Louis Isadore Kahn

LIFE

Louis Kahn, whose original

name was Itze-Leib
Schmuilowsky
(Schmalowski), was born
in Kuressaare on the Estonian
island of Saaremaa, then
part of the Russian Empire.
His actual birth year may
have been inaccurately recorded when, in 1905, his
Jewish family immigrated to the United States,
fearing that his father would be recalled into the
military during the Russo-Japanese War.
He was raised in Philidelphia and became a
naturalized citizen on May 15, 1914.

LIFE

When Louis Kahns corpse

was found by the NYPD
on the evening of 17 March
1974 in the public lavatory
at Penn Station in New York,
it took several days for the
police to identify him as
one of the worlds most
admired architects.
Kahn had died swiftly of a heart attack and the only
form of identification among his possessions was his
passport in which he had crossed out his address.

LIFE

On the evening of his death, Kahn had flown back to the US

from India where he was building the Indian Institute of
Management in Ahmedabad.
He had gone to Penn Station to board a train home to
Philadelphia.
The Institute of Management and another ongoing work, the
Capital Complex of government buildings at Dhaka in
Bangladesh, were not only Kahns most ambitious project,
but among his architectural masterpieces.
Yet he had built so little during his life that he died bankrupt
owing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The few buildings that Louis Kahn did realise were so
remarkable that they established him as one of the most
important figures in 20th century architecture, whose
influence is compared to that of Le Corbusier and Mies Van
Der Rohe, yet whose work offered new intellectual
possibilities to the younger generation of architects.

LIFE

Convinced that contemporary architects could and

should produce buildings which were as monumental
and as spiritually inspiring as the ancient ruins of Greece
and Egypt, Kahn devoted his career to the
uncompromising pursuit of formal perfection and
emotional expression.
Eminent though he later became, much of Kahns life was
a struggle.
Five year-old Louis was afflicted by scarlet fever. Together
with the facial scars left by an earlier accident, when he
burnt himself on a coal fire, this illness left him too weak
to start school and he was taught at home.
When Louis finally went to school, the shy boy was so
gifted at art and music that his teachers steered him
towards the special courses for talented students in
Philadelphias enlightened education system.
Despite his familys poverty, Kahn received an excellent
education and, inspired by a high school course in
architectural history, won

LIFE

When the 1930s depression struck, Kahn was made

redundant and, for several years, he and Esther were
supported by her parents.
Despairing of finding work as an architect, he
continued his studies.
Inspired by Le Corbusiers work in Europe, Kahn
developed his own theories of the architects social
responsibility, particularly in mass housing.
Professionally he struggled for commissions, partly
because of the depression and partly because, as a
Jew without money or connections, he was alienated
from the wealthy protestants who dominated US
architecture.
In 1947 he started teaching at Yale having rejected an
earlier offer from Harvard, as he was loath to leave
Philadelphia.

LIFE

He felt happier with Yale, which was a train ride

away, and taught there for eight years before
becoming a professor at the University of
Pennsylvania.
As an architect Kahn was limited to modest local
projects, until in 1951 he won his first major
commission an extension to the Yale Art Gallery.
The Yale commission also offered an opportunity for
Kahn to experiment with the ideas he had
developed since a trip to Greece, Rome and Egypt
when he had become convinced that modern
architecture lacked the monumental and spiritual
qualities of ancient buildings.
Our stuff looks so tinny compared to it, he wrote
to his office colleagues in Philadelphia.
Kahn was convinced that, as a modern architect, his
responsibility was to create buildings with those
qualities using contemporary materials and
construction techniques.

LIFE

Working with simple materials, notably brick and

concrete, Kahn applied his principles to
create buildings instilled with the spiritual qualities for
which he strove through a masterful
sense of space and light.
From the 1951-53 Yale Art Gallery extension, to
subsequent projects such as the 1954-59 Trenton
Boathouse in New Jersey and the 1957-62 Richards
Medical Towers in Philadelphia, Kahn combined visually
compelling spaces with drama as the changing light
transformed the sensory experience of being in the
building at different times of the day and night.
By the time he began the
1959-67 Salk Institute in
La Jolla, California, Kahn
had mastered this approach
to create his first masterpiece,
an extraordinarily inspiring
sequence of buildings.

LIFE

Despite the acclaim for these buildings, Kahn still

struggled to secure major commissions, not least in his
home town, Philadelphia, where he wrangled for years
with the city planners over the redevelopment of the
centre.
Painfully shy since childhood, Kahn was also blessed
and cursed by an uncompromising character that drove
him to become such an extraordinary architect but also
to clash with clients.
Impatient of the deadlines and budgets routinely
imposed on architects, he came to loath such
constraints and frequently lost commissions to less
gifted, but more amenable architects.
Years after Kahns death, his son Nathaniel made a
documentary film, My Architect, about his father.
Striving for perfection, Kahns development during this
period culminated in another US masterpiece in the
1967-72 Kimbell Art Museum at Fort Worth in Texas,
which is still regarded as an extraordinarily inspiring
and empathetic environment for painting and sculpture.

LIFE

Deprived of another major

commission in the US,
even after Kimbell, Kahn
poured his energy into his
most demanding projects,
the 1962-74 Indian Institute
of Management in
Ahmedabad and the
monumental Capital
Complex in Dhaka, which he
began in 1962 but which was
completed after his death.
It was in Dhaka that Kahn realised his dream of building a
city of the future.

LIFE

The project was intensely problematic, construction

was not only disrupted by political unrest and,
eventually a war for independence in Bangladesh,
but bedeviled by the logistical difficulties of building
in a city prey to floods and storms.
The result is a magical sequence of buildings that
appear to float above the surrounding water in
vernacular red brick brilliantly constructed by local
craftsmen.
In a Muslim city prey to painful poverty and natural
disaster, Louis Kahn achieved his goal of creating a
monumental modern architecture, which is at once
spiritually uplifting and humane.

Background Timeline

1901: Born in Osel, Estonia

1905: Came to Philidelphia, USA
1928: Studied classical architecture in Europe
1937-1939: Participated in Public Housing Projects
1947: Taught at Yale Univ.
1955: Taught at Univ. of Pennsylvania
1965: F.A.I.A. Medal of Honor Danish Architectural
Association,
1971: Gold Medal, A.I.A.,
1972: Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, R.I.B.A.,

1974: Passed away

Philosophy

He is the master of monumentality in United States was

Louis.I.Kahn.
Monumentality of course was not his only preoccupation
but it was certainly a major one and he evolved
philosophy and system of forms extraordinarily well
suited the expression of honorific themes and mood.
He knew how to fuse together modern constructional
means with additional methods.
His architecture was infused with a deep feeling of
meaning of human situations which enabled him to
avoid mere shape making of formalists.

Philosophy

His buildings are ordinary entities creating

for human use .
He gave support to individuality, sensitivity
and freedom to respond in unique ways to
the particular constraints of each building
programme.
He never rebelled against the new
technology, materials and aesthetics that
had come to characterize contemporary
building, but he insisted on reworking the
process of design to allow the inclusion of
both greater personal artistic statement
and occupant concern.

JARGONS
FORM
Form describes the pure ideal existence of an
architectural program.
ORDER
Order refers to architectural maneuvers including
geometry, linearity , symmetry, asymmetry etc. that
could create physical architectural entities.
DESIGN
Design was that attempt to approach perfect form
through the imposition of order.
SERVANT AND SERVED SPACE
It describes formal zoning difference between the primary
spaces of a building and the portions of a structure
reserved for mechanical equipment and ancillary use.
SOCIETY OF ROOMS
It was used to connect a plan that contains dramatic,
active architectural response between one area and
another so that there is interactive resonance.

Yale University Art

Gallery

Location: New Haven,

Connecticut
Date: 1951 to 1954
Building Type: art
gallery and design
center
Construction System:
site-cast concrete,
curtain wall infill, brick
Climate: temperate
Context: urban
campus
Style: Modern

Entrance to the Yale University

Art Gallery

Yale University Art Gallery

The Yale University Art

Gallery in New Haven,
Connecticut (1951-53)
was the first significant
commission of Louis Kahn
and his first architectural
masterpiece.
Historians Kenneth
Sketch by Louis Kahn of the
Frampton and Vincent
Palazzo Vecchio, No.2, Florence,
Scully consider this work
Italy 1950, drawn just before he
Kahn's response to the
designed the Yale Art Gallery.
desire for a new
monumentality in the post-World War II period.
Much emphasis has been placed on his structural
innovations, expressed in the hollow tetrahedral concrete
ceiling and floor slab system, which accommodate the
mechanical and electrical systems.

Yale University Art Gallery

Yet little attention has been

paid to the formal and
poetic aspects of the
Yale Art Gallery.
The building's blank walls
along Chapel Street mark a
radical break with the
neo-Gothic context of the
university.
View down into the stairwell at
Kahn's critics called this a
the Yale University Art Gallery
"brutalist" gesture. Such a
radical architectural statement
could probably not be realized today in a traditional
context like Yale University because the modernist
ideology that supported it no longer exists.

Yale University Art Gallery

The main exterior wall with its

stone coursing expresses both
the position of the interior floor
levels and the horizontal
continuity with the automobile
and pedestrian traffic along
View up to ceiling of stairwell.
Chapel Street.
The position of the brick infill
bands of wall just inches behind the projecting coursing
also expresses a true "edge condition," a seemingly
immoral gesture.

Yale University Art Gallery

On Entering
The entry stair at Yale lies at the bottom
of a spatial well, formed by the recession
of the blank wall.
The recessed entry door itself is defined
by an absent increment of the glass
fenestration.
Kahn invoked a Miesian vision of glass
with the recessed wall, reflected on
Rear view of the
the opaque white curtains behind the
building from the
fenestration.
garden.
He dematerialized the wall through which we enter the virtual
or imaginary condition of the art gallery.
From the exterior spatial well we enter a vestibule and then
deviate to the open loft spaces of the first floor.
The horizontal continuity of this space is broken by the core
elements: the circular enclosure of the main stair, the elevator
and mechanical core, and a secondary exit stair interfacing
with the rear garden.

Yale University Art Gallery

We circulate through the

breaks in this spatial
blockage as if through a
sieve to the open gallery
space at the other side.
Scully characterized the
original interior design as
archaic, governed as it was Analytical drawing of the Yale
University Art Gallery, showing it
by the exposed concrete
as a displaced box whose core
tetrahedral ceiling and the
elements lock the composition in
peripheral walls of concrete place.
block.
Certainly, Kahn's adoption of the hollow tetrahedral
structural system had the advantages of allowing for
the allocation of mechanical and electrical systems over
the open lofts.

Yale University Art Gallery

Yet it was structurally inefficient, being 60 percent

heavier than a more conventional structural solution.
Kahn levitated the rigid, hollow stone-like slab over our
heads. The ceiling system appears to float.
The circular stair silo (storage tower) that penetrates
vertically through the sedimented floor levels is a
restatement of human finitude.
Entering the stair from the upper floor, the stair runs
plunge vertically into spatial depth, into an abyss or a
well condition.
On this stair, we are ultimately suspended between the
basement level and the triangulated roof structure
which seals the silo.

Yale University Art Gallery

But the rim of the silo between the silo roof and
the main gallery roof is filled with continuous
curved glass blocks allowing a "transcendent"
light to fill the silo, leaving the triangular ceiling
structure a dark void against the light.
This structure is a citation from the tetrahedral
floor and ceiling structure of the gallery.
The stair generated out of this geometry, an
almost helical form, frees itself from the rigidity
of the ceiling, only to be encompassed by the
new limit of the silo walls.

Yale University Art Gallery

The Windows Speak
At the rear fenestration of the Yale Art Gallery, the
sliding wood shutters appear in giant fixed form in the
way the glazing is enframed at the vertical edges
through three levels, projecting the glazing forward of
the piers and the brick portion of the facade.
The mullions form a cage-like pattern organized within
these giant enframings.
They are curtain walls stretching from the exterior
garden terraces at grade to thin cornices above, and
they suggest a horizontal movement that has been
stilled.
Kahn has refined the industrial sash and curtain walls
of such works as the AEG Turbine Hall (1909) of
Peter Behrens and the Bauhaus (1925-26) of
Walter Gropius, confirming the link between an
industrial aesthetic and the new educational programs
in art.

Yale University Art Gallery

A reading of the plan suggests that the entire building

is a displaced box whose core elements lock the
composition in place.
If the core elements were removed, the geometry of
the building would collapse to an originating square
adjacent to the face of the original 1925 gallery.
At the rear garden terrace, the continuous paving
courses parallel to the rear fenestration denote this
shift.
The virtual shift of the upper terrace uncovers the
ground, allowing us to ascend from the lower terrace
via the double run of exterior stairs.
The position of these outside stairs, seemingly
displaced from the datum marked by the internal
stairs and the repetition of the upper paving pattern
in the lower terrace, reinforce this observation.

Yale University Art Gallery

The Yale University Art Gallery embodies nearly every

architectonic theme or device that Kahn returned to in
his later architectural production.
His accomplishment was not the formal variation of
elements as ends in themselves, but his constant
ability to extract from this void means to express his
belief in the institutions he was working for.

Salk Institute

Location: La Jolla, California

Date: 1959 to 1966
Building Type: research laboratories and offices
Construction System: reinforced concrete
Climate: mild
Context: seaside
Style: modern

Salk Institute

The extraordinary
complex of the Salk
Institute is more
beautifully and humbly
sited and executed than
can be conveyed in
photographs.
Photographs usually
express the openness and
serenity of the plaza, but
not its humanly-scaled
gesture to the site and
Pacific Ocean beyond.
The Institute is a
geometrized clearing in
the landscape, and
continually references
and expresses the
landscape - not itself or
its designer.

Salk Institute

Louis Kahn designed the

Salk Center in La Jolla...
as an eloquent composition
that is spatially and
symbolically incomplete,
with its two richly rhythmical
buildings which define a
powerful axis that is open at each end and that
constitutes thereby a significant gesture within an
American landscape.
The composition of this common space...is perceptually,
physically, poignantly American as it frames the sea and
the land where the old western frontier ends and the new
eastern frontier begins.
Because the openness of the plaza is so important to the
design, it is interesting to note that Kahn had a
collaborator.
The Institute received the American Institute of Architects
Twenty-Five Year Award in 1992.

Salk Institute

Two parallel laboratories,

each an uninterrupted
65- foot wide and
245-feet long and encircled
by a perimeter corridor,
flank a central court.
The support elements
to these totally flexible
spaces are placed in a
peripheral relationship to this corridor.
They are the studies and offices for scientist,
fractured in profile and vertical in rhythm, which line
this central court, connected by bridges to the
perimeter corridor and receiving views of the ocean
by virtue of exterior walls angles toward it.

Salk Institute

The institute manifests

beauty of mind and act;
of the resolution and
articulation of the major
elements of the building
being what it wants to
and needs to be, to the
precise detail and execution of beautiful
concrete surfaces.
The central court, as a typical Kahn-like space of
shimmering blue water, a band pointing toward the
ocean epitomizing what human endeavor can
accomplish at one scale with geometric clarity and
authoritative but modest deliberation, to give to the
scaleless sweep of the ocean, here the Pacific, a
poignant gesture."

INDIAN INSTITUTE
OF MANGEMENT

Date 1962 to 1974

Building type- management
institute
PLANNING CONCEPTS
The basic concept in the
Perspective of dormitories
design of dormitory blocks
was the interaction between
students and the staff. The dormitory on any floor
has a communal linkage.
The orientation of blocks is such that as to invite
breeze and cross ventilation.
Dormitories are separated by faculty houses by an L
shaped manmade lake. This was to separate the
residential areas of the students and the staff.

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANGEMENT

This L shaped lake would

act as a physical barrier
in order to avoid disturbance
but at the same time
connects them visually.
The most important and
significant structure the
educational buildings are at
the highest mound of the
The main complex and Louis Kahn Plaza
gently sloping site.
Immediately surrounding the educational building on both
sides are the dormitories.
A terrace garden had been provided to give relief in the
scorching sun of summer
Louis Kahn plaza acts as a relief to the monumental structure.
The blocks of the campus change their character from place to
place and function to function i.e. there is variation in space,
volume and structure.

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANGEMENT

There are double height clubrooms on the ground

floor.

The student dormitories have attached arched corridors

and landscape courtyards with their man wall running
towards the main building.
There are 18 dormitories for 400 students.
A visual segregation has been achieved between the
rooms and the staircase with staircase running in circular
well.
Light and shade were tampered by the local tradition of
brick construction, assembled in layers of walls
breaking the glare and suggested the sun in spaces
within, by the changing intensity of brick color.
The weathering of bricks- effects of sun, rain, or corrosion
were always felt to be positive attributes of buildings that
revealed seasonal changes in their surfaces.

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANGEMENT

PLAN
It is situated on the
western side of
Ahmedabad on 27
hectare site. It
comprises of classrooms,
Model- IIM Ahemdabad
library, offices, living hall,
dormitories, faculty houses,
workers housing and market.
Ground floor comprises of administrative offices while
first and second floor comprises classrooms and
seminar rooms respectively.
At the heart of this complex is a large open space
known as Louis Kahn plaza.
Illumination is provided by light wall specially
designed for glare free interiors.

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANGEMENT

Library is one of the most

prominent buildings in
campus in eastern side.
It is approached by a flight
of steps rising from the
parking court. It is
illuminated by two vast
glazed circles set within
a shady recesses.
It is connected with the school building by an
ambulatory with dormitory by over bridges.
Faculty office block lies in the north side of the
complex. It is a four storied building block on the
opposite side of the central courtyard, both joined
together by corridors. Each block contains 5 offices on
either side of the corridors on each floor.

Richards Medical Center

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvenia

Date: 1957 to 1961
Building Type: laboratories, offices
Construction System: precast concrete with trusses,
brick
Climate: temperate
Context: urban campus
Style: modern

Richards Medical Center

PLANNING CONCEPT
The main contribution of
Louis Khan is a significant
shift in emphasis from
structure to services.
This is most evident in
Richard Medical Labs built
on the campus on
Pennsylvenia-1964
The Medical Research
Building at the University
of Pennsylvania is conceived
on the recognition of the
realization that science laboratories are studios and that
the air to breathe should be anyway form the air to throw
away.
Each studio in three towers has its own escape super tower
and exhaust sub tower for the release of germ infected air
and poisonous gases.

Richards Medical Center

Khan created three great

stacks of studios and
attaches to them tall
services towers which
would include animal
quarters, main to carry
water, gas and vacuum
lines, as well as aces
ducts to breathe in the air.
This design is the outcome of the consideration of the
unique use of its spaces and how they are served
characterizes what it is for.
Several elements of Kahns architecture came together in
this building element that were used before,
independently of each other a clear articulation of
servant and served spaces; the problem of light; the
integration of spatial, structural, and utility elements and
above all, the integration of form, material and process.

Richards Medical Center

The square studio cluster

are constructed to give
natural light to the
courses, with dark cross
interiors, the tower for
the supply of vertical
services also act as direct
air exhaust for each
studio.
The services towers rise
high, 2 storey above
laboratories cluster, to
give the impression of a
leanassertive structure.
This building represents a
significant turning point
in contemporary
architecture.

exterior, structural detail

Richards Medical Center
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

PARLIMAENT
BUILDING AT DACCA
Date : 1962 to 1974
Building type : Government centre

PARLIMAENT BUILDING AT
DACCA
CONCEPT
Dominating circular and rectangular
concrete masses impart a supreme
monumentality to the building.
The architectural of the assembly
building grows out of the conception
to hold a strong essential form to give a particular
shape to the varying interiors needs, expressing
them on interiors.
He introduced a light giving element to the interiors
by giving series of columns for lights, this being a
element for Kahns design.
Light from roof is given interiors.

PARLIMAENT BUILDING AT
DACCA
Important consideration in
designing National Assembly
building was protection from
sun and rain while admitting
free circulation of air.
This is achieved by awarding
huge geometric openings at
the outer faade in the form
of triangles, rectangles, full and segmental circle
and flat arches.
The Parliament was placed at the central point of
converging smaller institutional relatives based on
similar geometry.

PARLIMAENT BUILDING AT
DACCA

The concept was primary and secondary axis, a

sense of climax variations in size and shape was
employed to reinforce this sense of building, as the
head of social chamber.
There was a great chamber circled by family of
other spaces- press, galleries, members room etc.
expressed as smaller variations on the central
formal themes. To one side was a mosque linked to
the main body by steps.
This was skewed slightly off the main axis to face
Mecca, a deviation which served to reinforce the
power of the prevalent geometric order by contrast.
The effect of these surrounding functions when
projected into space was a jostling series of
cylinders and vast oblongs grouped around the
central mass.

PARLIMAENT BUILDING AT
DACCA
PLANNING
It is situated in 208 acres of land, situated to the
north of recent manik Mia Avenue.
Complex includes national assembly, houses for
MPs, ministers, secretaries, hospitality halls,
community building, Supreme Court, ground
mosque, president place (first building to be built).
All linked by roads and walkways and surrounded
by attractive gardens and lakes.
The plan is concentric essentially a square
manipulated into a octagon.
At the centre there is main hall where MPs sit and
session are dine.
Various layers of functions are situated around the
main hall.
Seven storey high ambulatory with light coming
from the roof surrounds the assembly hall.

PARLIMAENT BUILDING AT
DACCA

Four identical assembly blocks along four arms with

other functions on four corners.
Elaborated circulation system with series of different
type of stairs.
9 level with horizontal connections in three floors only.
Basement accommodates parking area, offices of
maintenance agencies and services installations for
the main building.
Building has water body
as a artificial lake touching
its wall on all sides.
Height of structure
is 49.68 m (163-0).
Main building consists
of 9 individual blocks of
which 8 at its periphery
rises to a height of 110-0.

PARLIMAENT BUILDING AT
DACCA

The octagonal block in the center shoots up to 1550.

There is no a single column I the whole building,
hollow columns, parts of space enclosure have been
adopted as structural supports.
There are 50 staircases, 340 toilets, 1635 doors, 335
windows, 300 partitions and 35850 sq. ft of glass
shutters used in the buildings.
Formal entrance is through the south plaza which
gradually rises to a height 20-6in a broad flight of
stairs and through the presidential square from
north.
At north plaza there is a road by the side of crescent
lake.
BUILDING MATERIALS
Manifested precious stone concrete masses marble
strips used for construction.
Kahn made the most of local craftsmen in the
creation of the surfaces and textures.

PHILLIPS EXETER
LIBRARY

Date : 1967 to 1972

Building Type: School Library

PLANNING CONCEPT
Library is a square building
measuring 111 feet by 111 feet
Height of the building to the top
of the highest parapet, in the
center of the roof, is 85.5 feet.
Building has nine levels with
entrances from all sides.
The floors are suspended like
the shelves of a giant book
case between corner piers.

PHILLIPS EXETER LIBRARY

PHILLIPS EXETER LIBRARY

Hall is 50 square feet, with large circular holes which

almost touch at the corners of the concrete piers,
through which one sees the metal book stacks
behind white oak panels.
On the first floor, in addition to the central hall, are
the circulation desks, card catalog, reference
collection, and staff offices.
The rectilinear brick elevation paid homage to the
surroundings
The ground floor houses the periodicals collection
Upper floors include a student computer lab, a
viewing area for videotapes and DVDs, book stacks
for 250,000 volumes, listening areas for compact
discs, offices for use of faculty members, and 210
specially designed study carrels for students.
All upper floors have window on all sides.
There are approximately 450 seats of all types,
including a third floor lounge area with comfortable
furniture and fireplaces.

PHILLIPS EXETER LIBRARY

On the fourth floor are two seminar rooms for class

use and two rooms, given by Thomas and Corliss
Lamount for the housing and exhibition of special
collections
A terrace for reading in pleasant weather encircles
the fourth floor rooms.

CONSTRUTION MATERIAL

Brick made in Exterer, New Hampshire Slate from

Pennsylvania
Granite from Vermont
Traventine Marble from Carrera, Italy
Poured concrete

PHILLIPS EXETER LIBRARY

Teak, white oak Reinforcing steel

approximately 501 tons
Total concrete in the library
-5621 cubic yards exterior face
brick 420,000 exterior face
bricks
Interior face brick 300,000
interior face bricks.
Miscellaneous brick common
brick of 41000 as well as small
items that went into fireplaces,
etc.
Wall to wall carpeting 18 tons of
three different colors.

Kimbell Art Museum

The Kimbell Art Museum is

situated in the Cultural
District of Fort Worth, Texas,
USA
The building was designed
by Louis Kahn.
It houses a small but exquisite
collection of European, Asian
and Pre-Columbian works, as well as hosting traveling
art exhibitions.
The Kimbell Art Institute was established as a result of
a bequest by Kay Kimbell, a Texan industrialist and art
collector, to establish an art institute for the people of
Texas.

Kimbell Art Museum

The museum building was commissioned in

1966 and opened in 1972.
One of the masterworks of architect
Louis Kahn, the 120,000 square foot
(11,000 m) building takes the form of a
series of spaces defined by parallel
barrel vaults.
Interruptions and
irregularities between
the main spaces
are experienced as
rhythmic variations
on a theme.

Kimbell Art Museum

Kahn's excellent treatment of

light is appropriate to the art
on display and has the effect
of making the post-tensioned
reinforced concrete
construction
seem light and precise.
The spatial rhythm extends to
the exterior water-features on the west side of the
building, and resolves into a number of paths and
garden areas on the grounds.
Although the museum initially housed the Kimbell's
art collection, this has since been expanded, always
with a view to acquiring artworks of first class
quality .

Kimbell Art Museum

The museum is not
large, but the collection
of artwork is wide
ranging and would
not be out of place
in any of the world's
great art galleries .

Kimbell Art Museum

Exterior view showing

cleavage between building masses
Interior view

Open and solid faade bays

Yale Center for British

Art

The Yale Center for British Art,

in New Haven, Connecticut,
is considered to be among
the finest structures of noted
architect Louis I. Kahn.
Begun in 1973, one year before
his death, and opened to the
public in 1977, the museum
was built to house the most
comprehensive collection of
British art outside the
Entrance portico of
United Kingdom
Yale Center of British Art

Yale Center for British Art

The building's discreet, grey,

monotone exterior of mat
steel and reflective glass
and its clearly read concrete
frame confer a certain noble,
armored mien appropriate to its purpose.
Inside the building the visitor
experiences the same clarity and
organization seen on the exterior.
Without the plan being fully
revealed upon entry, the entrance
court immediately establishes
a sense of logical orientation.

Yale Center for British Art

The second-floor library

court continues this interior
organization so that the
visitor intuitively feels
familiar with the plan and
can find his way around
the galleries through
reference to the courts.
Skylights provide illumination for the top-floor
galleries
Angled louvers and baffles in the truncated,
pyramidal, concrete coffers block north light and
screen ultraviolet rays, admitting larger quantities
of light when the sun is low than when it is higher
in the sky.

Yale Center for British Art

Travertine flooring, Belgian linen

wall coverings, white oak wood
work, stainless steel panels and
ducts, and exposed concrete
structural elements make up
the palette of materials.
These are washed in daylight, which Kahn believed
was essential for appreciation of art.
This building reflects Kahn's
continuous search for
simplicity and the use of
daylight to define space.

Yale Center for British Art

Interior view
The facade and
corner entrance
entrance is

The

recessed under a low portico.

Yale Center for British Art

Its continuing influence on

architectural thinking has
now inspired the American
Institute of Architects to
give the building its 2005
AIA Twenty-five Year Award
for Architecture of Enduring
Significance. It is the fifth
Kahn building to receive this award.