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Louis I Kahn @ 40s: Architecture in the1950sGevork HartoonianPublished online: 21 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: Gevork Hartoonian (2008) Louis I Kahn @ 40s: Architecture in the 1950s,Architectural Theory Review, 13:1, 3-28, DOI: 10.1080/13264820801915096

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Louis I Kahn @ 40s: Architecture in the1950s

GEVORK HARTOONIAN

Starting with the particularities of the postwar American architecture, this paper

aims to discuss Kahn’s recoding of what might be called the culture of building,

for example, themes internal to the formation of the disciplinary history of

architecture. Additional attention is given to Kahn’s discourse on monumentality

pronounced in 1944. Emphasis is also placed on Kahn’s concern with structure

and ornament, but also the tectonic. The paper then presents an historical

analysis of Kahn’s design for the Philadelphia City Tower and the Yale University

Art Gallery, arguing that in spite of, or rather because of postmodern conditions,

the project of modernity should be considered neither as a perfect past, nor a

phenomenon that is working towards its completion. Modernity should rather be

considered a project whose periodic crisis is endemic to architects’ ongoing

recoding of the culture of building.

Opening

The years following World War II unleashed unprecedented uncertainties for American architecture.Victorious from war, America was desperately seeking to consolidate her image beyond the pride inliberty and democracy espoused by the country’s constitution. Another sense of identity was experiencedby a nation whose military industries would soon open the door to a consumer culture that would reactto the ‘‘durability’’ essential to the art of building. Architecturally, the nation was divided, if notconfused, around the following dilemma: how to institutionalize the post-war victory. In other words,the question was how to domesticate the political apparatus of the State, avoiding strategies used by theleft and right political camps of those decades. In 1944 Elizabeth Mock, then the director of theDepartment of Architecture in the Museum of Modern Art, wrote: ‘‘A totalitarian nation demandsbuildings which still express the omnipresence of the State and the complete subordination of theindividual.’’ She continued, ‘‘But the problem is not quickly disposed of, as a democracy needs

Corresponding author: Gevork Hartoonian, e-mail: Gevork.Hartoonian@canberra.edu.au

ATR 13:1/08

ISSN 1326-4826 print/ISSN 1755-0475 onlineª 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13264820801915096

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monuments, even though its requirements are not those of a dictatorship.’’1 It took almost two decadesfor the profession to unearth the causes of the implied confusion.

It is not the intention of this essay to address the historical context of the post-war Americanarchitectural discourse in its entirety. Presenting a critical reading of Louis I. Kahn’s famous piece on‘‘monumentality,’’ written in 1944, this essay discusses the singularity of his early work. The intention isto historicize Kahn not only within the postwar situation of America, but also within the project ofmodernism. This dual historical trajectory and its architectonic implications are mostly dismissed byscholars who either discuss Kahn’s work in association with what he said and wrote, or attempt to mapKahn within the discursive formation of postmodernism.

In a gathering whose aim was to discuss what was then called ‘‘The Period of Chaoticism,’’ the post-waruncertainty was seen as in part due to emerging new technologies, including the speed of social andcultural transformation unfolding in the 1950s, and the failure of the project of modern architecture.That architecture was expected during the early two decades of the last century to play a decisive role inthe transformation of western society had lost its incentives by the post-war period. Alongside otherparticipants in the gathering organized by Progressive Architecture, Kahn emphasized the importance of‘‘institutions.’’ Others underlined the need for ‘‘community’’ and ‘‘system.’’ Buckminster Fuller’stechnological optimism, for instance, was balanced by Philip Johnson’s emphasis on ‘‘the principle ofuncertainty.’’ Obviously, Fuller’s position mediated between Kahn’s and Johnson’s. Kahn presented adiscourse of architecture that was centered on postmodern interest in mass-culture and communication.Johnson’s presentation, instead, anticipated the formalism that would be entertained by the New YorkFive Architects. In retrospect, nothing short of the debate between the ‘‘Whites’’ and the ‘‘Greys’’ speaksfor the post-war demand for a different direction in architecture. The content of the debate underpinnedthe thematic of the architecture of postmodernism, overshadowing the scope of American praxis for atleast another three decades.2

During the 1950s, however, the choices were few. One could either endorse the instrumental logic of theEnlightenment, or recall the humanist aspiration for regionalism.3 This paradox was exemplified in thedebate running between a group of people gathered around Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein and HenryWright, on the one hand, and the Haussmanian vision put forward by Robert Moses, on the other. Inthis paradox, Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of democracy can be characterized as a ‘‘bipartisan’’ approach(the term used in American political jargon), the thematic of which attained a new momentum in theearly work and writings of Kahn.

History’s Disquiet4

For the objectives of the argument presented here, it is necessary to remind the reader that contemporaryarchitectural historiography relies mostly on historicism.5 Even Sarah Williams Goldhagen’s timely‘‘Coda’’ does not do full justice to the issues that this essay will discuss. Rejecting the views that wouldapproach Kahn’s work from the postmodernism’s presumed departure from modernity, the essays

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compiled in her book attempt to historicize a selected number of post-war architects, discussingarchitecture in the historical context of events that shaped the years between 1930 and 1965. In hercontribution to the volume, Goldhagen discusses Kahn and Alvar Aalto in terms of ‘‘situatedmodernists’’—architects who, according to her, ‘‘became ever more sceptical that architects couldsignificantly improve modern life by adapting their practices to the needs of industrial technology.’’6 Thefinal pages of her text do indeed provide a concise summary of the modernist ideas and idioms thatKahn re-conceptualized in the socio-political and cultural field of post-war America, including theproblems caused by the emerging mass culture.7

Goldhagen’s text develops its argument at the threshold of a Foucauldian historicism. Criticizing themyth of lone genius, she makes an attempt to situate Kahn not only in the intellectual life of post-warAmerica, but also in the architect’s personal experience of the era he lived through. To depart from thetraditional conventions of art history, which are mostly informed by the idea of style and periodization,Goldhagen’s text draws primarily from Michel Foucault’s ‘‘discursive formation’’ and Pierre Bourdieu’sdiscourse on what is called the logic of Practice.8 Although the author acknowledges the importance of asemi-autonomous understanding of architecture, her discussion of post-war architecture remains at adiscursive level. She is at best when the purpose of the text is to map the thematic of architecturaldiscourse along the socio-political and technological developments of the years ending withpostmodernism. A discursive approach to architecture, however, leaves questions of the following kindunanswered. For example, why would a ‘‘situated’’ modernist like Kahn choose brick as the maincladding material for most of his buildings? Or, what were the spatial and tectonic implications of thischoice? Was Kahn’s rejection of abstraction attuned to the modernists’ dislike of historicism, which inhis case means the whitewashed aesthetic of the international style architecture of the 1930s? Or, was ita modernist indulgence with the Zeitgeist, though now seen through the fog surrounding the failure ofthe project of modernity, and the postmodernist return to historical forms blended with stylistic andtactile connotations? Goldhagen does address aspects of the issues raised here.9 Nevertheless, a sense of‘‘in-betweeness’’10 is implied in these questions, which, if discussed in the context of what might becalled the ‘‘culture of building,’’ can produce a different understanding of Kahn’s architecture.

Elsewhere I have discussed the idea of the culture of building in terms of themes central to theformation of the disciplinary history of architecture.11 One is reminded of the architectonics of theinside/outside relationship: the dialogical rapport between column and wall, and the tectonic achievedby poetic embellishment of a constructed form and that of the earth-work and the frame-work discussedby the nineteenth-century German architect Gottfried Semper.12 Of interest here is the need to recode thethematic of the culture of building when the overall scope of architectural praxis changes its formaccording to socio-political and technological transformations endemic to the ongoing life of latecapitalism. What makes the presented paradigm useful is the emphasis it puts on the dialectics betweenautonomy and semi-autonomy. While a discursive approach to contemporary architecture provides acomprehensive understanding of how certain events and themes would influence the way an architectthinks, or what motivates a critic to write on architecture, a discussion centred on the culture ofbuilding highlights the tectonic implication of the same discursive formation. Instead of saying this or

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that concept was formative for an architect’s work, the suggested paradigm would rather underpin thesignificance of the dialectics between autonomy and semi-autonomy for a critical understanding of thecomplexity of horizon(s) that interweave the work of the architect with the text of the historian.

In discussing architecture in terms of the tectonics of the core-form and the art-form, for example, theidea is to retain that which is internal to architecture. What this means is that architecture is not adirect product of construction, and yet the core-form (the physical body of the building) inevitably putsarchitecture in the track of technological transformations and scientific innovations. The same might besaid about the art-form: if the notion of beauty, centred on the subjective inner imagination, issuspended, then the art-form remains the sole venue by which architecture is charged with aestheticsensibilities that are, interestingly enough, informed by perceptual horizons unleashed by technology.The art-form also reveals the tactile and spatial sensibilities accumulated through the disciplinaryhistory of architecture. Therefore, while the core-form assures architecture’s rapport with the manychanges taking place in the structure of construction, the art-form remains the only domain where thearchitect might choose to imbue the core-form with those aspects of the culture of building that mightside-track the formal and aesthetic consequences of commodification (a state of aesthetic exchangefundamental to the cultural production of late capitalism) and yet avoid dismissing the positive aspectsof the latest technological developments.

This theorization of architecture is also useful for avoiding a linear or structuralist vision of history.There are analytical moments in the historiography of architecture that suggest the reading of thecontemporaneity of architecture in a different light. Following Walter Benjamin’s idea of ‘‘spectralexperience of history,’’ Harry Harootunian writes, ‘‘a history founded on the ‘now of recognisability’ isnot a step in a continuous process, but, rather, a ‘tableau,’ a ‘presentation,’ a recovery of what was lost,repressed, excluded.’’13 What does this statement suggest? Consider this: in 1929, Henry-RussellHitchcock coined the term ‘‘the New Tradition,’’14 to discuss some buildings that would blendmodernism’s architectural achievements with conventions the origins of which can be traced back to theArts and Craft movement. Recalling the work of early pioneers of modern architecture, Hitchcock’svision seems less radical, so to speak, than, say, Sigfried Giedion’s. Nevertheless, the theoreticaldimension of Hitchcock’s argument was alarming as far as the historicist’s investment in the Zeitgeist isconcerned. Hitchcock’s position undermines Giedion’s, for whom the spirit of the time was the essentialdriving force if architecture had to be modern. Obviously the urge to synchronize time and space was adriving force during early decades of modernism. Alongside other thinkers, Giedion wholeheartedlyentertained the idea of Zeitgeist. Nevertheless, thinkers like Ernst Bloch held a different opinion. Blochargued that the present should be seen pregnant with ideas coming from both the past and the ‘‘now ofthe present.’’ Thus, for Bloch there was no simultaneous understanding of architecture and time.15

Continuing along this track, one might expand the horizon of the culture of building to include themateriality of the historical work on architecture (labeled either conservative or radical). If this lastproposition is accepted, then one might see in Kahn’s architecture the return of ‘‘the new tradition,’’ aconservative turn of events perhaps, though blended with radical socio-political incentives such as theclaim for civic architecture and monumentality.

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The stakes are high for the current historiography of the architecture of the last fifty years.Contemporary historians and critics are facing a body of well-crafted theories and buildings that werenot available to the architects and historians of the 1940s.16 This observation is an obvious one andperhaps glosses over late seventeenth century literary debate between the ancients and moderns. But thestakes are truly high if one suspends the linear vision of history and sees the apparition of the past,which in this case means the presence of modernity, not only for post-war architecture, but also for thearchitecture of postmodernism. What for the latter was intended to be a clear-cut departure from theproject of modernity turned out to be nothing but a deeper plunging of the cultural into that project.Devaluation of all values and the prevailing gap between the language of architecture and the capitalistforces of production and consumption are critical subjects for architectural praxis even today.17 Themodalities of this clash, however, change their form from one period to another.18

Consider Kahn’s famous aphorism, ‘‘what the building wants to be.’’ The phrase could be interpreted inmany ways.19 What needs to be added here is that ‘‘What the building wants to be’’ can also be discussedin relation to Kahn’s obsession with the space-defining role he attributed to a structural system. VincentScully suggests that, ‘‘what the building wants to be as an ideal scheme is profoundly modified by how itcan be built and, perhaps most of all, by what all its specific functions want to be.’’20 What this means isthat, while the brick wanted to be an arch, Kahn tried to convince his imaginary interlocutor that anarch is expensive to build, let alone the fact that by using a steel lintel the opening made in a brick wallwould be aesthetically more pleasing. While economic incentives could have also motivated Kahn toformulate the idea of serve/service spaces, his earlier aphorism alludes to the dualistic nature of hisapproach to architecture. Dualistic not only because his differentiation of ‘‘House’’ from ‘‘a house’’ ispeppered by the existential thinking in vogue in post-war years, but also because he wanted to re-thinkthe tectonic traditions anew. According to Arthur Danto, Kahn’s statement recalls the arche, ‘‘thebeginnings on which true architecture rests.’’21 Kahn’s phrase is also suggestive of the split between signand signifier, discussed during the semiological phase of postmodernism. According to Kahn, ‘‘House isthe form, in the mind of wonder it should be there without shape or dimension. A house is a conditionalinterpretation of these spaces.’’22 Separated from its signifier, the ‘‘building,’’ an autonomous entity, gaveKahn the chance to rethink the culture of building in conjunction with economic factors informing acost-effective construction system, whilst cashing in ideas and concepts that would justify his designchoices—though mostly articulated in tectonic terms.

Having established the dialogical relationship between Kahn’s theorization of architecture and thesituation of the 50s, it is not farfetched to associate Kahn’s strategy with Hitchcock’s ideas in ‘‘the newtradition.’’ Similar to the latter, one can argue that Kahn’s was a transitional case, smoothing the way topostmodern conditions (architecturally speaking). His was definitely a point of view moving against theline of thinking that pushed the autonomy of the sign towards its formalistic end—in both its historicistand abstract manifestations.23 This much is clear from Kahn’s rumination on space and institutions,and his belief that new spatial configurations will affirm ‘‘a promise of life and will reveal newavailabilities and point to human support for their establishment.’’24 Kahn’s rapport with historicaltypologies, his love affair with brick—a mundane tactile and sensuous material—and finally, his

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recourse to monumentality, were indeed strategies resulting from the drive for the autonomy ofarchitecture, whilst at the same time addressing an historical necessity: America’s timely ‘‘desire’’ forcivic architecture, and the reconciliation of institutions with the demands of a mass-culture that was inits formative years. Having briefly mapped the historicity of the post-war era, what should be asked is thefollowing: is it possible to expect a one-to-one correspondence between architectural form and thearchitect’s theorization of his/her work? Thomas Leslie has convincingly demonstrated that in spite ofhis inspiring words, Kahn’s architecture is ‘‘entirely rooted in prosaic of practice and technique.’’25 Hisobservation demands channeling the discussion to the theme of monumentality and its tectonicmanifestation in Kahn’s early work.

Of Monumentality

In the classical treatises, the idea of monument is mostly associated with the memory of an event or aperson. During the Renaissance, for example, architecture was deeply connected with the culture of itstime. Even though the church authorities or monarchs were the principal patrons, architecture couldnot but pursue its own language and thus was not totally sought after as a monument serving the state.It was only after the nineteenth century and the rise of the bourgeois concept of nation and nationalidentity that the state came to terms with the idea of monument as an agent of power. Since then, eventhe ruins of the past are charged with heritage value, establishing a different discourse of monumentthat can be associated with the values of the art-work displayed in museums. According to FrancoiseChoay, ‘‘The historic monument has a different relationship to living memory and to the passage oftime.’’ She writes, ‘‘On the one hand, it is simply constituted as an object of knowledge and integratedinto a linear conception of time: in this case its cognitive value relegates it irrevocably to the past, or . . . .to the history of art in particular; on the other hand, as a work of art it can address itself to our artisticsensibility, to our ‘artistic will’.’’26 Thus we see the importance of nurturing the concept ofmonumentality with visuality—something to look at either in association with a historical event, or thebuilding’s admiration for its sublime beauty expressed in majesty and size. Such an appreciation ofarchitecture was unknown to the classical wisdom of building. Renaissance architecture, for example,was comprehended in its similitude to the divine forces. This much is clear from the best churches andvillas built during the Renaissance where the image of cross and mathematical proportions, bothattributed to the body, would inform the building’s planimetric organization.

If the idea of monumentality was central to the nineteenth-century discourse on national identity,during the post-war era the concept received a different currency. To rebuild the devastated cities—butalso to camouflage the barbaric side of history—ideas such as monument and civic values were calledto shore up the divide, but also to charge the emerging capitalism in America with a human face. Thepoint is not to discuss the socio-political history of the post-war era but to turn the discussion to theways architects, especially Kahn, internalized monumentality in theorizing architecture. Although Kahnused the word ‘monumentality’ occasionally,27 he was less concerned with the mere size of buildings. Hewas rather keen for the message and the representational capacity of architecture. His generation, Kahnclaimed, ‘‘is looking forward to its duty and benefits to build for the masses with its problems of housing

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and health . . . the nation has adopted the beginnings of social reform.’’28 But is it not one of thecharacteristics of any institutional building to associate ‘‘size’’ with symbolism? And doesn’t theadjectival use of the word ‘‘monumental’’ open Kahn’s architecture to the discourse of ‘‘excess,’’ which isattributable to a noun? Any response to these questions cannot but demand recourse to the historicity ofthe concept of monument.

In the ‘‘Lamp of Power,’’ John Ruskin ponders the importance of mass, wall, and shadow, to discuss a‘‘size’’ that is associable with what he calls ‘‘sublimity.’’29 The early modern architects, instead,articulated monumentality in institutional buildings, which did not follow Ruskin’s interest in thesublime beauty of architecture. The abstract and unadorned forms of modern architecture addressmonumentality in the building’s aloof standing in the pre-modern context of European cities.30 Still adifferent sense of monumentality was achieved by juxtaposing large-scale architectonic elements withlandscape, as noted in Luis Barragan’s work, for example.31

This rather brief comment on the subject reminds us of the idea of monumentality reformulated bythree prominent figures of modernism, Jose Luis Sert, Fernand Leger, and Giedion.32 Their argumentwas based on a vision of monumentality that stands for the collective’s ensuring a sense of totalizationthat, as far as the architecture of symbolism is concerned, was not attainable by the abstract idiom ofearly modern architecture. In retrospect, one might claim that the post-war discourse on civicarchitecture and monumentality was suggestive of the rising idea of the collective implied in mass-culture, and the permeation of image as a visual means of institutionalizing the separation of sign fromsignifier, if not monumentality from monument. Drawing conclusions from the ill fate of Le Corbusier’s1927 design for the Palace of the League of Nations, Giedion, for one, blamed politicians andbureaucrats for the architect’s alienation from what he called ‘‘the emotional life of the community.’’The latter he believed to be the lost horizon seen ‘‘from the humanist point of view.’’33 ComparingPicasso’s Guernica of 1937 to Le Corbusier’s project for the League of Nations, Giedion presented theformer as a work that responds to the emotional life of the community. He was also keen to remind hisreaders that if architecture followed contemporary painting, then, rebirth of the lost sense ofmonumentality could be announced.

As noted at the beginning of this essay, in the post-war years, the urge to return to the ethos ofhumanism was strong. There were, however, exceptions to this generalization. James Ackerman, forexample, was of the belief that humanism is not attainable in modernity. To him, the appeal formonumentality was a vain effort. In a forum on ‘‘Monumentality and the City,’’ held on December 12,1981, drawing from Sigmund Freud, Ackerman made the argument that, ‘‘we have severed links withtradition and are forced to act without the benefit of the experience of the past.’’ His position issupportive of the claim that the classical monuments spoke to a collective value system that, since theadvent of modernization, has broken into pieces.34 Giedion and his colleagues, however, holdfunctionalism responsible for architecture’s detachment from ‘‘the common man,’’ a popular phrase inthose days. In addition to the above-mentioned emerging mass-culture, the word ‘‘collective’’ acquiredspecial currency in the context of the ‘‘new empiricism’’ of the 1950s. J. M. Richards, the editor of

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Architectural Review, gave a new twist to the concept of collectivity and drew his readers’ attention tomodern architecture’s lack of appeal to, what he called, ‘‘the man in the street.’’ The collective alsoacquired a new meaning through what many scholars have termed mass society or mass culture.Hannah Arendt, for example, sees the rise of modern society with the decline of the family as a processof annihilation that many groups have gone through as part of the formation of mass society.35

However, fundamental to Giedion’s vision of monumentality was the need to adorn the surface withartificial lights, a design strategy that would provide for painters and sculptors the opportunity to play animportant role in the design of civic architecture. This last point resonates with the suggested post-warera’s turn to image and visuality, the communicative potentiality of which played a significant role inthe formation of mass-culture. Contrary to Ruskin’s esteem for the culture of stone, and the symbolismassociable with the products of handcraftsmanship, Giedion, rather, underlined the importance oftransparency and light for the surface.

Giedion’s vision of spectacle, and its capacity to express the emotional life of ‘‘people,’’ soon joined thepostmodernist’s interest in billboards. This much is again clear from Choay, who, while reminding herreaders of the importance of the idea of ‘‘staging’’ for Viollet le Duc’s and Camillo Sitte’s vision ofnational heritage, observes that artificial light, sound, and music do indeed divert one’s attention frombuilding in favour of the spectator. Choay discusses these issues in light of the transformation of themonuments with use-value into commodities that are packaged through the culture industry. Shewrites, ‘‘Pushed to its limits, animation becomes the exact inverse of the staging of monuments, which ittransforms into a theatre or stage. The building enters into competition with an autonomous show or an‘event’ that is imposed upon it.’’36 Nothing short of her observation assesses Robert Venturi’s problematicdiscourse on postmodernity. Following Las Vegas’s commercialized landscape, Venturi discussedmonumentality not in association with the ‘‘cohesion of community,’’ and big-scale volumetric spaces,but in relation to a shift from spanning high volume to big, low spaces.37 Without wanting to exhaustthe contemporary discourse on monumentality further, it is timely to map Kahn’s ideas on the subjectin reference to Venturi, and aspects of the thematic of architectural discourse that go back to Viollet leDuc.

Kahn’s theorization of architecture demonstrates his interest in the ‘‘spiritual’’ dimension ofmonumentality achieved through investment in ‘‘impressiveness, clarity of form, and logical scale.’’These three categories frame an architecture that can be associated with the discourse of theEnlightenment. He also emphasized the essentiality of scientific knowledge for the progression of art andarchitecture, although galvanized by the aesthetic of the sublime. Interestingly enough, Kahn’s threesuggested categories recall the work of the nineteenth century rational positivists: Viollet le Duc’sdiscourse on ‘‘methodology,’’ for example, underlines the importance of material and techniques for theemergence of a new architectural style. These tropes of the nineteenth century will find theirarchitectonic language in Kahn’s interest in history, and the modification of historical types using newstructural systems. Kahn soon realized, Leslie writes, that ‘‘Economy, structural performance,construction, and aesthetics could be intricately linked in an overall conception of building,’’ if oneintends to attain monumentality.38

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Off Lightness

If one accepts the centrality of one or another kind of image for the formation of post-war culturaldiscourse, is it not then convincing to associate Kahn’s architecture with the disciplinary history ofarchitecture, and his utilization of industrial building techniques? Of interest here is the separation ofthe element of enclosure from the structure codified in the practice of contemporary architecture sinceLe Corbusier’s conceptualization of the Dom-ino frame. Of further interest is Kahn’s inclination to avoidthe perceptual lightness implied in early modernism’s use of the frame structural system, whilstdeveloping a notion of monumentality that would aspire to heaviness (particularly in his later work)and be even different from Le Corbusier’s later work. This paradox not only recalls the architect’s BeauxArts training,39 but the fact that monumentality, both visually and formally, is primarily registered inthe traditions of masonry construction systems.

In raising these issues the intention is to discuss Kahn’s two important but diverse projects, the proposedtower for the city of Philadelphia, and the Yale University Art Gallery.40 These two projects are importantbecause they demonstrate the American architect’s search for the language of monumentality at thetime when the postmodernist idea of both/and was not yet formalized. If there is any connotation ofboth/and in the Yale Art Gallery, it has to do with Kahn’s interest in articulating the tectonic form, andthe need for one’s aspiration for spatial comfort deeply rooted in the tactile and visual habitsaccumulated in conjunction with conventional construction materials such as stone and brick.41

Now, if one considers Ann Tyng’s project for an elementary school dated 1951 (Fig. 1), the same yearthat Kahn received the commission for the Yale Art Gallery, then it is reasonable to agree with Leslie’sclaim that Kahn re-designed the ceiling of the latter building based on Tyng’s advice at a time when

Figure 1 Ann Tyng, project for an elementary school, 1951, image from T. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 2005.

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most of the construction documents were prepared. Tyng’s project demonstrates her interest in geometryand the space-frame structural system beyond what Buckminster Fuller had already achieved. Whatstands out in Tyng’s proposed project, however, is the strong projection of a space-frame roof and itssimultaneous use as a support element: a tectonic configuration that has little to do with the tectonictradition of column and lintel. This observation is convincing when attention is given to Kahn’s designfor a tubular structure, Philadelphia city (Fig. 2). In addition to Fuller, references should be made to thetubular structures used in the masonry roof of what seems to be an amphitheatre designed by Viollet leDuc (Fig. 3).42 At this stage of his career, however, Kahn was interested in the nineteenth centuryrational positivists’ search for architectural forms that were mostly motivated by new buildingtechniques. Likewise, Kahn was concerned with the craft of architecture and the poetic interpretation ofa chosen construction system. For Kahn, the tubular structure presented the natural growth of aconstruction system. It had the potential to blend Greek knowledge of material and construction with themodern I-beam system.

As far as the question of the tectonic is concerned, one might associate Kahn’s interest in spatialpotential of a given structure to that of Carl Botticher, the nineteenth century German architect. UnlikeGottfried Semper’s reservation concerning the monumental effects of iron structures, Botticher saw ironas the most suitable construction material for covering space, rather than stone whose tectonic potentialwas already exhausted.43 While some German architects designed iron structures whose members werebeefed up to provide a depth appropriate to the expected monumental effects, Kahn’s tubular structureenjoys a sense of proportion that is analogous to the delicate relationship between a tree’s branches andits trunk.

Figure 2 Louis I. Kahn, proposal for a welded tubular steel structure, Philadelphia,

1944. Image from K. Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, MIT Press, 1995.

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Kahn’s design also recalls the classical debateon the origin of architecture suggested in Marc-Antoine Laugier’s image of a wooden hut, or theVitruvian vision in which the Greek temple isseen as the tectonic translation of a wooden hutinto a stone structure.44 There are two reasonsfor Kahn’s esteem for tubular structures: the firsthas to do with the availability of welding, atechnique that eliminates the problem of jointin the I-beam structural system. According toKahn, in tubular structures the column becomespart of the beam. The second reason has to dowith the analogy Kahn would make betweentubular structures and Gothic architecture. Hesaw in tubular structures the potential forimproving the work of Gothic builders whoobviously did not have access to materials suchas steel and glass.45 Interestingly enough,Kahn’s tectonic vision of space and constructionbecame more complex as he moved away fromthe structural rationalist agenda. The suggesteddeparture is convincing if one accepts thehistorical observation that Mies van der Rohe’slater architecture had already exhausted tectonicforms available within the idiom of earlymodernism. Also important to Mies of the

American period is the notion of repetition, and a tectonic that is centred on interlocking the element ofcolumn to the lintel. Obviously this was an attempt to recode the classical notion of monumentality.46 IfMies’s case was the ‘‘monumentalization of technique,’’47 then, the following pages will demonstrate thesingularity of Kahn’s conceptualization of the paradoxical rapport between technology andmonumentality in his early work: dematerialization, lightness, but more importantly, modernism’sdrive for volumetric composition against that of mass and heaviness.

Consider Kahn’s design for the City Tower, the Municipal Building dated 1952 (Fig. 4), whose triangularplan recalls Mies’s 1921 glass skyscraper designed for Fredrichstrasse. Both architects wrap the finalform with a curtain-like glass membrane. The difference between these two projects is, nevertheless,historical. Mies was less concerned with the placement of the vertical supports. His design stresses theopenness of floor space and its distinction from the placement of what Kahn would later call ‘‘servicespaces.’’ Still, a perspective drawing of the glass skyscraper shows the arrangement of floors and theoverall image of tower, the one that looks like a translucent mass cut out of an ice-cube. In Kahn’sdesign, instead, the glass enclosure stops above the ground level showing its leg-like vertical supports

Figure 3 Eugen-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, project for

a hall. Image from K. Frampton, Studies in TectonicCulture, MIT Press, 1995.

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from which the building’s clothing is hung. Mies’s esteem for grafting the aesthetics of the new into thetraditional morphology of Berlin has no place in Kahn’s timely rapport with the post-warexperimentation, and the impact of new techniques on architecture. In Kahn’s hands the neo-empiricism of the post-war era is molded with historical perspective. In Gothic times, Kahn claimed,‘‘architects built in solid stones. Now we can build with hollow stones. The spaces defined by members ofa structure are as important as the members.’’48 Here he speaks for the spatial and formal potentialitiesembedded in a triangular concrete space-frame structure, the members of which will be the main form-giving element of the final scheme. This much is clear from Kahn’s statement for the first scheme of thetower, ‘‘The tower is an experimental exercise in triangulation of structural members rising upward toform themselves into a vertical truss against the forces of wind. The forces of gravity are secondary in atower rising high.’’49 The spatial and formal potentialities of a concrete triangular space frame playedalso an important role for the final scheme of Kahn’s addition to the Yale Art Gallery (late March 1952)although with a different end in view.

According to Thomas Leslie, Kahn abandoned the earlier scheme of the Yale Gallery (April 1951) wherethe square structural grid’s system dominated the planimetric organization, leaving no room for astructural system, which ‘‘can harbor the mechanical needs of rooms and spaces and require nocovering.’’50 Kahn’s early rapport with modern architecture’s concern with form and structure madehim to realize that his own idea of ‘‘monumentality’’ demanded a tectonic configuration that wouldrespond to the complexity involved in knotting together the support and service elements. To this end, hehad to look for another historical precedent, the French connection, discussed by Kenneth Frampton.51

Figure 4 City Tower, Philadelphia, 1952-57, image from K. Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, the MITPress, 1995.

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Accordingly, Kahn approached the experimental work of Etienne-Louis Boullee and Claude-NicholasLedoux for two ends: firstly, to explore the form-giving power of axes, hierarchy, and the importancegiven to the composition of the processional spaces, circulation; secondly, to reinterpret the typologicalwork of the French Revolutionary architecture in reference to the culture of building, the nineteenthcentury discourse on the tectonic in general, and the tectonic dialogue between the column and the wallin particular.

In the Yale Art Gallery, Kahn’s design concerns a standstill space that is framed by the column and thewall (Fig. 5). According to Vincent Scully,52 although Kahn had problems with the wall in his earlywork, after his experience with tubular structures, he did not use the column as the sole architectonicelement dominating the space. Kahn’s departure from structural positivism opened the possibility for atectonic practice in which the wall emerged as the essential form-giving element. On this move, whichbecame the main language of his later architecture, Frampton has this to say: ‘‘In one design afteranother, Kahn constantly strove to reveal the structural skeleton, together with its cross-sectionalreduction in areas as the load diminished.’’ For Frampton, the Washington University Library of 1956 isKahn’s last ‘‘didactic tectonic essay,’’ and thereafter, ‘‘masonry would play a more decisive role in hiswork, either rendered as a screen wall or treated as a kind of stressed-skin construction.’’53 There are tworeasons for the shift in Kahn’s tectonic thinking: firstly, the need to integrate mechanical elementswithin a given structural system, a phenomenon new to architecture; and secondly, the need to

Figure 5 The Yale Gallery, plan, image from C. Wiseman, L. I. Kahn, 2007.

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articulate a ‘‘flesh’’ suitable to the expected image of civicarchitecture and monumentality. After the Yale Art Gallery,where the mechanical elements are hidden in thestructure of the ceiling (Fig. 6), Kahn decided to channelthose elements through vertical enclosures. The exagger-ated volume of service spaces is charged with amonumental effect, notable in Richard Medical ResearchLaboratory, University of Pennsylvania (Fig. 7).

Secondly, the shift should be discussed in terms of whatcivic architecture meant to Kahn. In the context ofAmerican mass-culture of the 1950s, Kahn soon realizedthat his idea of civic architecture is attainable not ‘‘only inthe conventional socialist thinking he had embraced inPhiladelphia, but also in the institutions that could havean impact beyond their immediate precincts.’’54 To this,one should add the aesthetic side of Kahn’s understandingof the role an institution played in the America of the post-war era. Even though the City Tower project expressedmonumentality through its exposed structural system, the time still was not ripe to blendmonumentality with the modernist aesthetic of abstraction. And yet the suggested aesthetic dimensionwas in part a derivative of Kahn’s close experience with the abstract expressionism in painting, manypainters of which were his colleagues at Yale. The work of Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko—tomention the two most famous names—‘‘involved the employment of solid masses of unmixed colour,fundamental geometries, and the expression of the act of making,’’ but also light and darkness.55 This iswhat Kahn thought a civic centre should look like. While lecturing at Tulane University Kahn declared:‘‘At Yale, now, we are given a problem which is a civic center. Please forget the word civic and pleaseforget the word center. That’s important. If you think of civic, what do you think of? You think of thecity hall, you think of the firehouse, the post office, you think of other things that go into a civiccenter.’’56 Underlining the ineffectiveness of holding on to the old idea and believing that the peopleactually could participate in the politics of decision-making, Kahn’s position alludes to the power ofcommunication as the emblem of a civic centre. And this shift in conjunction to his simultaneousesteem for ‘‘room’’ and the brick wall, though occasionally articulated in lacerated surfaces, necessarilyended in taking two steps away from Mies.

Kahn had to abandon both the Miesian idea of large space with no identical function, and the tectonicof steel and glass architecture. The result was an image of architecture in which the served space isvisibly framed by its frame-structure while the service spaces are clad in brick. Another consequence ofKahn’s departure from Mies involves the architect’s juxtaposition of monumentality with the jargon ofauthenticity, noted by Goldhagen.57 Kahn’s indulging work on these two themes distanced him from theethos of modernism, especially the idea of open space and its radical implication for reducing the barrier

Figure 6 The Yale Gallery, detail of the

ceiling, image from T. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn,

2005.

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between the inside and the outside to sheerglass. While Mies’s later work flattens theconflict between monumentality and authen-ticity in favor of an existentialist vision of thebody, space, and landscape, for Kahn, instead,it was important to situate the body within amasonry enclosure. Goldhagen writes, ‘‘It is allbut impossible to enter Kahn’s buildings andnot to notice it, not to inspect it or lookinternally at it.’’58 Thus, central to Kahn wasthe exploration of the tectonic enclosure of an‘‘authentic’’ monument, but also the need for aparticular inside/outside relationship, the manyarchitectonic manifestations of which aresuggestive of Kahn’s distance from the earlymodernist infatuation with the aesthetic oflightness, and the importance he gave to light.What makes Kahn different from Mies, is thatin his case the tectonic figuration, and thedetailing of how different elements of thebuilding are put together had to be legible andexperienced through light, as if the latter ‘‘hada physical presence.’’59 The interlocking ofdifferent constructed elements in the gaze oflight is what makes Kahn’s tectonic differentfrom that of Mies.

In the light of these considerations, the Yale Art Gallery (Fig. 8) should be considered a transitional workin Kahn’s repertoire. The design still enjoys Mies’s concept of space, as well as the tectonic dialoguebetween the element of wall and column. This is the first building where Kahn uses both the brick walland an articulated ceiling for monumental effects, such that the building itself becomes an ornament.Juxtaposing a brick wall next to a Miesian curtain wall, Kahn did indeed anticipated the architectoniclanguage of ‘‘both/and,’’ which soon would be popularized by Venturi. The final planimetricorganization of the Yale Art Gallery (Fig. 5), however, is touched by the humanist discourse presented inColin Rowe’s ‘‘Mathematics of the ideal Villas,’’ first published in 1947. In the Yale Art Gallery, the planis informed by a pattern of a-b-a where the ‘‘b’’ section houses service spaces, including two stairways,one for emergency exit, and the other wrapped in a concrete circular wall leading to the upper floors.Part of the space between these two stairways is given to mechanical shafts. The two ‘‘a’’ stripes areoccupied by frozen spaces, one looking to the outside, and the other opening into another smallersection of the plan—like a joint—connecting the new gallery to the existing nineteenth centurybuilding. Centered on the long side of the ‘‘b’’ stripe, this square-shaped space marks the main entrance

Figure 7 Louis I. Kahn, The Richard Medical

Research Laboratory, Philadelphia. Image GevorkHartoonian.

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to the gallery. The overall plan, however, is punctuated by the presence of concrete columns that endorsethe a-b-a spatial division, and establish a 2 to 1 proportional ratio between the ‘‘a’’ and ‘‘b’’ stripes.

The mathematics of the plan is in part supportive of the ceiling’s triangulated structure (Fig. 9). Theplan is also informed by the dialogical relationship between the column and the wall. Thefreestanding columns demarcate the two exhibition spaces, flanked by the central service space. They

Figure 8 The Yale Gallery, view of the main entrance, image from T. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 2005.

Figure 9 The Yale Gallery, reflected ceiling plan, image from T. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 2005.

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also weave the vertical and horizontal web of the window panels that cover the north and west sidesof the gallery. The north wall, mostly glass and elegant in mass and shadow (Fig. 10), recalls Mies’stectonic language in the Lake Shore-Drive apartments, Chicago. The shadow surfaces of this wall,more visible at night, allude to the thickness of the concrete floor slab and its ceiling, which is madeof triangulated space frames. Seen from below, the triangulated space frames seem to be suspendedfrom the floor above. During construction, the concrete slab was poured after the electrical bars andair conditioning ducts above had been laid and within members of the concrete space frame (Fig. 6).The articulating of a tectonic form that integrates structural system with a space dedicated tomechanical elements, which otherwise are mostly hidden behind a suspended ceiling, is credited toKahn. Here the tectonic shores up the dualistic vision implied in the nineteenth century debate thatsaw ornament either as an addition to construction, or as an empirical result of the processes ofconstruction. The ceiling of the Yale Art Gallery also recalls Le Corbusier’s tectonic articulation of thewall at the Unite d’habitation in Marseilles, though rotated ninety degrees. Of interest here are botharchitects’ attempt to thicken (excess) constructive elements, responding to a non-functionalrequirement of the brief, sun and orientation in the case of the latter project, and the mechanicalconduits in Kahn’s case.

The ornamental quality of the thickened ceiling of the Yale Art Gallery resonates with the brick wallof the south: the stone ledge placed at each floor level of this wall interrupts the continuity of thebrick coursing (Fig. 8). These limestone joints, ‘‘the beginning of ornament,’’ as Kahn would like tosay, express the way in which the concept of construction is made visible (Fig. 11). The stone ledgeboth covers and reveals the intricate construction system of the floor structure. The top of the stone

Figure 10 The Yale Gallery, view from the garden, image from T. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn,

2005.

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ledge is aligned with the floor slab, itself sitting on the top of the joists braced by the tetrahedralelements of the ceiling (Fig. 12). The limestone appearing at all floor levels also extenuates the factthat the brick wall is veneer. The wall attains a monumental sensibility not because of its brickwork,but for its look: the brickwork appears to be an applied ornament. Kahn claimed that, ‘‘there is noreason why one can’t apply it [ornament]. But one must apply it with humor, and know he isapplying it. But one must satisfy other things too. It isn’t merely a question of saying ‘I needornament, because these things are too bulky and I am going to put something on so that it hasmore life to it.’ This is meaningless as we all know.’’60 The exaggerated limestone ledge charges thesouth brick wall with a monumental quality, which, according to Kahn, gives the wall the chance tobe washed smoothly when it rains. Whatever other speculations one can make about this wall, it alsoprovides a sense of continuity and enclosure to the fabric of the campus. In addition, the walldemonstrates a unique instance in Kahn’s tectonic of column and wall. In a conversation withstudents, Kahn spoke of the relationship of the wall to the column not only in reference to LeonBattista Alberti’s ideas, and the genealogy of these architectonic elements, but in reference to thearchitects’ will to accommodate these elements in their design.61 Nevertheless, and unlike his laterwork—Dhaka, for one—the brick wall of the Yale Art Gallery stands silent: it provides no openingfor looking into or out from; neither does it allude to the presence of the columns behind it. Whilethe columns speak for the way the space is made, the exterior wall says nothing except that itremains anonymous. It stands there for an image of monumentality and a functionally neededenclosure for the exhibition space.

Figure 11 The Yale Gallery, under construction, image from T. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn,

2005.

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Off History

In the Yale Art Gallery, the placement of the stone ledge, and the freestanding gesture of the wall chargethe idea of anonymity with excess.62 This aspect of Kahn’s work recalls Mies’s suggestion that‘‘architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of significance.’’63 Howdifferent his ‘‘realm of significance’’ is from the realm of architecture that Kahn spoke of soenthusiastically!64 Mies was reflecting on technology and how architecture should utilize technique, andelevate facts to the level of significance. Was he recalling Semper, who saw monumentality in relation tothe transfiguration of material, technique and structure to the point that a constructed form turns into‘‘self-illumination’’ of technique?65 This may be so. But, Mies’s statement also anticipates Kahn in theYale Art Gallery, where structural techniques are integrated with the idea of a constructed space that isappropriate for the display of artwork. And yet, if it is correct to characterize the brick wall and theceiling of the Yale Art Gallery as ornamental, then is not the building itself elevated into a monumentalornament?

Figure 12 The Yale Gallery, reflected ceiling plan and section details, image from T. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn,2005.

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The difference between Mies and Kahn remains historical. Kahn’s lamentation for civic architectureshould be regarded as one consequence when architecture’s ‘‘interiority’’ is compromised with valuesextraneous to the culture of building. Interiority here refers to that historical moment in architecturewhen the architect’s attention is focused on ‘‘building’’ as a constructive project.66 One might argue thatKahn’s architecture was an attempt to domesticate the early modernist experience in two moments: first,in the context of 1950s empiricism; and second, in reference to his metaphysical narratives ofmonumentality and civic architecture. While the first instance addresses the tectonic rapport betweencolumn and wall, exemplified in Mies’s architecture, the second moment necessitates a return togeometries embedded in the French revolutionary architecture of the eighteenth century. Thesegeometries are clad in brick to ensure a romantic tactility accessible to the ‘‘man in the street.’’ Yet theyare charged with the formal achievements of modern architecture, including fragmentation anddecomposition. One might argue that the montage of fragments is the most singular tectonic figurationpermeating Kahn’s architecture. Paradoxically, the historical impossibility of achieving civic architecturein the 1950s distilled the metaphysics of monumentality no matter how hard Kahn tried to charge hisdesign with new meanings such as the place for ‘‘gathering,’’ and the rhetoric of community, orrepresenting the tectonic of fragmentation with platonic geometries. One consequence of thishistoricization of Kahn has to do with the fact that in late capitalism the idea of monumentality hasturned out to be nothing but ornamentation, if not spectacle. The fragmented and lacerated body ofKahn’s later architecture is indeed ornamental and yet it is the tectonic language that differentiates hiswork from postmodern ‘‘decorated shed.’’

Kahn’s attempt to compromise the constructive dimension of architecture with the metaphysics of civicarchitecture and monumentality has led Manfredo Tafuri to argue correctly that, ‘‘In the operation ofoverturning performed by Kahn and Venturi, it makes little difference whether the material of theirimage-system is made up of dreams of nonexistent institutions or nightmares dominated by thecrowding together of the ephemeral icons of cosmic merchandization.’’67 Therefore, ideological delusionmight be one reason why the new generation of American architects is disenchanted with Kahn. Anotherreason has to do with the periodic shift of architects’ theoretical interest. Architects have to theorize thedesign process in order to create forms and spaces that operate on an imaginative plateau, free from thegiven constraints. Kahn’s metaphysical speculation in differentiating form from design, for example,fitted not only with the intellectual climate of the 1950s, but also stimulated him to generate richimages. Still, his was a return to the ethos of the revolutionary architecture of Boullee and others whoformulated new typologies according to the institutional demands of the Enlightenment. Nevertheless,subsequent and radical theoretical departures taking place since the 1960s have left no historical tunnelto Kahn’s work.

To the mainstream of current architectural practice, Kahn’s work remains an enigma, if not theruins of a bygone era. This observation relies on the historicity of the post-war era: that Mies’s workexhausted the tectonic question put on the table of architects since the late nineteenth century,leaving postmodernists with no choice but to look back into the abyss of historical eclecticism. In thisdevelopment, Kahn occupies a sensitive position: he charged architecture with socio-political ethos, a

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point of view essential to the modernity of modern architecture. Ironically, this strategy distanced himfrom his contemporaries as well as from the new generation of architects who also revisited theexperience of modern architecture, albeit from a different angle. The New York Five architects, forexample, attempted to discharge architecture from any communicative burden, civic or otherwise,except for the process of the conceptualization of form. In addition, the cultural experience thatcontemporary architects are framed by has pushed abstraction and formalism of the modernexperience one step further, to the point that, aesthetically, Kahn’s tactile sensibilities are notaccessible anymore.

Now what does the argument presented in this essay entail for architectural historiography? Firstly, thework of an architect should be seen as a document in its own right, but also a project that re-presentsits own historicity. The suggested concept of project embodies both the architect’s meta-narratives, andthe body of work, that is, the culture of building whose themes and strategies differentiate architecturefrom other artistic activities. This last point is fundamental to a semi-autonomous understanding ofarchitecture, and indeed for any critical reinterpretation of post-war architecture. Secondly, the idea ofthe project should be understood as a failed attempt to present a totalized picture of diverse storiesinvolved in the process of its own realization. This demands contaminating the historicality of the workwith the problematic of the present architectural praxis. In addition to recent inclination forhybridization,68 of interest is the concept of technification of architecture,69 and the level of abstractioninvolved in the process of design as architects utilize telecommunication technologies. From thisperspective, Kahn’s rhetorical remarks on monumentality remain unattainable, regardless of how hardarchitects try to juxtapose the ethos of modern architecture with the contemporaneity of the presentculture. Finally, the future that a project assigns to itself should be regarded as the architectonicrealization of a past whose traces can be recovered in the fleeting moments of the present. Kahn lived inthe post-war years, but his architecture re-presents the problematic of modernism. Seen from thespectral experience of the present everydayness, the theatricality nurturing his later buildings resonatethe spectacle permeating the present commodified world.70 In spite of this latter development, andperhaps because of contemporary drift into the digitalization of architecture, there are many recentpublications that re-approach Kahn with an eye on the tectonic dimension of his work,71 searchingperhaps a way out of the present infatuation with virtuality. Seemingly still there is room to learn fromKahn’s early buildings, specially the idea of served/service spaces. The latter does indeed inform theplanimetric organization of every thoughtful design conceived today, even those produced by digitaltechniques.

Endnotes1 Quoted in Christiane C. and George Collins, ‘‘Monumentality: A Critical Matter in Modern Architecture,’’

Harvard Architecture Review, 4 (1984): pp. 15-32, p. 17. George Howe was of the opinion that, ‘‘Themonuments of democracy must be founded in the symbolism of democracy, they must return from thearbitrary scale of vanity to the human scale, from the boastful show of plutocracy to the dignity of honest menwho wear felt hats to keep off rain instead of silk hats to show that they can afford to hire a valet.’’ Christianeand George Collins, ‘‘Monumentality,’’ p. 24.

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2 See ‘‘The Sixties a P/A Symposium on the State of Architecture: part I,’’ Progressive Architecture, 42 (March,1961): pp. 122-133.

3 Joan Ockman contextualizes fifties architecture in Architecture Culture 1943-1968, New York: Rizolli,1993. For detailed references on humanism and regionalism, see Sarah Ksiazek, ‘‘Architectural Culture inthe Fifties: Louis Kahn and the National Assembly Complex in Dhaka,’’ Journal of the Society of

Architectural Historians, 52, 4 (December, 1993): pp. 416-435.

4 The subtitle recalls Harry Harootunian’s History’s Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question

of Everyday Life, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

5 On this subject see Gevork Hartoonian, ‘‘Beyond Historicism: Manfredo Tafuri’s Flight,’’ In the Making of

Architecture’s Past, 18th Annual SAHANZ Conference, (2003): pp. 33-40.

6 Sarah Williams Goldhagen, ‘‘Coda: Reconceptualizing the Modern,’’ in S. W. Goldhagen and Rejean Legault(eds.), Anxious Modernisms, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, p. 313.

7 S.W. Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, p. 201.

8 See S.W. Goldhagen’s introduction and the last chapter in Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism.

9 To my knowledge she is the first scholar to stress the importance of art theories (as taught at the YaleUniversity of those days) for Louis Kahn’s architecture. According to Goldhagen, both Josef Albers’s vision ofan aesthetic of abstraction that demanded honest use of everyday materials and geometric forms, and Willemde Kooning’s abstract expressionism were influential for Kahn’s interest in the optical side of architecture.Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism, p. 51.

10 As early as 1969, Robert Stern discusses Louis Kahn’s work in the theoretical divide separating what he callsthe third generation of American architects, Robert Venturi, Romaldo Giurgola, and Charles Moore, and thesecond generation, that is Kevin Roche, Paul Rudolph, and Philip Johnson. See Stern, New Directions in

American Architecture, London: Studio Vista, 1969. Even when one reads Kenneth Frampton’s and VittorioGregotti’s essays on Kahn, one can’t avoid the sense of in-betweenness implied in the titles of their essays, the‘‘French Connections,’’ and the ‘‘Modern Connections,’’ respectively. See also this author’s essay on Kahn inModernity and its Other, College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1997.

11 Gevork Hartoonian, ‘‘Two Textual Levels of Architecture,’’ Modernity and its Other, pp. 121-140.

12 Gevork Hartoonian, ‘‘Five Points: Unweaving the Old Cloth,’’ Architectural Theory Review, 5, 1 (2000):pp. 34-45.

13 Harootunian, History’s Disquiet, p. 16.

14 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, Romanticism and Reintegration, New York: Dacapo Press,1993. At a certain point, the idea of new tradition operated as a general role: in Italy, for example, it wassuggested that, ‘‘for architecture to become the monument of an age and of a nation, it must be intimatelyconnected with the past,’’ and thus to become national rather personal. See Estter Da Costa Meyer, The Work of

Antonio Sant Elia, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, p. 3. The author cements her observation bypresenting examples from Germany and England.

15 Fredric J. Schwartz, ‘‘Ernst Bloch and Wilhelm Pinder: Out of Sync,’’ Grey Room, 3 (2001): pp.54-89.

16 Aspects of what makes architecture so different since 1968 are discussed in Gevork Hartoonian, Modernity and

its Other.

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17 I am thinking of the historical consciousness of autonomy at work since the eighteenth century Frencharchitects, and its subsequent reformulation as architecture entered the capitalist system of production andconsumption. Most historians who entertain the critical theory of the Frankfurt School discuss this historicalvision. See, for example, Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976.

18 Although Kenneth Frampton’s and Vittorio Gregotti’s reading of Kahn contain some historical truth, bothscholars shy away from demonstrating the architectonic choices that Kahn made in order to respond to thehistorical clash between architecture’s desire for autonomy and the chaos of fragmentation and disorder that isat the heart of the capitalist production system. On this subject see Kenneth Frampton, ‘‘Architecture and theState: Ideology and Representation 1914-43,’’ Modern Architecture: A Critical History, London: Thames andHudson, 1980, pp. 210-223.

19 On this subject see, Gevork Hartoonian, ‘‘Louis Kahn at the Salk Institute: What the Building wants to Be,’’Modernity and its Other, pp. 81-102.

20 See, for example, my views on this subject in a previous footnote. Also see Vincent Scully, Louis I. Kahn, NewYork: George Braziler, 1962, p. 33.

21 Arthur C. Danto, ‘‘Louis Kahn as Archai-Tekt,’’ in Philosophizing Art: Selected Essays, Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1999, p. 193.

22 Louis Kahn, ‘‘Form and Design,’’ in Alessandra Latour (ed.), Louis I. Kahn Writings, Lectures, Interviews,

New York: Rizzoli, 1991, p. 113.

23 Here I am thinking about the New York Five architects and the debate running between the Grays and theWhites.

24 Louis Kahn, ‘‘Alessandra Latour,’’ p. 267.

25 Thomas Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, Building Art, Building Science, New York: George Braziller, 2005, p. 4.

26 Francoise Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001,p. 13. In this book, Choay pursues the development of the idea of the monument from its anthropologicaldimension in pre-Renaissance times to Alberiti’s discourse on the monument as a work of artuntil the nineteenth century, when the purpose of the Latin monumentum gave way to the historicmonument.

27 Louis I. Kahn, ‘‘Monumentality,’’ in Ockman, Architecture Culture, pp. 48-53. This and the following citedarticle were originally published in Paul Zucker, New Architecture and City Planning, New York:Philosophical Library, 1944. Sarah Williams Goldhagen provides two reasons for architects’ interest inmonumentality. One was in anticipation of the need for monumental memorials at the end of World War II,and second, the fact that America felt left behind in the esteem for monumental buildings that had permeatedNazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism, pp. 25-26.

28 Louis I. Kahn, ‘‘Monumentality,’’ as footnote 27. Housing and the commitment of modern architects to masshousing was a central issue throughout the years prior to the Second World War. The subject was broached inAmerica in part due to the massive immigration that took place after the war. For Kahn’s involvement insocial housing and detailed references about housing activists, see Sarah Williams Ksiazek, ‘‘Critiques ofLiberal Individualism: Louis I. Kahn’s Civic Projects, 1947-57,’’ Assemblage 31 (1997): pp. 57-79.

29 John Ruskin ‘‘The Lamp of Power,’’ in The Seven Lamps of Architecture, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,1981, pp. 69-99.

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30 On this subject see Christiane and George Collins, ‘‘Monumentality.’’ The entire issue is dedicated to thesubject of monumentality. Although the editorial text is dated, the panelist discussions on the subject(especially James Ackerman’s views) are interesting. The above article presents a succinct summary of the ideaof monumentality as discussed by modern architects.

31 Kenneth Frampton, ‘‘A Propos Barragan: Formation, Critique and Influence’’, in Fredrica Zanco (ed.), Luis

Barragan: the Quiet Revolution, New York: Abbeville Publishing Group, 2001, p. 14-27. Frampton here refersto Giedion’s ‘‘Nine Points of Monumentality,’’ suggesting that the authors of that article ‘‘anticipated Barraganwhose architecture mediates between the built and unbuilt’’ (p. 27).

32 See J. L. Sert, F. Leger, and S. Giedion, ‘‘Nine Points on Monumentality,’’ in Joan Ockman, Architecture

Culture, pp. 29-30.

33 Sigfried Giedion, ‘‘The Need for a New Monumentality,’’ in Paul Zucker, New Architecture and City Planning,pp. 547-604, p. 563.

34 James Ackerman, ‘‘Monumentality and the City,’’ Harvard Architectural Review, 4 (Spring, 1984): pp. 38-45.

35 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, New York: Anchor Books, 1959, pp. 37-38. Before Arendt and around1944, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno introduced the idea of ‘mass culture,’ to speak for thestratification and control of society based on a system of production and consumption in which the fusion ofculture and entertainment would take place. This leads ‘‘not only to the deprivation of culture, but inevitablyto an intellectualization of amusement.’’ Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment,New York: Continuum Publishing, 1972, p. 143. For a discussion of mass society in America and thedissolution of the classic, eighteenth century concept of ‘‘public’’ into ‘‘mass,’’ see C. Wright Mills, The Power

Elite, New York: Oxford University Press, 1956, pp. 298-324. This last reference is cited in Ksiazek,‘‘Architectural Culture in the Fifties.’’

36 Choay, Invention of the Historic Monument, p. 147.

37 Robert Venturi, Denise S. Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning From Las Vegas, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1972, p. 50.

38 Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, p. 32.

39 Robert McCarter goes further, suggesting that at the age of fifty, Kahn was perhaps unable ‘‘to engage lightstructural materials effectively.’’ Robert McCarter, Louis I. Kahn, New York: Phaidon, 2005, p. 62.

40 For a close account of the academic environment at Yale University when Kahn started to teach architecture,see Carter Wiseman, Louis I. Kahn, Beyond Time and Style, New York: W. W. Nortorn, 2007, pp. 54-81.

41 Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, p. 70. Leslie provides a detailed discussion of issues of diverse nature involved in thedesign of the Yale University Art Gallery.

42 Kahn was also influenced by Ann Tyng’s research with the structural potentialities present in geometry andnature, discussed by D’Arcy Thompson. See D’Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form, Cambridge, MA:Cambridge University Press, 1961.

43 On this subject, see Mitchell Schwarzer, German Architectural Theory and the Search for Modern Identity,Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 167-214.

44 Kenneth Frampton has given a new twist to these analogies and discusses Kahn’s tubular structure in referenceto the tectonic of Gothic cathedrals. See Kenneth Frampton, ‘‘Louis Kahn: Modernization and the NewMonumentality’’, in Studies in Tectonic Culture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995, p. 211.

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45 Kahn, ‘‘Monumentality,’’ pp. 49-51.

46 On this subject see Gevork Hartoonian, ‘‘Mies van der Rohe: The Genealogy of Column and Wall,’’ Ontology of

Construction, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 68-80.

47 Frampton, Modern Architecture, pp. 231-237.

48 Louis I. Kahn, Louis I. Kahn, Complete Works, 1935-1974, Colorado: Westview Press, 1977, p. 74.

49 Kahn, Complete Works, p. 73. His vision of ‘tower’ extends to expressing some reservation on Mies van derRohe’s Seagram building. While praising the building as a ‘‘really beautiful building of the world today’’,Kahn nevertheless does not like the way Mies ends his tower, and does not count on the factor of wind for thefinal form. See Latour, Louis I. Kahn Writings, pp. 95-96.

50 Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, p. 58.

51 Kenneth Frampton, ‘‘Louis Kahn and the French Connection,’’ Oppositions, 22 (Fall 1980): pp. 21-53.

52 Scully, Louis I. Kahn, pp. 17, 23.

53 Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 231.

54 Wiseman, Louis I. Kahn, p. 68.

55 McCarter, Louis I. Kahn, p. 77.

56 Latour, Louis I Kahn, pp. 63-64.

57 Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism, p. 208.

58 Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism, p. 212.

59 Michael Cadwell, Strange Details, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007, p. 142.

60 Latour, Louis I Kahn, pp. 63-64.

61 Latour, Louis I Kahn, p. 156. Also see my discussion of the subject in reference to Mies van der Rohe’sarchitecture in Ontology of Construction, pp. 68-80.

62 On this subject, see Gevork Hartoonian, Modernity and its Other.

63 Quoted in Gevork Hartoonian, Modernity and its Other, p. 99.

64 According to Louis Kahn, ‘‘the realm of architecture is a realm within which all other things are. In the realmof architecture there is sculpture, there is painting, there is physics, there is nursing—everything is in it. Butthe emphasis is on architecture. Architecture is the king of this realm.’’ Latour, Louis I Kahn, p. 93.

65 Gottfried Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, Harry F. Malgrave & WolfgangHerrmann (trans.), Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 255.

66 In his An Essay on Architecture, Marc-Antoine Laugier presents an understanding of architecture the thematicof which is devoid of values rooted in the metaphysics of Christianity or nature, as was the case withRenaissance architecture. Perceived in the middle of a natural setting, Laugier’s wooden hut underlines theimportance of column, the roof and the space marked by these constructive elements. See Laugier, An Essay

on Architecture, W. Hermann (trans.), Los Angeles: Ingalls, 1977.

67 Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and Labyrinth, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987, p. 295.

68 For a discussion of hybridization that involves the notion of contamination, see Farshid Moussavi, ‘‘HybridIdentities: Mutating Type,’’ Log, 10 (Summer/Fall, 2007): pp. 81-87. According to Mousavi, the architecturalpotential of contamination is suggestive of ‘‘a practice that is the coming together of the two reactions to

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globalization: a practice that intersects with the specificities of given projects and a growth of new identitiesthat are unique to a situation, while benefiting and evolving from the expertise and knowledge gained in otherdomains.’’ p. 82.

69 On this subject see, Gevork Hartoonian, ‘‘Notes on Critical Practice,’’ Architectural Theory Review, 7, 1 (2002):pp. 1-14.

70 This subject is discussed in Gevork Hartoonian, Crisis of the Object; the architecture of theatricality, London:Routledge, 2006.

71 I am thinking of the contribution of the following authors: Joseph Rykwert (2002), Robert McCarter (2005),Thomas Leslie (2005), Carter Wiseman (2007), and Michael Cadwell, with his intelligent remarks on The YaleCenter for British Art (2007).

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