Kahn Tour: Illumination. J. Tobias

Despite his pronouncements on "silence and light," in his 1931 sketching article Kahn is surprisingly silent about light.

The works we visited, however, speak volumes. Compare, for example, a modest early building and two major, later works: the Trenton Bath House (1954-1959), Yale University Art Gallery (1951-1953), and the Yale Center for British Art (1974-1977).

The bath house was designed for summer use, and the strong, high light of July emphasizes the structure's mini-monumentality. Here one can imagine the legendary light of Greece, recalled by the bath house's cruciform plan, open promenade, and central fountain (now lost).

It should be noted here that Anne Tyng played a significant and under-appreciated role in the bath house design, contributing among other things geometry and the elegant corner entries to each changing room, all of which underpin the light effects. An associate recalls that "...Kahn was having trouble with the design [and] Tyng was heard calling...that she 'had something." Kahn walked over and...'immediately saw that Anne's design was it." (See Carter Weisman. Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style, p. 93.)

Entering the changing room at Trenton, Tyng's corner entries transition beautifully to the shade and cool of the changing area (while eliminating need for doors and their maintenance). Yet the skylight brings in a soft light (eliminating the need for fixtures, too). In contrast, sharp slivers of light pierce the rough concrete walls, stabbing through the gap between walls and floating roof.

How different from Kahn's museums at Yale, especially the diffuse glow in the galleries of the Yale Center for British Art. Natural lighting was a shared goal with the clients. In fact, it was a requirement for the painting galleries. The desire for a domestic scale was also a factor (presumably the corresponding light effects were desired as well). In the preliminary phase of the design, Kahn visited homes of patron and collector Paul Mellon, as well as the Phillips Collection, a house-museum in Washington, DC. The YCBA glow is the product of the large-span skylights and their deep pyramidal wells. The 20-foot spans help to break the spaces up into room-sized galleries, but moveable, floating partitions and louvered windows keep the feeling open and of course, light. The skylights illuminate the top galleries and atrium. In turn, atrium overlooks allow light to enter galleries on lower floors. White oak panels and smooth concrete complete the effect.

In this rendering I tried to capture the glow and minimal shadows. Watercolor is an excellent medium for exploring light effects, for its luminous quality comes from the paper's reflectiveness. Watercolor filters this light like stained glass, unlike opaque media.

Kahn's sketching article features mostly pastels and charcoals (all reproductions are in black and white, unfortunately). His European pastels express the feel of light on rough materials, and they seem a particularly appropriate choice for eroded stone and sandy landscape. (An aside: these sketches are striking for areas of vibrant color. Less well known is that in later life, cataracts affected his color vision. After treatment, Kahn declared, "I haven't seen colors in years!" (Weisman, p. 86)).

The raw concrete of the Yale Art Gallery evokes the feeling of ancient stone, but without the bright light of their sites. The somber feeling is much different from the YCBA. At the Gallery the low, heavy concrete ceiling grid (innovative though not structural) and peripheral windows strongly absorb light. Here material spends light, leaving little for art. (Apparently there was enough light to spend some of the art materials, however--several works have been damaged over the years). The one exception is the well-known barrel stairwell, with its side-lit skylight. Here the light is diffused by glass block and curving walls. The light penetrates down several floors, giving a sense of ascent and descent.

As a student of museum history, i wonder if Kahn knew of historical precedents in natural lighting for museum galleries. Certainly he experienced the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Frank Furness, 1876). Did he visit Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, the glass-domed remainder of the Centennial Exhibition (H.J. Schwarzmann, 1876)?

One wonders in particular if he was aware of John Soane's inventive use of indirect light, in his wonderful house-museum (1792-1824) or at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (1814), known as the first purpose-built art gallery. Probably not. His influences tended to be ancient and his guidance internal. According to several sources Kahn said, "I am an interesting kind of scholar because I don't read and I don't write."

One imagines that Kahn would have appreciated Soane. Both architects were intuitive and idiosyncratic. Both sought the sublime. Both appreciated but transcended ancient precedents. Both were influential teachers. And they both developed unprecedented techniques for indirect natural illumination.

Someday I hope to visit the Kimbell (1966-1972), known as Kahn's greatest achievement with light. What is the combined effect of Texas sun, barrel vaulting, and Kahn's ingenious skylights? How does this change our perception of the works on view? And can I sketch in the galleries?

On this note I end these posts on "The Value and Aim of Sketching." I hope they've conveyed some of the value of the SAH Kahn Tour.

Image (top): Jennifer Tobias. Trenton Bath House.

Image (second from top): Jennifer Tobias. Yale Center for British Art.

Image (third from top): Jennifer Tobias. Yale University Art Gallery.

Image (fourth from top): Memorial Hall, 1875 (H. J. Schwartzman, 1876).
Image (bottom): Dulwich Picture Gallery (John Soane, 1814).

See Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21.

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Kahn Tour: Rowhouses and Estates. J. Tobias

...not only pompous estates but the monotonous repetitions of the row house, should arrest our attention.

Kahn grew up in such Philadelphia row houses, moving seventeen times in two years (usually due to trouble paying rent). Kahn's moving personal story is well known, but class-oriented analysis of his oeuvre arrests little attention from the scholarly community. Perhaps this is because many of us (self included) speak from its upper end.

Kahn may not have built "pompous estates," but private houses are a significant part of his legacy. (His work in south Asia also involves social stratification, but on a scale I'm ill-qualified to address.)

In these terms, one sees striking differences between an early public project and several private homes we visited. The former is a product of the Depression era, when public housing was one of few opportunities for first wave modernists to test their ideas on a large scale. Many of Kahn's later, private houses reflect post-war prosperity and the luxuries it afforded.

In the public realm, Kahn assisted Alfred Kastner with the Jersey Homesteads in Roosevelt, New Jersey (1935-1936) and his Architectural Research Group proposed a garden city development to replace a South Philadelphia slum (1933), one perhaps not so different from the Northern Liberties of his childhood.

Public projects were ideal testing grounds for "machine housing," ostensibly efficient, low-cost, construction based on industrial principles. Machine housing, however, is different from a machine aesthetic, its much-criticized assimilation into upper-class lifestyles.

Both housing types are a function of class. From this perspective, one can analyze how modernist precepts are applied differently for different social strata. While Kahn is considered primarily an expressionist, his expressions draw upon the "deep structure" of the modernist language. Analyzing the relative application of machine production and machine aesthetic is one way to see this in play. In spareness, for example.

All Kahns works lack ornamentation, of course. But where is this driven by efficiency and where by aesthetics? In the Homesteads, spareness reflected the goal of making homes affordable for textile workers. They could choose between twelve models, but those models were chosen for them.

On the other hand, the spareness of the Margaret Esherick House (1959-1961), especially its interior, evokes the rigorous spareness of traditional Japanese architecture. Esherick could choose any form (and architect, for that matter). She chose and underwrote the craftsmanship required for Kahn's design.

Another manifestation is scale and its expression in program (functional spaces and their spatial arrangement). Quite simply, the Homesteads are small and private houses large. As a result, program was scaled accordingly. In one of the Homesteads we visited, the entry, living room and dining room are "open plan," the modernist way of saying "no walls."

On the one hand, Modern materials enabled larger spans and the elimination of interior bearing walls, so the open plan offered light, air, and flexibility unknown in traditional construction. But in the Homesteads, this meant an entryway separated from the living room by only a change in flooring material. In Kahn's private houses, including Esherick's, entries take many elegant forms sensitive to transition from exterior to interior.

In his 1931 article on sketching, Kahn states that

The simplest form, be it but a moulding, is only part of a creative process. It is the interwoven relation of that moulding to the rest of the creation which makes it significant.

In modernist terms, each element of a work is correctly considered in relation to the material and metaphysics of "the rest of the creation," or in Kahn terms, to its "will." As a whole, his works certainly reflect these notions. What the child of North Philly row houses could not have seen then, and perhaps never saw, is that the expression of will (both spirit and clients') is partially determined by socioeconomic factors.

Image (top): Alonzo D. Biggard. Frankford Elevated, Site of Bent 68, West Side of Front Street [Department of City Transit-1598-0], (1915). This and other excellent historic photos of Philadelphia are found at PhillyHistory.org.

Image: (second from top): Jennifer Tobias. Esherick House (1959-1961).

Image (middle): Arthur Rothstein. New Jersey homesteader in her living room. Hightstown, New Jersey. (1936).
Image (bottom): Russell Lee. Nathan Katz's apartment, East 168th Street, Bronx, New York. Mr. Nathan Katz is an accepted applicant to Jersey Homesteads (1936).

Quotes from Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21.

Kahn Tour: Scumbling the Small Stuff. J. Tobias

To make a sketch...requires...the making of many impressions and notes 'on the job.' You must then get away from it all to work over and crystallize your thoughts in order to develop the picture in the form of a readable design.

On a study tour, time really is of the essence. The pace forces one to both slow down (observe) yet speed up (get impressions). Here are two takes on Kahn's Jesse Oser House (1940-1942). The first is "on the job" (With tour manager Kathy Sturm in the foreground, keeping us on schedule). The second follows "get[ting]away from it all" and developing the drawing into a "readable design."

There is no value in trying to imitate exactly...We should not imitate when our intention is to create--to improvise...I have learned to regard it as no physical impossibility to move mountains and trees, or change cupolas and towers to suit my tastes. 

In this spirit I can exaggerate perspective, manipulate shadows, and literally furnish the mise en scene. Scholarship requires getting the facts exactly right. Drawing requires no footnotes. But Kahn knew that interpretive drawing must, in the end, respect the subject:

I try in my sketching not to be entirely subservient to my subject, but I have respect for it...

Any study tour shifts, like a drawing, between the "big picture" and telling details. It would have been a pleasure to linger on the idiosyncratic details of the Furness library at Penn--its crockets, wedge mouldings, and patterned brickwork. But the situation called for the big picture, with the rest improvised later, if the drawing "wanted" it. Furness invented a formal grammar all his own, so can't I riff on it a bit?

I try to evolve a composition, and make every sketch count for as much value to me as may be gotten out of a design problem.

Site visits are an excellent way to study details. Archtiecture may start with a room, as Kahn would say, but it ends with building codes, HVAC, and electrical outlets. Consider the air vent detailing in the cupola of Temple Beth El (1966-1972). Two practicing architects in the tour group were disappointed by the execution: surely Kahn wasn't responsible! Based on their observations, I indicated the vents but downplayed them. Or should they be drawn as they appear?

Images (top): Jennifer Tobias. Jesse Oser House (1940-1942)

Image (middle): Jennifer Tobias. Frank Furness. Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania (1888-1891).

Image (bottom): Jennifer Tobias. Temple Beth El (1966-1972).

All images .

Quotes from Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21.

Kahn Tour: Time and Materials. J. Tobias

As is well known, Kahn suffered facial burns as an infant, transfixed by the glowing embers of a coal fire. According to family accounts, the three-year-old scooped embers into his apron and they burst into flames.

In his oracular style, Kahn said that "material is spent light." I think of the glowing coals as the reverse: light is spent material. Or rather, the glow is the material in the process of being spent. The word "transfix" incorporates this moment of transformation: trans (motion) plus fix (stasis).

Did I learn that as a child, Kahn used this coal for drawing, for lack of other material? (Paging a volunteer fact checker--I think it's in My Architect). His use of soft charcoal (and carpenter pencil) is also well known. With this ever mutable powder, he could explore an idea and wipe it away in an instant, or push it around with his fingers like a sculptor with clay. See, for example, his perspective of the unbuilt Mikveh Israel Synagogue (1961).

Perhaps it's no accident that Rodin is a recurring theme in Kahn's biography and article. He writes, "The drawings this great sculptor made took form with his eye on the final results in stone."

In situ drawing, on the other hand, deals with the final results, the (literally) concrete. Here materials spend light on actual mass and volume. The hard lines and colored washes of my tour sketches try to reflect this.

During the tour someone quoted...someone...who said that Kahn worked on a project until he got fired. In this spirit, his drawings are not so much unfinished as transfixed.

Image: Jennifer Tobias. Trenton Bath House (1954-1959).

Rodin quote from Louis Kahn. "The Value and Aim in Sketching." T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May 1931, 18-21.

Kahn Tour: "The Value and Aim in Sketching." J. Tobias

In 1931 the young Louis Kahn published his thoughts on "The Value and Aim in Sketching." (T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia. May, 1931. p. 18-21.) Sketching my way through the SAH Louis Kahn tour presented an opportunity to reflect upon these Values and Aims.

In his article Kahn states, "The capacity to see comes from persistently analysing our reactions to what we look at..." My entries here analyze some of my reactions in words and images. The process has helped me to "see" Kahn better. Perhaps blog readers will see something new in Kahn, too, or have reactions of their own.

Image: Jennifer Tobias. Center City, Philadelphia. near Kahn's office. PSFS Building in background. August 2008.