For everyone interested in the enduring appeal of Louis Kahn, this book demonstrates that a close look at how Kahn put his buildings together will reveal a deeply felt philosophy.

Louis I. Kahn is one of the most influential and poetic architects of the twentieth century, a figure whose appeal extends beyond the realm of specialists. In this book, noted Kahn expert John Lobell explores how Kahn's focus on structure, respect for materials, clarity of program, and reverence for details come together to manifest an overall philosophy. Kahn's work clearly conveys a kind of "transcendent rootedness" -- a rootedness in the fundamentals of architecture that also asks soaring questions about our experience of light and space, and even how we fit into the world. In Louis Kahn: The Philosophy of Architecture, John Lobell seeks to reveal how Kahn's buildings speak to grand humanistic concerns.

Through examinations of five of Kahn's great buildings -- the Richards Medical Research Building in Philadelphia; the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla; the Phillips Exeter Academy Library in New Hampshire; the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth; and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven -- Lobell presents a clear but detailed look at how the way these buildings are put together presents Kahn's philosophy, including how Kahn wishes us to experience them. An architecture book that touches on topics that addresses the universal human interests of consciousness and creativity, Louis Kahn: The Philosophy of Architecture helps us understand our place and the nature of well-being in the built environment.

About the Author:

John Lobell is a researcher, instructor, and lecturer on the subjects of architecture, creativity, and consciousness. A professor of architecture at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, since 1980, he has lectured widely and is the author of numerous articles. He has studied and worked with major creative and cultural figures of the twentieth century, including mythologist Joseph Campbell; architects Louis Kahn and Robert Venturi; Buddhist masters Chogyam Trungpa, Robert Thurman, and the Dalai Lama; and Tai Chi master Cheng Man-Ch'ing.
His previous books include Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn (Shambhala, 1979/2008), which has sold 25,000 copies across two editions, Joseph Campbell: The Man and His Ideas (1993), and Visionary Creativity (2015).

Brilliant Buildings. Louis Isadore Kahn and a luminous modernist language

Louis Isadore Kahn (1901–1974) treated each building like a temple. Across the United States, in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Israel, his designs combined the sleek, utilitarian surfaces of modernism with a devotion to geometric forms and a reverence for natural light that suffused his structures with a monumental and breathtaking spirituality.

This essential introduction brings together 17 of Kahn’s most important buildings across his cultural, governmental, religious, and residential repertoire. Plans, views, descriptions, and quality photographs trace the context and development of each project, while an introductory essay explores Kahn’s unique architectural ideology and his legacy as one of the most important 20th-century American architects since Frank Lloyd Wright.

Through Kahn masterworks, such as the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, or Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, we’ll explore Kahn’s his “back to basics” grammar inspired by ancient sites in Italy, Greece, and Egypt; and his unique vocabulary of mass, void, and light that suffused the International Style with a near-celestial luminescence.

The author:

Joseph Rosa is the Director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art. He is author of numerous publications and has taught at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), the California College of the Arts, The College of Environmental Design at the University of California in Berkeley, and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University.

The editor:

Peter Gössel runs an agency for museum and exhibition design. He has published TASCHEN monographs on Julius Shulman, R. M. Schindler, John Lautner, and Richard Neutra, as well as several titles in the Basic Architecture series.

About the series:

Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. 

Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Architecture series features:

- an introduction to the life and work of the architect
- the major works in chronological order
- information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions
- a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings
- approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts, and plans)

Though Louis Isidore Kahn (1901–1974) started his career late in his life, the few projects he was able to undertake were realized to perfection. With the Jonas Salk Institute in La Jolla, California (1959–1965) Kahn created a workspace with superb functional and aesthetic qualities; the institute`s Minimalist elements radiate a sense of eternal beauty. The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth (1966–1972) occupies the somewhat faceless city like an island of spiritual space, an effect that is achieved by simplicity in design and materials. Also, the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (1962–1974) and the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, National Assembly of Bangladesh in Dhaka that was finished after his death are buildings of monumental importance, demonstrating the vision of a talented and very unusual man. 

This book brings together 17 Kahn projects, ranging from private housing to commercial architecture, religious buildings, exhibition spaces, and government buildings.

About the Series:

Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Architecture Series features:

- approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans
- introductory essays exploring the architect's life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects
- the most important works presented in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes as well as construction problems and resolutions
-an appendix including a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography, and a map indicating the locations of the architect's most famous buildings

Born in Estonia in 1901, Louis Isidore Kahn was to become one of the United States’ most important architects of the post-war period, alongside the Modern masters Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier.

Although renowned for a number of seminal modern works, he came to question many of the precepts of the Modern Movement. In particular, he questioned the ability of the International Style of Modernism to house the social spaces required by the latter half of the century.

In 1947 Kahn was appointed Professor at Yale University. He was to continue teaching throughout his architectural career, influencing a younger generation of architects along the way. His teaching enabled him to further develop his own concepts and to inform his ever-evolving definition of design. He was drawn to investigate monumentality in architecture, creating buildings out of heavy, solid materials and forms and incorporating vivid plays of light, in complete contrast to the lightweight glass and steel structures being created elsewhere by his peers. This monumentality was also imbued with his concern for the ritual of human experience. His career, although extending to just over twenty years, was a rich and varied one, where he continually readdressed the issues of light, mass, structure, monumentality, geometry and materials.

This monograph follows a predominantly chronological order, identifying major themes and examining key works according to these themes. A comprehensive list of projects by Kahn spanning his lifetime and drawn from the Louis I Kahn Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Archives is also included, listing over 231 projects, of which at least c30 were previously unattributed.