louis kahn essay
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Marcos , Kenneth N. May 16, 2011
Arch. Daniel T. Dayan Essay: My Architect
Louis Kahn, one of the greatest architects during the twentieth-
century, influenced a lot of scholars and other architects. He died in
Pennsylvania Station alone, unacknowledged and in full debt. His life and
death became a mystery to all of his colleagues and extended family
especially to his illegitimate son, Nathaniel, who is also the film maker.
Nathaniel tried to put the pieces of the puzzle to find out what kind of
person and architect his father was whom he barely knew. Being unable to
see his father urged him to make this film. Nathaniel met his father’s
contemporaries, Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson and I.M. Pei, as well as his
father’s other family affairs. By the time he had interviewed these people,
he came to know and understand what kind of architect, friend, lover, family
and dad he was, far from what he had known from the start.
As he started to find out the answers he wanted to unveil from the
covered past of his father, he even tried to visit most of his father’s
designed buildings across different countries starting from his father’s
hometown Philadelphia to California, Texas, Israel, India and finally
Bangladesh. He came to understand what Louis Kahn is in the field of
architecture. He did realize that Louis Kahn left the world with a legacy of
brilliantly designed and engineered buildings that have a tough beauty and
deep spirit. Tracing his father’s confounding life made him acknowledge
and see his father’s works that he had never seen before in his entire life.
Among Louis Kahn’s buildings were some of the most important and
influential in twentieth century. These are the Yale University Art Gallery,
Salk Institute in La Jolla, the Bath House he designed together with his
other woman, Anne Tyng the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the Hurva
Synagogue which symbolizes his spiritual being, the musical boat he
designed for his friend, the Fisher House he made for his daughter Sue
Ann Kahn, the Phillips Exeter Library, the Indian Institute of Management,
and the capital of Bangladesh. The style he wanted to impose tends to be a
monumental and monolithic, heavy buildings that neither hide their weight
nor the way they're put together.
Nathaniel learned a great story from his father’s buildings and that
story clearly explains the quote, if you’ll go silent, you’ll hear it. Nathaniel
saw the purity and passion in his father’s works which was undoubtedly
seen in each of its facade and interior, defining a great art with the
combination of classical forms with modern styles that sit in harmony with
their elements and settings using bricks, concrete, water and most
importantly light.
Louis Kahn’s buildings revealed the answers to the questions left
behind in Nathaniel’s mind. In the end of the film, the son realizes that he is
like his famous father, a genius who also had his own struggles with life
and a failure who stood up for his dreams. He travelled nomadically around
the world on the surface working on numerous projects, without letting his
families know where he was. The son begun to discover the nature of
artistic success by his father, that it's far better to create a handful of great
works than a numerous of ordinary ones just for profits. He had found out
that his father wasn’t merely that bastard guy who left him and his mom
alone but a man of dreams and recognition who chose a life he wanted and
a man who is truly an inspiration for everyone. Nathaniel came to
understand that his father was a man not a myth.
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