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Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of SpacesThe Dominican Motherhouse and a Modern Culture of Space
It was not by chance that Louis Kahn’s move into his profession’s spotlight coincided with the crisis of modern architecture: representing, as his work increasingly did, those aspects of space which modernism had so ambitiously removed from its program. Kahn’s rethinking of modern architecture’s paradigm of space belongs to his most important contributions to the métier. In tracing the genesis of the unbuilt project for the Dominican Motherhouse (1965–69), we are given a close-up view of Kahn at work on a few fundamental questions of architectural space: seeking the sources of its meaning in its social, morphological, landscape and contextual dimensions.
This rich and multivalent project opens the way to a second section, which sheds new light on several of major works in a timely reappraisal of Kahn’s work.The result of extensive research, illustrated with unpublished archival material and new analytic drawings, this affordable volume is an indispensible companion to Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out.Design: Integral Lars Müller
16.5 x 24 cm, 6 ½ x 9 ½ in, 240 pages, 215 illustrations, softcover (2010)
ISBN 978-3-03778-220-0, e
EUR 35.00 / USD 55.00 / GBP 35.00
7 Introduction
On the Value of Uncompleted Things
SECTION I
LOUIS KAHN AND THE DOMINICAN MOTHERHOUSE, 1965–1969
15 Prelude to a Project
Congregation, Program, and Architect
25 “Architecturing”
The Designs, April 1966–December 1968
SECTION II
ON THE NATURE OF SPACE, 1940–1974
115 Prelude to a Paradigm
Kahn, the Room, and the Beginning of Architecture
123 Configuration, Movement, and Space
From “Circulation” to an “Architecture of Connection”
145 The Twin Phenomena of Inside and Outside
“Dichotomous Things” or the Theme of Reciprocity
179 From Space to Place
From Establishing the General to Revealing the Specific
205 Epilogue
On Good Questions
213 Appendix«I was deeply moved by both Drawing to Find Out and On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Without question, at this point in our profession’s history where so much of Kahn’s thinking has been absent, reintroducing it in this way to a new generation is a noble effort. An important contribution to the Kahn legacy.»
Moshe Safdie, architect, urban planner and educator, recipient of the Gold Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada
