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.