LOUIS I KAHN

OUTSIDE INFLUENCES INDIA

Modern architecture produces truly innovative work: glittering, staggeringly tall buildings,
opera houses that look like folded origami, even museums that look like spaceships.
However, in turning towards everything new, architectural modernism also dogmatically
left behind much of what makes buildings lovely. The best architects of the modern age
have managed to avoid this pitfall, discarding older, dull conventions while retaining the
meaningful and beautiful aspects of tradition. Perhaps one of the most successful
architects at finding this balance was a whimsical, absent-minded American named
Louis Kahn.
Kahn was born in 1901. As a young man he studied architecture at the University of
Pennsylvania, but his career truly blossomed in the 1950s after a trip to Rome led him
to a new appreciation of ancient designs. Kahns important contribution to modern
architecture was to include these older and even ancient elements in his work without
losing the innovation and clarity of modernism.
Education/ Occupation

He attended the University of Pennsylvania and received his Bachelors degree

in architecture at the age of 24.

After college, he worked as a senior draftsman in the office of Philadelphia City

Architect John Molitor.

While he still designed and worked as a design critic on the side, Louis became a
professor of architecture at Yale school of Architecture.

Personal designs

Kahn created many unique intricate buildings, but among his most memorable were

* The Yale University Art gallery: 1951.

* The Jonas Salk institute for Biological Studies: 1965
* The Margaret Esherick house: 1961
* The National Assembly building: 1962

Louis Kahns works in India :

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Institute of Public Administration`

National Assembly at Dacca.

More Light Matters, after the break

As identified by Leonardo da Vinci, we often encounter three types of
shadows: Attached shadow, shading and cast shadow. The attached shadow
falls on the body itself like a cantilever roof causing a shadow on the
faade. The second type belongs to bright and dark contrasts, which are
inherent to the form and depend only on the source of light, e.g. a ball
shaped pavilion, which even under a cast sky shows a darker zone in the
lower part. The third, cast shadow could be the result of a high house
generating shadow on the street due to the projection of the building outline.

However, light was also a central element in Kahns philosophy because he

regarded it as a giver of all presences: All material in nature, the mountains and
the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this
crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.
For him, light is the maker of material, and materials purpose is to cast a shadow .
And because Kahn believed that the dark shadow is a natural part of light, Kahn
never attempted a pure dark space for a formal effect. For him, a glimpse of light
elucidated the level of darkness: A plan of a building should be read like a harmony
of spaces in light. Even a space intended to be dark should have just enough light
from some mysterious opening to tell us how dark it really is. Each space must be
defined by its structure and the character of its natural light. As a result, the light
as a source is often hidden behind louvers or secondary walls, thus concentrating
attention on the effect of the light and not on its origin.