Architect: Louis Kahn
Louis Kahn: In Praise of shadows
3 February 2021
Louis Kahn: In Praise of shadows3 February 2021
By Emerald Liu
The pale white touch The most exquisite glow and depth of shadows An immutable mystery in the crossbeam of tranquillity simply vanished when the sunlight flooded the atmosphere Of this small corner Where we as children would feel an inexpressible chill While waiting so quiet and pliant to the touch… Read More
BV Doshi: Drawn Closer
23 April 2020
BV Doshi: Drawn Closer23 April 2020
By Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi and Sarah Handelman
I was fifty years old when I started designing Sangath, my office in Ahmedabad. In India, when you cross fifty, suddenly – biologically, psychologically – you start to think about what in your life you have discovered. When I made the first drawings, I was thinking about many things: although… Read More
Alternative Histories: Noreile Breen on Louis Kahn
30 July 2019
Alternative Histories: Noreile Breen on Louis Kahn30 July 2019
Kahn’s drawing is composed of solid and dotted hard pencil lines with red hatching on coloured paper; conventions representing elements above, below and through a cut line. Parallel lines and breaks between lines give an indication of scale. Curious, massive, triangular, hollow and inaccessible forms meet broken lines in a… Read More
Alternative Histories: fala atelier on Louis Kahn
14 June 2019
Alternative Histories: fala atelier on Louis Kahn14 June 2019
Supreme efficiency. For the cost of one millimetre of pencil lead, a few careful shapes define the volume, its load-bearing structure, the metrics of the facades and the distinction between services and open areas. We thought five pillars would be enough, and that the rhythm of the elevations would benefit… Read More
Alternative Histories: Christ & Gantenbein on Louis Kahn
16 February 2019
Alternative Histories: Christ & Gantenbein on Louis Kahn16 February 2019
Louis Kahn’s drawing is a floor plan, a typical plan. It is characterised by the stark expression of the poché. The coal-coloured stains lend the drawing the quality of a painting. Their roughness contrasts with the minuscule dots suggesting the mullions of the facade. It’s a sketch on paper, not on… Read More
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 2
21 January 2019
Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 221 January 2019
By Mark Dorrian and Michael Webb
Mark Dorrian: I’ve loaded some images – Michael, by the way, doesn’t know what’s coming up. After showing this, the drawing of the building, I thought it would be useful to show a couple of slides about the context in which this project then appeared. The Furniture Manufacturers Building is… Read More
Dogma: The Room of One’s Own
13 November 2017
Dogma: The Room of One’s Own13 November 2017
By Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara
The Architecture of the Private Room These drawings are part of a series of 48 perspectives that depict the ‘private’ room from antiquity to the present day. They comprise a study of the private room as a specific architectural form. Each perspective is taken with a more or less consistent… Read More
Louis Kahn: Kansas City Office Building
18 March 2016
Louis Kahn: Kansas City Office Building18 March 2016
The Kansas City Office Building – never built but designed in many variations between 1966 and Louis Kahn’s death in 1974, in close collaboration with the structural engineer August Komendant – is a clear example of the poetics of weight and mass in contrast with prevailing ideals of structural lightness.… Read More
This Was Tomorrow: Reinventing Architecture 1953–1978
13 March 2016
This Was Tomorrow: Reinventing Architecture 1953–197813 March 2016
This Was Tomorrow: Reinventing Architecture 1953–1978 is an exhibition about architectural imagination and the power, processes and poetics of creation and invention. It presents a series of twelve episodes – beginning in the 1950s – that look at the ferment of new ideas as architects began to reconceive space in response… Read More
Excerpt: Shadow Places
15 March 2021
Excerpt: Shadow Places15 March 2021
By Simon Unwin
The following text is excerpted from Simon Unwin’s book on shadow, in his series Analysing Architecture Notebooks, available here. For 20% off until May 31st 2021, use code KHL20. The piece is illustrated with drawings specially selected by Simon from the Drawing Matter collection. ‘Yea, though I walk through the… Read More
publication theoretical & imaginary