Louis Kahn On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces Cover
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Summary page
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Inside page
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Inside page
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Inside page
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Inside page
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Inside page
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Inside page
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Inside page
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Inside page
  • Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces. Inside page
1 / 10

Michael Merrill

Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces

The 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on several of major works in a timely reappraisal of Kahn’s work.The result of extensive research, illustrated with unpublished archival material and new analytic drawings, this affordable volume is an indispensible companion to Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out.

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.

Also available as an e-book

“From previously unpublished material and new analytic drawings this book explores Louis Kahn’s Dominican Motherhouse, his unbuilt masterpiece.”

– Arch Daily

“[Merril’s second book on the Dominican Motherhouse is] comprehensively illustrated with archival material and is more than adequate in presenting the detailed results of Merrill’s archival research."

– Architecture Review

Author(s): Michael Merrill

Design: Integral Lars Müller

16,5 × 24 cm, 6 ½ × 9 ½ in

240 pages, 215 illustrations

paperback, 1st edition: 2010

2010, 978-3-03778-220-0, English
Architectural Research Architectural Drawing Louis Kahn
CHF 40.00

Louis I. Kahn

Born in Estonia, Louis Kahn (1901–1974) emigrated with his family to Philadelphia when he was four years old. Kahn received Beaux-Arts training at the University of Pennsylvania, under the French-educated Paul Philippe Cret, and then adopted his own idiosyncratic modernism, which would engender the heterogeneous “Philadelphia school.” It wasn’t until 1950–51 when, as an American Academy fellow, he traveled in Italy, Greece, and Egypt that he developed his own singular philosophy of architecture. In 1951 he attained his first major commission to design Yale University’s Art Gallery, and upon its completion gained instant national recognition before going on to do international commissions a decade later. He developed a signature style that was monumental, monolithic and transparent in its functionality. Kahn was awarded the AIA Gold Medal in 1971 and the RIBA Gold Medal in 1972.

Michael Merrill

Michael Merrill is an award-winning architect and educator. He taught architectural design and theory at the Technical Universities at Karlsruhe and Darmstadt and has served as the director of research at the institute for building typology at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) since 2017. Michael Merrill is the author of three books on Louis Kahn: "Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out”, "Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces” and “Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing".

CHF 40.00