Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn
Spatial Configuration (Service, Public, Private)

Classical Proportion and Geometries
Light
(born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky) (February 20, 1901 March 17, 1974) was an
American architect,[1] based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After
working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own
atelier in 1935. While continuing his private practice, he served as a design critic and
professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. From
1957 until his death, he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design at the
University of Pennsylvania. Influenced by ancient ruins, Kahn's style tends to the
monumental and monolithic; his heavy buildings do not hide their weight, their
materials, or the way they are assembled. Louis Kahn's works are considered as
monumental beyond modernism. Famous for his meticulously built works, his
provocative unbuilt proposals, and his teaching, Kahn was one of the most influential
architects of the 20th century.
Louis Kahn, whose original name was Itze-Leib (Leiser-Itze) Schmuilowsky
(Schmalowski), was born into a poor Jewish family in Prnu and spent the rest of his
early childhood in Kuressaare on the Estonian island of Saaremaa, then part of the
Russian Empire. At age 3, he saw coals in the stove and was captivated by the light of
the coal. He put the coal in his apron which caught on fire and seared his face.[2] He
carried these scars for the rest of his life.[3]
In 1906, his family immigrated to the United States, fearing that his father would be
recalled into the military during the Russo-Japanese War. His actual birth year may
have been inaccurately recorded in the process of immigration. According to his son's
documentary film in 2003[4] the family could not afford pencils but made their own
charcoal sticks from burnt twigs so that Louis could earn a little money from
drawings and later by playing piano to accompany silent movies. He became a
naturalized citizen on May 15, 1914. His father changed their name in 1915.
Career
He trained in a rigorous Beaux-Arts tradition, with its emphasis on drawing, at the
University of Pennsylvania. After completing his Bachelor of Architecture in 1924,
Kahn worked as senior draftsman in the office of City Architect John Molitor. In this
capacity, he worked on the design for the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition.[5]
The Phillips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S., with
160,000 volumes on nine levels and a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes, is the
largest secondary school library in the world.[1] It is part of the Phillips Exeter
Academy, an independent boarding school.
When it became clear in the 1950s that the library had outgrown its existing building,
the school initially hired an architect who proposed a traditional design for the new
building. Deciding instead to construct a library with a contemporary design, the
school gave the commission to Louis Kahn in 1965. In 1997 the library received the
Twenty-five Year Award from the American Institute of Architects, an award that
recognizes architecture of enduring significance that is given to no more than one
building per year.
Kahn structured the library in three concentric square rings. The outer ring, which is
built of load-bearing brick, includes all four exterior walls and the library carrel
spaces immediately inside them. The middle ring, which is built of reinforced
concrete, holds the heavy book stacks. The inner ring is a dramatic atrium with
enormous circular openings in its walls that reveal several floors of book stacks.
The library has an almost cubical shape: each of its four sides is 111feet (33m) wide
and 80feet (24m) tall.[8]:309 It is constructed in three concentric areas (Kahn called
them "doughnuts").[7]:87 In the words of Robert McCarter, author of Louis I. Kahn,
"From the very beginning of the design process, Kahn conceived of the three types of
spaces as if they were three buildings constructed of different materials and of
different scales buildings-within-buildings".[8]:306 The outer area, which houses the
reading carrels, is made of brick. The middle area, which contains the heavy book
stacks, is made of reinforced concrete. The inner area is an atrium.
The library's heating and cooling needs are supplied by the nearby dining hall, which
Kahn built at the same time as the library, but which is considered to be of less
architectural significance.[5]:202
Exterior
The building committee's document specified that the new library should be
"unpretentious, though in a handsome, inviting contemporary style".[11] Kahn
accordingly made the building's exterior relatively undramatic, suitable for a small
New England town. Its facade is primarily brick with teak wood panels at most
windows marking the location of a pair of wooden carrels. The bricks are loadbearing; that is, the weight of the outer portion of the building is carried by the bricks
themselves, not by a hidden steel frame. Kahn calls this fact to the viewer's attention
by making the brick piers noticeably thicker at the bottom where they have more
weight to bear. The windows are correspondingly wider toward the top where the
piers are thinner.[8]:309 Kahn said, "The weight of the brick makes it dance like a fairy
above and groan below."[12]
The corners of the building are chamfered (cut off), allowing the viewers to see the
outer parts of the building's structure, the outer "doughnut." The Macmillan
Encyclopedia of Architects says, "Kahn sometimes perceived a building as enclosed
by 'plate-walls,' and to give emphasis to this structural form, he interrupted the plates
at the corner, leaving a gap between them. The Library at Phillips Exeter Academy in
Exeter, New Hampshire (19671972) is a classic example".[13]:540 Each of these four
brick "plate-walls," which house the library carrels, is 16 feet (4.9m) deep.[8]:308
At the top of the exterior walls is a row of openings similar to the windows below
except that these openings are above the roof and have no glass.[8]:309 Vincent Scully
said that Kahn was drawn to architecture based on "solid, almost primitive, masonry
masses with voids in them without glass."[14]:4 The bottoms of these window-like
openings are 6feet (1.8m) above the floor of an arcade that follows the perimeter of
the top of building.[8]:320
Another arcade circles the building on the ground floor. Kahn disliked the idea of a
building that was dominated by its entrance, so he concealed the main entrance to the
library behind this arcade. His original design, however, called for landscaping with a
paved forecourt that would have indicated the entrance without disrupting the
symmetry of the facade.[5]:191 Architectural historian William Jordy said, "Perverse
as the hidden entrance may seem, it emphatically reinforces Kahn's statement that his
design begins on the periphery with the circle of individual carrels, each with its
separate window."[15]
Interior
A circular double staircase built from concrete and faced with travertine greets the
visitor upon entry into the library. At the top of the stairs the visitor enters a dramatic
central hall with enormous circular openings that reveal several floors of book stacks.
At the top of the atrium, two massive concrete cross beams diffuse the light entering
from the clerestory windows.
Carter Wiseman, author of Louis Kahn: Beyond Time and Style, said, "The many
comparisons of the experience of entering Exeter's main space to that of
entering a cathedral are not accidental. Kahn clearly wanted the students to be
humbled by the sense of arrival, and he succeeded."[5]:194 David Rineheart, who
worked as an architect for Kahn, said, "for Lou, every building was a temple.
Salk was a temple for science. Dhaka was a temple for government. Exeter was a
temple for learning."[5]:180
Because the stacks are visible from the floor of the central hall, the layout of the
library is clear to the visitor at a glance, which was one of the goals the Academy's
building committee had set for Kahn.[11]
The central room is 52 feet (15.8m) high, as measured from the floor to the
beginning of the roof structure, and 32 feet (9.8m) wide. Those dimensions
approximate a ratio known as the Golden Section, which was studied by the
ancient Greeks and has been considered the ideal architectural ratio for
centuries.[8]:309
The circle and the square that are combined so dramatically in the atrium were
considered to be the paradigmatic geometric units by the ancient Roman architect
Vitruvius.[3]:129 He also noted that the human body is proportioned so that it can fit in
both shapes, a concept that was famously expressed with a combined circle and
square by Leonardo da Vinci in his drawing Vitruvian Man.
The outer part of the building, which houses the carrels, is built of load-bearing brick.
Each carrel floor spans two levels of book stacks.
The specifications of the Academy's building committee called for a large number of
carrels (the library has 210[6]) and for the carrels to be placed near windows so they
could receive natural light.[3]:390 The latter point matched Kahn's personal
inclinations perfectly because he himself strongly preferred natural light: "He is also
known to have worked by a window, refusing to switch on an electric light even on
the darkest of days."[16] Each pair of carrels has a large window above, and each
individual carrel has a small window at desk height with a sliding panel for adjusting
the light.
The placement of carrel spaces at the periphery was the product of thinking that
began years earlier when Kahn submitted proposals for a new library at Washington
University. There he dispensed with the traditional arrangement of completely
separate library spaces for books and readers, usually with book stacks on the
periphery of the library and reading rooms toward the center. Instead he felt
that reading spaces should be near the books and also to natural light.[8]:304 For
Kahn, the essence of a library was the act of taking a book from a shelf and walking a
few steps to a window for a closer look: "A man with a book goes to the light. A
library begins that way. He will not go fifty feet away to an electric light."[9]:76 Each
carrel area is associated with two levels of book stacks, with the upper level
structured as a mezzanine that overlooks the carrels. The book stacks also look out
into the atrium.
The inherent massiveness of the brick "plate-wall" structure of the outer part of the
library helps to create the cloistered atmosphere that Kahn felt was appropriate for
library carrels.[8]:305 While explaining his proposal for the library at Washington
University, Kahn had used the example of the cloistered carrels at the monastic
library at Dunham, England, to explain his "desire to find a space construction system
in which the carrels were inherent in the support which harbored them ... Wallbearing masonry construction with its niches and vaults has the appealing structural
order to provide naturally such spaces."[9]:69,70
Architectural interpretations
Massive cross beams that diffuse the light at the top of the atrium
Architectural experts sometimes differ in their interpretations of Kahn's design. Why,
for example, are the cross beams at the clerestory windows above the atrium so
massive? Carter Wiseman says, "While they appear to beand indeed are
structural, they are far deeper than necessary; their no-less-important role was to
diffuse the sunlight coming in from the surrounding clerestory windows and reflect it
down into the atrium."[5]:198 Sarah Goldhagen thinks there is more to the story,
asserting that "the concrete X-shaped cross below the skylit ceiling at the Exeter
Library is grossly exaggerated for dramatic effect."[17] Kathleen James-Chakraborty
goes even further: "Above, in the most sublime gesture of all, floats a concrete cross
brace, illuminated by clerestory windows. Its weight, which appears ready to come
crashing down upon the onlooker, revives the sense of threat dissipated elsewhere by
the reassuring familiarity of the brick skin and wood details."[7]:87 Kahn similarly
floated a massive concrete structure above the sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church
of Rochester, which he designed a few years earlier.
Another issue is the extent to which Kahn deliberately introduced elements into some
of his buildings that give them the ageless atmosphere of ruins. Kahn himself spoke
of "wrapping ruins around buildings", although in the context of another project.[14]:
10 In his essay "Louis I. Kahn and the Ruins of Rome," Vincent Scully argues that
Kahn followed this practice in several of his buildings, including this library, saying,
"And in his library at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Kahn won't even
let it become a building; he wants it to remain a ruin. The walls don't connect at the
top. They remain like a hollow shell".[14]:12 Romaldo Giurgola, on the other hand,
avoids this interpretation in the entry he wrote for Louis Kahn in the Macmillan
Encyclopedia of Architects. In it, while discussing the arrangement of exterior
components of Kahn's National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, Giurgola wrote,
"This relationship with daylight was the determining element behind this solution,
rather than the formal desire to 'create ruins,' as some critics have suggested." In the
very next paragraph Guirgola describes the chamfered corners of the library at
Phillips Exeter by saying only that Kahn used this device to show that the
structural importance of the corner is greatly reduced in buildings like the
Exeter library that are constructed with reinforced concrete and other modern
materials.
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, hosts a small but excellent art
collection as well as traveling art exhibitions, educational programs and an extensive
research library. Its initial artwork came from the private collection of Kay and Velma
Kimbell, who also provided funds for a new building to house it.
The building was designed by architect Louis I. Kahn and is widely recognized as
one of the most significant works of architecture of recent times. It is especially noted
for the wash of silvery natural light across its vaulted gallery ceilings.
Architecture
The museum is composed of 16 parallel vaults that are each 100 feet (30.6 m) long,
20 feet (6 m) high and 20 feet (6 m) wide (internal measurements).[13]:398
Intervening low channels separate the vaults. The vaults are grouped into three wings.
The north and south wings each have six vaults, with the western one open as a
portico. The central space has four vaults, with the western one open as an entry
porch facing a courtyard partially enclosed by the two outside wings. The aerial view
of the Kimbell Art Museum on Google Maps makes the museum's layout clear.[14]
With one exception, the art galleries are located on the upper floor of the museum to
allow access to natural light. Service and curatorial spaces as well as an additional
gallery occupy the ground floor.[5]:342 Each interior vault has a slot along its apex to
allow natural light into the galleries. Air ducts and other mechanical services are
located in the flat channels between the vaults.[5]:347
Kahn used several techniques to give the galleries an inviting atmosphere. The ends
of the vaults, which are made of concrete block, are faced with travertine inside and
out.[5]:348 The steel handrails were "blasted" with ground pecan shells to create a
matte surface texture.[5]:350 The museum has three glass-walled courtyards that bring
natural light to the gallery spaces. One of them penetrates the gallery floor to bring
natural light to the conservation studio on the ground floor.[4]:219
Vaults
Kahn's first design for the galleries called for angular vaults of folded concrete plates
with light slots at the top. Brown liked the light slots but rejected this particular
design because it had the ceilings 30 feet (9 m) high, too high for the museum he
envisioned. Further research by Marshall Meyers, Kahn's project architect for the
Kimbell museum, revealed that using a cycloid curve for the gallery vaults would
reduce the ceiling height and provide other benefits as well. The relatively flat cycloid
curve would produce elegant galleries that were wide in proportion to their height,
allowing the ceiling to be lowered to 20 feet (6 m).[4]:214-216 More importantly, that
curve could also be used to produce a beautiful distribution of natural light from a
slot in the top of the gallery across the entire gallery ceiling.[16]
Kahn was pleased with this development because it allowed him to design the
museum with galleries that resembled the ancient Roman vaults he had always
admired. The thin, curved shells needed for the roof were challenging to build,
however, so Kahn called in a leading authority on concrete construction, August
Komendant, with whom he had worked before (and who, like Kahn, was born in
Estonia[4]:96). Kahn generally referred to the museum's roof form as a vault, but
Komendant explained that it was actually a shell playing the role of a beam.[4]:216
More precisely, as professor Steven Fleming points out, the shells that form the
gallery roofs are "post-tensioned curved concrete beams, spanning an incredible 100
feet" (30.5 m), which "happened to have been the maximum distance that concrete
walls or vaults could be produced without requiring expansion control joints."[17]
Both terms, vault and shell, are used in professional literature describing the museum.
One of the porticos at the front of the museum. This shell, like all the others, is
supported only at its four corners, minimizing obstruction at floor level.
True vaults, such as the Roman vaults that Kahn admired, will collapse if not
supported along the entire lengths of each side. Not fully understanding the
capabilities of modern concrete shells, Kahn initially planned to include many more
support columns than were necessary for the gallery roofs.[12]:185 Komendant was
able to use post-tensioned concrete that was only five inches thick to create gallery
"vaults" that need support columns only at their four corners.[12]:194
The Geren firm, which had been asked to look for ways to keep costs low, objected
that the cycloid vaults would be too expensive and urged a flat roof instead. Kahn,
however, insisted on a vaulted roof, which would enable him to create galleries with a
comforting, room-like atmosphere yet with minimal need for columns or other
internal structures that would reduce the museum's flexibility. Eventually a deal was
struck whereby Geren would be responsible for the foundation and basement while
Komendant would be responsible for the upper floors and cycloid shells.[4]:218 Kahn
placed one of these shells at the front of each of the three wings as a porch or portico
to illustrate how the building was constructed. The effect was, in his words, "like a
piece of sculpture outside the building."[12]:204
Thos. S. Byrne, Ltd. was the contractor for the project, with A. T. Seymour as project
manager. Virgil Earp and L. G. Shaw, Byrne's project superintendents, designed
forms with a cycloid shape that were made from hinged plywood and lined with an
oily coating so they could be reused to pour concrete for multiple sections of the
vaults, helping to ensure consistency.[12]:204-206 The long, straight channels at the
bottoms of the shells were cast first so they could be used as platforms to support the
workmen pouring concrete for the cycloid curves. After all the concrete had been
poured and strengthened with internal post-tensioning cables, however, the curved
parts of the shells carried the weight of their lower straight edges instead of the other
way around.[16]
To prevent the shells from collapsing at the long light slots at their apexes, concrete
struts were inserted at 10-foot (3 m) intervals. A relatively thick concrete arch was
added to each end of the shells to stiffen them further. To make it clear that the curved
shells are supported only at their four corners and not by the walls at the ends of the
vaults, thin arcs of transparent material were inserted between the curve of the shells
and the end walls. Because the stiffening arches of the shells are thicker at the top,
the transparent strips are tapered, thinner at the top than at the bottom. In addition, a
linear transparent strip was placed between the straight bottoms of the shells and the
long exterior walls to show that the shells aren't supported by those walls either. In
addition to revealing the building's structure, these features bring additional natural
light into the galleries in a way that is safe for the paintings.[4]:217
The vault roofs, which are visible to approaching visitors, were covered with
lead sheathing inspired by the lead covering of the complexly curved roofs of the
Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy.[5]:353
Skylights
Reflectors spread sunlight across the gallery ceilings. Kahn showed that the curved
ceiling shells are supported only at their corners by allowing a thin strip of outside
light to enter along the tops of the long gallery walls and a thicker arc of light to enter
at the end of each gallery.
David Brownlee and David DeLong, authors of Louis I. Kahn: In The Realm of
Architecture, declare that "in Fort Worth, Kahn created a skylight system without peer
in the history of architecture."[13]:132 Robert McCarter, author of Louis I. Kahn, says
the entry gallery is "one of the most beautiful spaces ever built," with its "astonishing,
ethereal, silver-colored light."[5]:355 Carter Wiseman, author of Louis I. Kahn:
Beyond Time and Style, said that "the light in the Kimbell gallery assumed an almost
ethereal quality, and has been the distinguishing factor in its fame ever since."[4]:222
Creating a natural lighting system that has evoked such acclaim was challenging, and
Kahn's office and the lighting designer Richard Kelly investigated over 100
approaches in their search for the proper skylight system. The goal was to illuminate
the galleries with indirect natural light while excluding all direct sunlight, which
would damage the artwork.[12]:184 Richard Kelly, lighting consultant, determined that
a reflecting screen made of perforated anodized aluminum with a specific curve could
be used to distribute natural light evenly across the cycloid curve of the ceiling. He
hired a computer expert to determine the exact shape of the reflector's curve, making
it one of the first architectural elements ever to be designed with computer
technology.[4]:221[12]:209
In areas without art, such as the lobby, cafeteria and library, the entire reflector is
perforated, making it possible for people standing beneath to glimpse passing clouds.
In the gallery spaces, the central part of the reflector, which is directly beneath
the sun, is solid, while the remainder is perforated.[5]:353 The concrete surfaces
of the ceiling were given a high finish to further assist the reflection of the light.
[4]:221 The end result is that the strong Texas sun enters a narrow slot at the top
of each vault and is evenly reflected from a curved screen across the entire arc of
the polished concrete ceiling, ensuring a beautiful distribution of natural light
that had never before been achieved.
Thomas Bosworth
For clients privileged enough to own a few acres on coastlines or prairies in the state
of Washington, the go-to architect for low-key, woodsy non-McMansions is Thomas
L. Bosworth. At age 77, he runs a 40-year-old Seattle practice (since 2004 it has been
a partnership with architect Steve Hoedemaker). Although really more of a giant
promotional brochure, Building with Light in the Pacific Northwest: The Houses of
Thomas L. Bosworth, Architect, explains how the Pacific Northwest designer has
resisted the Microsoft-era temptations to overwhelm landscapes.
Bosworth has also resisted temptations to be a committed Modernist the career
track he set upon in the late 1950s as a star student at Yale's architecture school. An
Ohio native of Puritan ancestry, Bosworth came under the Yale spell of Paul Rudolph,
Gordon Bunshaft and Louis Kahn. After graduation in 1960, Bosworth took a job
with Eero Saarinen and helped design the TWA Terminal at New York City's JFK
Airport. In 1968, he moved to Seattle to head the architecture department at the
University of Washington while designing a timber-columned, wood-clad campus for
Pilchuck Glass School. Once settled in Washington, Bosworth seems to have never
again put up a curtain wall where shingles or clapboard would do. He credits this
permanent shift toward traditionalism partly to his father and grandfather, who had
been professors and Classical scholars at Oberlin College in Ohio. As architectural
theorist Max Jacobson (a co-author of Christopher Alexander's 1977 A Pattern
Language) points out in this volume's introduction, Bosworth had grown up in an
1855 Greek Revival in Oberlin while "spending happy hours alone" in his family's
"library-storehouse of ancient art, architecture, and texts."
In the 1970s and '80s, along with East Coast Postmodernist counterparts like Robert
Venturi and Robert A.M. Stern, Bosworth helped reintroduce gables, porches and
bays to avant-garde patrons of country houses. Unlike Venturi and Stern, whose
styles have kept evolving (and, arguably, sometimes veered into blandness or kitsch),
Bosworth has kept his palette extraordinarily narrow.
Since the 1990s, he has designed almost nothing but houses more than 60 so far. All
but a handful are in Washington. They are typically gabled with incomplete cornice
returns, dormered, fronted-in porches with capital-less square piers, and bilaterally
symmetrical along spines or crisscrossing axes. (The book is plentifully stocked with
site and floor plans, elevations and sections.) Windows generally reach the floors and
supplementing that flood of natural light are clerestories, transoms, skylights and
monitors. Bosworth's commissions range greatly in scale, from cottages to
compounds. His subtle variations on recurring themes make this book a page-turner.
He sometimes stretches porch steps the width of the house, and lets the stair edges
trail off into the beach grass. He points room axes toward water views, of course, or
more surprisingly toward hip-roofed folly outbuildings/guesthouses shaped like silos
or lighthouses. To stimulate quick patinas on his structures, he applies weathering
stain over cedar siding, and he's been known to leave gaps between concrete paving
slabs so that weeds can root. Clients have returned to his office again and again for
additions, but even at multi-structure estates, Bosworth keeps interiors cozy. His
cedar-lined or whitewashed rooms resemble thrifty ship cabins; he tucks bookcases
under loft beds, transoms over closet doors and window seats beside fireplaces. His
architecture, as Jacobson writes, is "free of any trace of fussiness, coyness, or the
overweening presence of an egocentric personality."
Bosworth's own summations of his work, however, are less straightforward and
illuminating than Jacobson's. Bosworth sounds a little like a cryptic Zen master:
"Architectural design involves a creative tension between the metaphoric and the
literal, between image and reality." In the volume's detailed descriptions of 17 houses,
filling up to two-dozen pages apiece, Rosenfeld herself tends toward fuzziness. "His
houses emerge from and fulfill his understanding of what architecture is and what it is
for," she writes, and reports that one Puget Sound cottage's axis "serves as a metaphor
for the mediating and translating role of design and human habitation."
Sea Ranch
Sea Ranch is noted for its distinctive architecture, which consists of simple timberframe structures clad in wooden siding or shingles. The building typology of the Sea
Ranch draws on the local agricultural buildings for inspiration, in the way that those
buildings are designed to deal with prevailing weather and topography. Originally, the
Sea Ranch had local lumber mills to draw on for the Douglas Fir and Redwood used
in the homes. The majority of the 1800 or so homes currently finished are smaller
second homes, though there is also a small contingent of about 300 full-time
residents. Approximately half the homes are rented as weekend rentals. The eventual
build out will consist approximately 2400 homes- the number varies as some current
owners purchase adjacent vacant lots and merge the two, to preserve open space. The
buildings could be considered as a hybrid of modern and vernacular architecture, also
known as the "Third Bay Tradition" also referred to as "Sea Ranch" style.
The original design guidelines suggest that buildings have a site specific relationship
with the landscape, although this is more difficult as the development approaches
build out, and a lot of the newer homes are actually in-fill between already developed
lots. Sea Ranch specific design review requirements include various design
guidelines so that the buildings become part of the landscape, not subordinate to it,
but do not dominate either. Details such as exteriors of unpainted wood or muted
stains, a lack of overhanging eaves, and baffles on exterior lighting subdue the
appearance of the buildings in the landscape. Lighting is also baffled to minimize
nighttime "light pollution"; there are no street lights, and the night sky is dazzling.
The lack of roof overhangs is also intended to allow the near-constant strong breezes
to pass over the buildings without the turbulence the overhangs would create. The
Sea Ranch design review process has no impact on the interiors of the buildings, but
all construction is subject to Sonoma County Permit and Resource Management
oversight.
Landscaping in The Sea Ranch is regulated by a design manual which prohibits
perimeter fences and limits non-indigenous plants to screened courtyards.[9] A herd
of sheep is used to keep grass cut low to the ground to reduce the threat of fire during
the summer months.
Architecture in
English II
Lecture 12: Modern Vernacular
Fall 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Vernacular Architecture is:
Based on Local Building Traditions

Local Materials
A Built Response to the Environment
and Light
Uses Available Technology
Exeter Library
Kimball Art Museum
Pilchuck School
Sea Ranch
Vernacular Building
Vernacular Building
Vernacular Building
Vernacular Building
Vernacular Building
Vernacular Building
Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Date: 1967 -72 Architect: Louis Kahn










Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas











Salk Institute - La Jolla, California

Date: 1967 Architect: Louis Kahn





National Assembly Building - Dhaka, Bangladesh



Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Date: 1973 - 77 Architect: Thomas Bosworth









Private Residence - Bainbridge Island, Washington

Date: 1987 Architect: Thomas Bosworth


Sea Ranch - Sonoma Country, California

Date: 1963 ~ Architect: Charles Moore, William Turnbull, Joesph Escherick








Burton Barr Central Library - Phoenix, Arizona

Date: 1995 Architect: Will Bruder




Garfield Community Center - Seattle, Washington

Date: 1995 Architect: Miller + Hull Architects


1310 E. Union Live/Work Lofts - Seattle, Washington



Office Building - Monterrey, Mexico

Date: 1993 - 95 Architect: Legorreta Arquitectos




Louis Kahn

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Louis Kahn

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Louis Kahn

Spatial Configuration (Service, Public, Private)

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Vernacular Architecture is:

Based on Local Building Traditions

Uses Available Technology

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Exeter, New Hampshire

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Kimball Art Museum - Fort Worth, Texas

Salk Institute - La Jolla, California

Salk Institute - La Jolla, California

Salk Institute - La Jolla, California

Salk Institute - La Jolla, California

Salk Institute - La Jolla, California

Salk Institute - La Jolla, California

National Assembly Building - Dhaka, Bangladesh

National Assembly Building - Dhaka, Bangladesh

National Assembly Building - Dhaka, Bangladesh

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Pilchuck School - Stanwood, Washington

Private Residence - Bainbridge Island, Washington

Private Residence - Bainbridge Island, Washington

Private Residence - Bainbridge Island, Washington

Sea Ranch - Sonoma Country, California

Sea Ranch - Sonoma Country, California

Sea Ranch - Sonoma Country, California

Sea Ranch - Sonoma Country, California

Sea Ranch - Sonoma Country, California