Louis Isadore Kahn, FAIA

Year Awarded: 1971
Born: February 20, 1901; Saarama, Estonia
Died: 1974; New York City

Quote
Design is not making beauty; beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love. Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.


Projects
• 1974: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn.
• 1974: National Assembly Building, Dhaka, Bangladesh
• 1972: Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, N.H.
• 1972: Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Tex.
• 1967: First Unitarian Church, Rochester, N.Y.
• 1965: Erdman Hall Dormitories, Bryn Mawr, Pa.
• 1965: Richards Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
• 1965: Jonas Salk Institute, La Jolla, Calif.
• 1961: Esherick House, Chestnut Hill, Pa.
• 1953: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.


Biography
In 1905 Louis Kahn emigrated to the United States with his family from Estonia, at the time part of Russia. He grew up in Philadelphia and became a citizen in May 1914.

Kahn first studied architecture at Central High School in Philadelphia and then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition. He graduated from Pennsylvania with a BArch in 1924. That year, he won a bronze medal in the Arthur Spayd Brooke Memorial Prize.

After graduating, Kahn worked as the chief of design for Philadelphia’s 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition. In 1927, he joined William Lee’s practice, but in 1928, he left for Europe to explore the architecture of Northern Europe, Italy, and Paris.

When he returned from Europe, Kahn began working for Paul Cret as a designer and worked on the Folger Shakespeare Library. Cret was unable to keep Kahn employed, so Kahn moved on to Zantzinger, Borie & Medary to work as a designer. He stayed there until 1932 and worked on the U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. Shortly after that, he joined with Dominique Berninger to form the Architectural Research Group (ARG) in Philadelphia.

When the ARG closed its door, Kahn worked first for the Philadelphia City Planning Commission on its housing studies and then for the Federal Government’s Resettlement Administration, still working as a consultant to the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

In 1947 Kahn began his teaching career at Yale, where he was design critic and professor of architecture for 10 years. Following that, he served as dean of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1950, he became architect in residence at the American Academy in Rome; in this role, he again toured Europe, studying ancient buildings and monuments.

In 1955 he returned to Pennsylvania to design the Alfred Newtown Richards Medical Laboratories, an early expression of what would become, with Kahn in the lead, the Philadelphia School style.

From 1961 to 1967, Kahn was the Class of 1913 Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University. In 1962 he was Albert F. Bemis Professor of Architecture and Planning at MIT, and in 1966 he was named the Paul Cret Professor of Architecture. Kahn joined the AIA in 1935 and was made a Fellow in 1951; he was a member of the Philadelphia chapter and served as one of its directors in 1950 and 1952.

He was also a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Royal Society of Arts. In 1962 Kahn was named a fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1964 he was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science in 1968 and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1970.

In 1960 Kahn won the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize. In 1972, he received RIBA’s Royal Gold Medal, and he was awarded the Twenty-five Year Award by the AIA for the Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, N.H. He received the Gold Medal for Architecture in 1973 from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Over the course of his career, he was given honorary degrees from several schools, including the University of North Carolina, Bard College, the Maryland Institute College of Art, Yale University, and Columbia University.