The Life of the Characters in Louis Kahn's Works

On February 20th, Louis Isadore Kahn was born in Salma Island in the Baltic Sea. This is a small island in Estonia, which was then ruled by Poland. Kang is the surname of a Jewish family. Louis's father is a devout Jew, and his mother Bertha was born in the prestigious Mendelssohn family. Bertha Kang is related to the German romantic composer Febrix Mendelssohn. At that time, the Mendelssohn family had moved to the east coast of the Baltic Sea for generations. Bertha's grandfather, moses mendelssohn, was a famous Jewish philosopher during the German Enlightenment in the18th century and settled in Riga, the capital of Latvia. Her father is Sheila, a prestigious Jew. When she died, the whole city lit white candles for her. At that time, Riga, with a population of 200,000, was the most prosperous and developed city on the east coast of the Baltic Sea. Although not as famous as Rix Mendelssohn, Bertha Mendelssohn was once an outstanding harpist and an admirer of famous writers Goethe and Schiller. Louis Kahn was influenced by his parents' culture since childhood. Nature, religion, music and the literary works of Goethe and Schiller have become Louis Kahn's spiritual food since childhood. Therefore, after18th century, romanticism and neo-Platonism, the mainstream of German bourgeois revolution, evolved into existentialism, which had a considerable influence on Louis Kahn. These influences have existed since childhood, and Louis and Bertha are very loving. Although he is very busy at work as an adult, he often takes time to have a long talk with his mother. This clever mother was also her mentor when Louis Kahn was growing up. The Louis Kahn family immigrated to the United States on 1906. The first generation of immigrants in the United States always have strong characteristics of their home countries, so it is often difficult to integrate into the new society in this new continent. Different national traditions, values and consanguinity make immigrants form a small society linked by their respective traditional cultures. In today's America, driving along a street can clearly identify the sect and original nationality of residents in each block from the styles of various religious buildings. Similarly, at the beginning of this century, Louis Kahn's family settled in a Jewish neighborhood in the old town of Delfia in North Ferrara, where high-pitched Berlin German and Yiddish were spoken. 19 12 to 1920 studied at Ferra Delfia center and public industrial art design school. During this period, his painting skills have also made great progress, so he won many awards. Before I finished my middle school education, I won an art scholarship from Philadelphia Art Institute to further improve my professional painting level. Louis Kahn showed extraordinary talent when he was young. These innate and acquired endowments are the conditions for him to eventually become a generation of famous architects.

Kang from the Great Depression to the Second World War

1932, an exhibition entitled "International Architectural Art" jointly organized by architectural critics and historians Hitchcock and philip johnson officially used international architecture for the first time on the cover of its catalogue. This may be considered as the moment when neoclassicism and neoromanticism fell out of favor in America. Starting from 1935, Louis Kahn opened an independent firm. During World War II, he successively cooperated with Qiao Qi Howe, Oscar Si Tong Nolov and others to open a firm. Since the Great Depression, the friendship established with some urban planners, such as Clarence Stearns and Henry Wright, has also given Louis Kahn the opportunity to participate in some urban development designs. In the experience of nearly 20 years, his life is an unenviable struggle.

Oscar Stone Nolov & louis kahn architects share the top floor of an old house with N Kronheim (structural and equipment engineer of Kang) and L McAllister architects. The owner of this house is the Evening News. The architect's workspace is next to the house where the newspaper editorial department has a rest and lunch, separated by fragile fiberboard. From this, we can overlook several busy and noisy movable type typesetting machines. There is a huge public toilet next door. All kinds of jokes and news from editors and workers flew into the ears of the drafters through the partition. During the day, there are windows on the north and west sides to illuminate the office, and at night, dazzling light bulbs are hung under the white and green umbrella lampshade on the drawing table. Draughtsmen work 60 hours a week, and Louis Kahn himself even works on Sundays. He often says to his people,' Come on, work for an hour or two'.

Kang works with the draftsman day and night. Either cigars or cigarettes. He has a soft pencil or charcoal stick in his hand. He always tells his own theories and principles, while drawing endless lines on sketches over and over again. Sometimes, a mature idea will appear clearly on paper with a pencil or charcoal pen. Sometimes, it may still be a piece of paper, waiting for the draftsman to draw another draft and make another round of exploration with Louis Kahn. (Excerpted from Memories of Draughtsman D. Whist, etc. )

In wartime, construction activities all over the country also served the war. There are quite strict restrictions on the use of materials. Si Tong Nolov, Howe, Kang and others cooperated to design and build some public houses in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and other towns in Pennsylvania. Louis Kahn also designed a mass-produced wartime house for a manufacturer, but there was no chance to put it into production. …

Architect, a profession appreciated by others, is by no means an inexhaustible industry for some architects who really pursue it. Like any other artistic creation, serious architects are always faced with endless exploration, but it is often bittersweet, or this endless exploration is simply mixed. Why should we distinguish between bitterness and bitterness? Louis Kahn's early struggle is a typical life experience of this kind of architecture. Perhaps it was this experience that made Kang quickly step into the ranks of famous architects in the 1950s. Extraordinary achievement

After 30 years of exploration and hesitation, Louis Kahn finally reached the turning point of his career. The expansion project of Yale University Art Museum is Kang's famous work. In the university town of New Haven, when Louis Kahn took over the project, there were not many new buildings. Like Harvard University, it is full of the academic atmosphere of Cambridge and Oxford in England, and so are the buildings-old gray stone buildings, heavy historical forms and weights, from Gothic and Victorian to eclecticism. In such a rich historical environment, Kang's design is very formal. Along the facade of Church Street, he carefully made it consistent with the original building in terms of color, surface texture, line and plane division, and was humble in architectural details. Seen from this side, the unfolded part looks like a dog's tail and a mink. However, indoors and on the other side facing the outdoor exhibition platform and green space, Kang boldly used typical modern technologies, such as steel and glass, flowing space and triangular multi-ribbed floor structure exposed. In the room, he first used some simple geometric shapes as elements of space. The triangular multi-ribbed floor, which integrates structure, space composition, decoration and equipment piping, combines the simplicity of le corbusier and the decorative structure of Nervi, and is the most praised essence of modern architectural movement. This feature has since become an important aspect of Louis Kahn's personal style. This dual practice of taking care of the historical environment and striving for innovation is obviously a combination of styles under two pressures-the pressure of the times and the historical pressure of Yale. If the expansion project of Yale University Art Museum shows some superficial and blunt conformity, then the later Trenton Jewish Cultural Center and the Richard Medical Research Building of the University of Pennsylvania, which was completed after 1957, show some complex duality of non-pressure treatment, but the interweaving of tradition and modernity in all aspects. In this interweaving process, Louis Kahn's cultural accomplishment accumulated since childhood began to shine. Not only his design works come out, but also his works often have their own theoretical support. His theory is based on German classical literature and romantic philosophy, as well as modernist architectural view, oriental cultural philosophy and even China's Laozi and Zhuangzi theory. He is not only engaged in architectural creation practice, but also engaged in architectural education in Yale, Princeton and U Penn, and was invited to give speeches and articles in many countries. In terms of architectural theory, his remarks are often as obscure and puzzling as poetic language; However, it is like a poem, full of metaphorical power, which makes people have many meanings. His practice seems to interpret these poetic theories; His theory seems to put a mysterious coat on his practice. At the peak of 20 years, his works have spread all over the North American continent, South Asia and the Middle East. His disciples have become the backbone of architecture and architectural education in the United States and other countries, and his architectural thoughts have become popular among generations of architects. So people worship him as a generation of architectural poets. Louis Kahn, who was famous for a while, still holds a strict working attitude towards his works in the 1930s. He works more than 80 hours a week by himself. His employees are often forced to work more than 80 hours a week. Employees recalled that the weekend made them feel uneasy. Because, at ordinary times, Kang doesn't have much time to calm down and consider the ongoing design work, and weekends are especially precious to him. He always uses the weekend time to get into the office, catch anyone he meets and modify the design project he cares most about. In this way, the project architect may see a new sketch on his drawing board on Monday morning. He must understand it quickly and draw it quickly in case Kang asks questions from time to time. This fickle revision is simply too much for the average person. It is difficult for people to grasp Kang's thought from the two changes of the scheme. However, if a project sketch that has been revised three or five times or even seven or eight times is put together, a sincere admiration will rise in their hearts.