Louis Kahn Quotes

I sense Light as the giver of all presences, and material as spent Light. What is
made by Light casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

Architecture appears for the first time when the sunlight hits a wall.
The sunlight did not know what it was before it hit a wall.

The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building.

Even a room which must be dark needs at least a crack of light to know how dark it
is.

We are born of light. The seasons are felt through light. We only know the world as
it is evoked by light.

Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities,

integration, love.

Architects in planning rooms today have forgotten their faith in natural light.
Depending on the touch of a finger to a switch, they are satisfied with static
light and forget the endlessly changing qualities of natural light, in which a room
is a different room every second of the day.

A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means
when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.

All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made
of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a
shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space

A city is the place of availabilities. It is the place where a small boy, as he

walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his
whole life.

Greek architecture taught me that the column is where the light is not, and the
space between is where the light is. It is a matter of no-light, light, no-light,
light. A column and a column brings light between them. To make a column which
grows out of the wall and which makes its own rhythm of no-light, light, no-light,
light: that is the marvel of the artist.

A room is not a room without natural light.

Also marvelous in a room is the light that comes through the windows of a room and
that belongs to the room. The sun does not realize how beautiful it is until after
a room is made. A man’s creation, the making of a room, is nothing short of a
miracle. Just think, that a man can claim a slice of the sun.

I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of

inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light
to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art.

The Sun does not realise how wonderful it is until after a room is made.