbul, Turkey Admitted without a degree Ain Sham University, Cairo, Egypt Alexandria University, Egypt American University, Beirut, Lebanon (2) Architectural Association, London, England (3) Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece Auburn University Cairo University, Egypt (4) Canterbury College of Art, England Carnegie Institute of Technology (4) Catholic University of America Cheng Kung University, Taiwan Cheng Yuan Christian College, Taiwan Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand (15) Clemson University (7) College of Engineering, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Columbia University (2) Cornell University (8) Drexel University Durham University, England École Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (15) Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zurich, Switzerland Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa, Portugal (2) Georgia Institute of Technology (7) Harvard University (2) Illinois Institute of Technology (2) Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India Institut Saint-Luc, Bruxelles and Tourvai, Belgium (7) Iowa State University (3) Isik School of Engineering and Architecture, Istanbul, Turkey Appendix C: Institutions of higher education 195 Istanbul Technical University, Turkey Istanbul University Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, Italy (2) Lisbon University, Portugal London University, England Lycée College, Istanbul, Turkey Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India (5) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (8) McGill University, Montreal, Canada Miami University of Ohio (2) Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey (7) Montana State University Musashi Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan National University of Ireland, Dublin (2) North Carolina State University (4) Ohio State University Oklahoma State University Pennsylvania State University (3) Polytechnic Institute, New Delhi, India Pratt Institute (6) Pyongyang Technology College, Korea Regional College of Art, Manchester, England Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (5) Rhode Island School of Design (2) Rice University Royal Danish Academy (2) School of Architecture, Ahmedabad, India Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künst, Berlin, Germany (2) Syracuse University (6) Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel Technische Universiteit, Delft, Netherlands (2) Technische Universität, Berlin, Germany (3) Technische Universität, Darmstadt, Germany (2) Technische Universität, München, Germany (3) Technische Universität, Vienna, Austria (2) Tehran University, Iran (2) Texas A&M University (4) Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan (3) Tunghai University, Taiwan Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas (2) Universidad de Buenos Aries, Argentina (2) Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador Universidad de Mendoza, Argentina Universidad Mayor de San Simón, Cochabamba, Bolivia 196 Appendix C Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina Universidad Nacional de Columbia, Medellin, Columbia Universidad Nacional de Columbia, Bogota, Columbia Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria, Peru Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Santa Fe, Argentina Universidad Pontiﬁcia Bolivariana, Medellin, Columbia University of Auckland, New Zealand University of Adelaide, Australia University of Arizona University of Baghdad, Iraq University of Belgrade, Serbia (2) University of Bombay, Sir J.J. College of Architecture, India University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (2) University of California, Berkeley (8) University of Cape Town, South Africa (8) University of Cincinnati (7) University College, Dublin, Ireland (3) University of Delhi, India University of Florida (4) University of Hawaii University of Houston University of Illinois (8) University of Kansas (2) University of Liverpool, School of Architecture University of Ljubijana, Slovenia University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada (5) University of Maryland University of Michigan (5) University of Minnesota (13) University of Natal, South Africa (2) University of Nebraska University of New Mexico (2) University of North Carolina (2) University of Notre Dame University of Nottingham, England University of Oklahoma University of Oregon (3) University of Paris, France University of Pennsylvania (60) University of Roorkee, India University of Southern California (2) University of Sydney, Australia (5) University of Tehran, Iran (3) University of Tennessee, Knoxville University of Texas (9) Appendix C: Institutions of higher education 197 University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (3) University of Tokyo, Japan (2) University of Toronto, Canada (5) University of Utah (2) University of Virginia (5) University of Washington (5) Virginia Polytechnic and State University (3) Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan (3) Washington State University (3) Washington University of St. Louis (5) Yale University (2) Yokohama National University, Japan Bibliography

Bednar, Michael, “Kahn’s Classroom,” Modulus, 11th issue, 1974, University of Virginia School of Architecture. ben Sirach, Joshua, The Wisdom of Sirach, 40:1; Walker Evans and James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1940). Brownlee, David B. and De Long, David G., Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1991). Edwards, Betty, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1989). Farrrell, Terence, ed., Arena (London: Architectural Association, vol. 82, no. 910, March 1967). Gropius, Walter, Scope of Total Architecture (New York, Collier Books, 1955). Gutman, Robert, “Buildings and Projects,” Architecture from the Outside In: Selected Essays by Robert Gutman, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). Hilson, Jeff, “Auguste Rodin: Premier Sculptor” (Counter-Currents Publishing, www. counter-currents.com/2010/09/auguste-rodin/, 2010). Janson, H.W., History of Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall and New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1966). Johnson, Donald Leslie, “Recollections of Lou Kahn,” Progressive Architecture (August 1961). Kahn, Louis, “Remarks,” Perspecta, vol. 9/10 (1965), p. 306. Kandel, Eric R., The Age of Insight (New York: Random House, 2012). Komendant, August, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975). Latour, Alessandra, ed., “Louis I. Kahn: l’uomo, il maestro” (Rome: Edizioni Kappa, 1986). Leatherbarrow, David E., “Beginning Again: The Task of Design Research,” Ensinar Pelo Projeto, Joelho: revista de culture aarquitectónica (April 4, 2013). Portuguese and Spanish translations, in Summa+ (no. 134, February 2104). Lobell, John, Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn (Shambhala, Boston, MA, 1979). Louis I. Kahn: Conversations with Students (Houston, TX: Architecture at Rice, no. 26, 1969). May, Rollo, The Courage to Create (New York: Bantam Books, 1976). Nakamura, Tohio, ed., “Louis I. Kahn, Conception and Meaning,” Louis I. Kahn (Tokyo: Architecture + Urbanism Publishing Co., 1983). Bibliography 199 Ockman, Joan, ed. and Williamson, Rebecca, research ed., Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America (Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 2012). Oxford Grove Art, “Bernard Huet,” www.answers.com/topic/bernard-huet-1. Pena, William, with Parshall, Steven and Kelly, Kevin, Problem Seeking (Washing- ton, DC, AIA Press, 1987). Rich, Martin E., “Photographic Essay from November 1963: Louis Kahn’s Studio Teaching Techniques,” Made In the Middle Ground (Darren Deane, Nottingham University, UK, June 2011). Robinson, Max A., “Place-Making: The Notion of Center,” Sarah Menin, ed., Constructing Place: Mind and Matter (London: Routledge, 2003). Scott Brown, Denise, “A Worm’s Eye View,” Having Words (London: Architectural Association, 2009). Scully, Vincent, Louis I. Kahn (New York: George Braziller, 1962). Strong, Ann L. and Thomas, George E., eds., The Book of the School: 100 Years, The Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1990). Twombly, Robert, ed., Louis I. Kahn, Essential Texts (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003). Underwood, Max, “Louis Kahn’s Search for Beginnings: A Philosophy and Method- ology” (Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 1988). University of Pennsylvania Bulletin, vol. 56, no. 6 (December 16, 1955). Vassella, Alessandro, ed., Louis I. Kahn, Silence and Light (Zurich: Park Books and Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania, 2013). Venturi, Robert, Iconography and Electronics Upon a Generic Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996). Wallas, Graham, The Art of Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926). Wiseman, Carter, Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007). Wolfson, Harry Austryn, “Talmudic Method,” Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), http://ohr.edu/judaism/articles/ talmud.htm. Wurman, Richard Saul, What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Access Press and Rizzoli, 1986). Index

30th Street Station, Philadelphia Blount Brothers Construction 168–169 Corporation project 128 BOORA Architects 147 abstract-expressionism 123 Boys Club assignment 46–47 abstract language, LK’s use of 77–80, Bryn Mawr College project 17–18, 127 95, 144 alumni essayists 109–185; Aronson, CAD (computer aided design) Sherman 53, 164–172, 181; Cutler, technology 119–120, 168 James L. 157–163; Field, Stan 61, California, University of 119, 120, 150–156, 176; Moye, Gary 141–149; 154–155 Reep, Richard T. 123–130, 183; careers of students xi–xiv, 138–139 Robinson, Max A. 24–25, 44, 110, Carra, Carlo 94 131–140, 178; Sidener, Jr., John Central Park, San Jose 122 Tyler 12–13, 49, 113–122, 174, 180 church design 18–19, 66, 129, 171; see American Academy in Rome 8, 12 also monastery design; synagogue ancient world 17, 19 design appropriation of student ideas 82–83 Church, Robert (Bob) 133 architects: guiding principles 47–49, City of Oakland 117 149; role in society 19–21 “City Place” assignment 50–53 Architectural Research Group 8 civic architecture 151–152 Aronson, Sherman xi, 46, 47, 53, 55, Civic Design 9, 13, 38, 113–114, 116, 78, 84, 164–172, 181 118 artist-architects 181 clay models 59 assignments, studio 46–47, 50–58, 187, Clemson School of Architecture 189–192 124–127 cliques 76 Bacon, Edmund 40, 41, 114, 115, 151 Cobb, J. Michael xi, 26, 33, 49–50, 53, Bauhaus 7–8 69, 70, 74, 82, 180 Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) collaborative working 166 117 computer technology 101, 119–120, beauty 16–17 168 Beaux-Arts tradition 7, 12–15 Constructing Place: Mind and Matter Bednar, Michael xi, 2, 25–26, 71, 73, (Menin, ed.) 136 110–111, 178–179 construction of buildings, design “beginnings” 50–58 process 146 Berkeley Hill Fault project 121 contemporary architecture education Berkeley, University of California 119, 99–105 120, 154–155 Copeland, Lee 110 Bernstein, David xi, 29, 33–34, 174, corporate practice 21 179 The Courage to Create (May) 92 Index 201 creative process 88–98, 104–105; see Giurgola, Romaldo 10, 11, 41, 42, 62, also design process 124 Cret, Paul Philippe 7 grading system, Master’s Class 43–44 critical thinking 95–97 Greece 17, 19 criticisms of LK 76–77, 82–83, Greek Orthodox church project 18–19 174–175, 180–181 Grifﬁn, John Raymond (Ray) xii, 12, Cutler, James L. xi, 46, 157–163 42, 50, 54, 58, 59, 73, 74 Gropius, Walter 15, 92 Dacca, Capital of Bangladesh 83, 93, group work 20–21 122 Guisasola, Miguel Angel xii, 71 Dagit, Jr., Charles E. xi, 26, 70 Gwathmey, Charles 10 D’Andrea, Edward xi, 41, 61, 64 death of LK 83 Hagge, Michael xv Delaware Speedway 53 higher education institutions attended De Long, David G. xii, xv, 73, 100 prior to University of Pennsylvania design assignments/problems, Master’s enrollment 194–197 Class 46–47, 50–58, 187, 189–192 Hill Central Middle School project design process 13–15, 17–18, 101, 144–145 103–104, 125–126, 128, 134, 144; Hill, Edward 96 and construction of buildings 146; historic rehabilitation projects 167, student learning of 145–146 168–170 dictatorship 65 the “how” 30–35, 142 Dole, Philip 141 Huet, Bernard 109 drawing/s 8, 13, 58–61, 96, 119–120, humanism 183 166; creative process 89; humor 72–73 infrastructure drawings 113; intuitive Hurva Synagogue project 153 thinking 101, 102–103 Drexel University 170 idiosyncratic language, LK’s use of Dudson, Brian xii, 72, 174–175 77–80, 95, 144 Independence Mall 30, 53–54, 69, 71 École des Beaux-Arts 7, 12–15 infrastructure, architecture of 113–115 education see pedagogy institutions, nature of 47 Edwards, Betty 96 instructors compared to teachers 31–32 Ekroth, David C. xii, 71 interdisciplinary cooperation 178 “energy drawings” 8 introductory letter to students 38–39 Engman, Robert 40, 63–64 intuitive approach 33–34, 95–97, 101 esquisse (quick sketch) 13 “Eureka effect” 92–93 Janson, H.W. 90 Jerusalem 153 Field Architecture 155 Jewish mysticism 27 Field, Stan xii, 61, 150–156, 176 Johnson, Dennis L. xii, 69, 76–77 First Unitarian Church, Rochester, New Johnson, Donald L. xii, 177 York 171 Jung, Carl 92 Florida State College 129 Junker, Tony xii, 27, 69, 74 “folksy wisdom” 80 juries 61–66, 114 Form 16, 17, 18, 31, 61, 88–91, 94, 102–103 Kahn, Louis: abstract language use Furness Building studio 46, 56 77–80, 95, 144; appearance 37; as a musician 29, 121; criticisms of Gabor (Gabor Antala Szalontay) 42 76–77, 82–83, 174–175, 180–181; Germiston Civic Center project death 83; ‘folksy wisdom’ 80; health 151–152 84; language use 77–80, 95, 144; Gestalt 93–94 legacy 99–105, 122, 130, 138–140, Giacometti, Alberto 96 149, 172, 173–185; motivation for 202 Index teaching 80–83; pedagogy 23–68, Michelangelo 90, 91 115, 170; philosophy of education Miller House, Khyber Rock 151 12–22, 99–105; school, LK attitude Milne, Glen xiii, 44, 75, 109–110 toward 81; seminar style 24–25, models 58–61 46–49, 101; student interactions Modernism 7–8, 13, 14, 15, 99–100, 69–75, 157–158 123, 141, 183 KBJ Architects 129, 130 monastery design 56–57; see also Keats, John 90 synagogue design Kent Campus, Florida State College monologues 82, 84 129 monumentality 12 Kimbell Museum 121 moral philosophy 20 Kise, James Nelson xii, 57 Moye, Gary xiii, 141–149 Komendant, August 9, 15, 34, 38, music 29, 48, 120–121 41–42, 53–55, 65–66, 79, 109, 173, 181–182 North Philadelphia redevelopment 53 Kutcher, Arthur 153 Neoplatonism 16–19 New Haven 144–145 Lacy, Bill 2, 133 language use, LK’s 77–80, 95, 144 Oakland, City of 117 Lao Tzu 89 oil painting 123 Lawrence Hall of Science 19, 119 Order 16, 17, 132, 135 learning 23–24; see also pedagogy Oregon, University of 141, 145–147 lectures 144 Osmon, Fred Linn xiii, 70, 82, 175 legacy of LK 99–105, 122, 130, 138–140, 149, 172, 173–185 Paestum 17 LeRicolais, Robert 38, 41, 65, 66 painting 123 Light 88–91, 103, 120 Pantheon 19, 58 “little Kahns” 72 Parthenon 17 parties 72, 73 McGinty, Tim xiii, 15, 30, 41 Paul Philippe Cret Chair 10 McHarg, Ian 41, 64, 116, 118, 150, pedagogy 23–68, 170; case study 180 101–105; contemporary architecture Marineland project 129 education 99–105; motivation for Master’s Class: age range of students teaching 80–83; seminar style 24–25, 186; arcane topics 57; assisting 46–49, 101; Socratic method 24–26, faculty 38–42; challenges 49–50, 115; studio assignments 46–47, 173; design assignments/problems 50–58; Talmudic method 27–30; the 46–47, 50–58, 187, 189–192; end of ‘what’ and the ‘how’ 30–35, 142 83–85; grading system 43–44; Pellechia, Tony 143 introductory letter to students 38–39; Pennsylvania State University 170 juries 61–66, 114; legacy of LK Perkins, G. Holmes 8–9, 10, 37, 38, 43, 173–185; problems 49–50; purpose 175 of 50; seminar style 24–25, 46–49; personal aura, LK’s 37 students 37–38, 69–87, 186–197; personality cult 76–77 studio assignments 46–47, 50–58, Philadelphia 53, 55, 168–169 187, 189–192; studio building Philadelphia School 10–11 44–46, 56; see also alumni philosophy of education 12–22, materials 161–162, 165 99–105; see also pedagogy Master’s Class Contributors xi–xiv Piccioni, Pat 146–147 May, Rollo 92, 94, 95 Plato 16, 89, 91 Memphis, University of xv Platonic philosophy 89 metaphorical language, LK’s use of poetical language, LK’s use of 77–80, 77–80, 95, 144 95, 144 Meyerson, Martin 80–81 Poincaré, Jules Henri 93–94 Index 203 Polk, David 78, 109 sketches/sketching see drawing/s preservation see historic rehabilitation Smith II, Karl G. xiv, 51, 52, 56, 71 projects Smithson, Peter 9 principles for architects 47–49, 149 social housing 179 “process” 20 Socratic teaching method 24–26, 115 professionalism 20, 32 South Africa 151–152 programming 14–15, 17, 34, 56, 100, spaces, making of 14, 149 102–103, 183 specialization 20–21 Progressive Architecture (journal) 123 stoas 19 Prown, Jules 78 Strawberry Mansion Health Center public housing 179 project 165 public lectures 144 structural design 41–42 students 37–38, 69–87; age range 186; Ranta, Richard R. xv careers of xi–xiv, 138–139; cliques Reep, Sr., Richard T. xiii, 10, 123–130, 76; countries of origin 193; 183 demography 189–192; design renovation projects 167, 168–170 assignments/projects 46–47, 50–58, residential projects 148, 160–162, 166 187, 189–192; design process Rice, Norman 23, 33, 35, 38–41, 44, learning 145–146; higher education 73, 183 institutions attended 194–197; Richards Medical Research interactions with LK 69–75, Laboratories 121 157–158; introductory letter to Rich, Martin E. xiii, 34, 38, 60, 179 38–39; performance 40; relationships R-mode 96 among 75–77; studio assignments Robinson, Max A. xiii, 24–25, 41, 44, 46–47, 50–58, 187, 189–192 110, 131–140, 178 studio building 44–46 Rochester, New York 171 synagogue design 153–154 Rodin, Auguste 90–91 Szalontay, Gabor Antala 42 room 47, 48–49, 158–159, 166 Ross, Gavin xiii, 18, 74, 75, 110, Talmudic teaching method 27–30 176–177, 178 Tao 89 Rowan, Jan C. 123, 124 teaching see pedagogy Rudolph, Paul 8 teamwork 20–21 technology 101, 119–120, 168 Sacramento reconstruction project Tennessee, University of 133, 137 116–117 Thorne, Nancy xv Safdie, Moshe 175 Tigerman, Stanley 84 Salk, Jonas 85, 159–160 Traub, David S. xiv, 78 San Francisco 155 Tritt, David xiv, 51 San Jose 122 Tyng, Anne 41, 61, 79 satirization of LK 72 Tzamtzis, Anthony E. xiv, 75, 100–101, schooldays, LK’s 81 182 schools, origins of 28 Schulz, Norberg 135–136 the unconscious 104–105 Schuylkill River area project 114 “Unit of Design” cube 126 Scott Brown, Denise xiii–xiv, 9, 64, 71, universities, LK’s concept of 100 74–75, 76, 78, 79–80, 81, 82–83, University of California 119, 120, 116, 118, 182 154–155 Scully, Vincent 37, 78, 84 University of Hawaii 118 seminar teaching style 24–25, 46–49, 101 University of Memphis 101–105 Shepheard, Peter 77, 175–176 University of Oregon 141, 145–147 Sidener, Jr., John Tyler xiv, 12–13, 28, University of Tennessee 133, 137 49, 59, 69, 76, 113–122, 174, 180 Unmeasurable concept 18, 150, Silence and Light 77, 88–91, 103 176–177, 181 204 Index urban design projects 53, 55, 116–117, the “what” 30–35, 142 119, 155 Whitaker, William xv, 9, 186–187 Wilcots, Henry 143, 144 Vallhonrat, Carlos Enrique 40 Willliamson, Peggy xv Venturi, Robert 78, 182 Wisdom, David 143, 144 “viaduct architecture” 114 Volume Zero 50, 131, 135, 136, 178 Yale University 8, 9, 10 Yegul, Fikret xiv, 1, 25, 26, 27, 56–57, “waiting” 97 58, 75–76, 80, 177 Wallas, Graham 91 Yetken, Cengiz xiv, 29, 72 West Philadelphia neighborhood redevelopment 55