Louis I. Kahn Architectural Collection Conserved with a Save America’s Treasures Grant
The Architectural Archives
University of Pennsylvania
Year of Award: 2004
Federal Amount: $70,000
Matching Amount: $70,000
“Between about 1960 and his untimely death in 1974, [Louis Kahn] became, I think, the most important architect in the United States, whose work changed things in a fundamental way.”
Vincent Scully, “Louis I. Kahn and the Ruins of Rome”
Louis Isadore Kahn (1901-1974), architect, philosopher, teacher, and mentor, was born in Estonia. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1906, and he became a U.S. citizen in 1914. Trained at the University of Pennsylvania in the Beaux-Arts tradition, he completed his Bachelor of Architecture in 1924. From the 1920s – the 1940s, Kahn worked in the offices of or collaborated with prominent architects of the period including John Molitor and, his mentor and teacher, Paul Cret; founded the Architectural Research Group with colleague George Howe; and taught at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
It was not until the 1950s and a trip to the American Academy in Rome that Kahn began to develop his own unique approach to architecture. Kahn was a reluctant follower of the International Style, but eventually he created a blend of his early Beaux-Arts training with elements of modern architecture that resulted in large, monolithic sleek buildings of unusual combinations of materials. Although many of his projects were unrealized, the Salk Institute (1959-1965) in La Jolla, California and the National Assembly Building (1962-1983) in Dhaka, Bangladesh exemplify his philosophy about architecture.
Kahn’s large architectural records collection is located at the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. With a 2004 Save America’s Treasures grant, all 6,363 of his architectural drawings were conserved. The grant also supported the construction of a new climatized storage facility to ensure that the 41,000 collection items, including models, photographs, and office records and correspondence, would be stabilized appropriately. The collection is now accessible and available for study and research, and its resources provide researchers with insights into the mind of one of the 20th century’s most prolific and influential architects.
Renowned for his creative thinking, striking buildings, and teaching career, Kahn received many honors and awards including the highest honor awarded to an architect: the AIA Gold Medal, awarded by the American Institute of Architecture (AIA) in 1971. This award was followed in 1972 by the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Other buildings of note by Kahn include the Kimball Art Museum (1966-1972), Fort Worth, Texas, and the Phillips Exeter Academy Library (1965-1972), Exeter, New Hampshire. This building, famous for its dramatic interior space, received the AIA Twenty-five Year Award in 1997.
At the age of 73, Kahn died of a heart attack in the men’s room in Pennsylvania Station (NYC) in 1974. At the time of his death, he was working on designs and plans for a Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Park. In October 2012, 40 years after Kahn designed the park, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park opened on a 4-acre triangular plot situated on the southern end of Roosevelt Island in New York City.
Featured photo courtesy of the Louis I. Kahn Collection, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania, courtesy of the National Park Service.
