Louis Kahn

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Louis Isadore Kahn

(born Feb. 20, 1901, Osel, Estonia, Russian Empire — died March 17, 1974, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Estonian-born U.S. architect. He came to the U.S. as a child and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. One of the century's most original architects, Kahn turned from the International Style to a timeless, elegant Brutalism evocative of ancient ruins. His Richards Medical Research Building (1960 – 65) at the University of Pennsylvania isolated "servant" spaces (stairwells, elevators, vents, and pipes) in four towers distinct from "served" spaces (laboratories and offices). His fortresslike National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangl. (1962 – 74), utilized geometric shapes to admit light to its inner domed mosque. Like R. Buckminster Fuller, Kahn was concerned about wasteful use of natural resources; his urban-planning schemes proposed geodesic skyscrapers and huge car "silos." He taught at Yale University (1947 – 57) and the University of Pennsylvania (1957 – 74), where appreciation for his intellect gained him a cult status.

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(b ?sel Island, Russia [now Saaremaa Island, Estonia], 20 Feb 1901; d New York, 17 March 1974). American architect and teacher of Russian birth. He moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1905. Although they lived in poverty he received a good education at Central High School and the Public Industrial Art School. An obligatory course on architecture deflected Kahn from a career in art; from 1920 to 1924 he studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, under Paul Cret, following Beaux-Arts principles. He then worked until 1926 for the City Architect's office, acting as chief of design for the Sesquicentennial Exposition, Philadelphia (1926). In 1928-9 he travelled in Europe; although he was attentive to recognized historical works, there is little evidence of any concern with major innovations in modern architecture in those years. Returning to Philadelphia he worked in Cret's office (1929-30).

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Biography: Louis I. Kahn

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Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974) was one of the most significant and influential American architects from the 1950s until his death. His work represents a profound search for the very meaning of architecture.

Louis I. Kahn was born February 20, 1901, in Estonia on the island of Saaremaa. His face was severely burned as a child, resulting in lifelong scars. His Jewish family immigrated to America in 1905 and settled in Philadelphia, where Louis was raised in poverty. A precocious artist and musician in high school, Kahn was inspired to become an architect during an architectural history course he took his senior year. He studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (1920-1924), where the Classical tradition in architecture was taught by Paul Philippe Cret, a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. This would prove to have a significant influence on his later career.

Kahn became a renowned architect only late in his life, after a long period of maturation. After graduating in 1924 he worked for a number of architects, including his former teacher Cret. The Classically-trained Kahn began to develop an appreciation for the emerging architecture of the International Style through his contacts with such Philadelphia architects as Oscar Stonorov and George Howe, both of whom Kahn was associated with in private practice during the 1940s. He especially respected the architecture and writings of the modern master Le Corbusier. Like Le Corbusier, Kahn was drawn to the ancient architecture of the Mediterranean. He made his first trip to Europe in 1928-1929, and in 1950-1951 was a resident at the American Academy in Rome. The timeless, monumental grandeur of ancient Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern ruins was often suggested in his later buildings.

Kahn's rise to prominence began in 1948-1957 when he was a professor at Yale University. In 1957 he returned to the University of Pennsylvania and taught there until his death. Kahn was a highly respected and influential teacher. His exploratory, questioning attitudes probed in a poetic manner the inner meaning of architecture. For Kahn, the designing of buildings went well beyond just fulfilling utilitarian needs. He searched for "beginnings" and wanted to discover what a particular building "wants to be." In creating a building Kahn first sought to understand its "Form," or inner essence, which he considered to be "unmeasurable." Once the "Form" was conceived, it was then subjected to the realities of the "measurable" through "Design." In a successful final product, Kahn believed, the original "Form" can still be strongly felt.

Kahn was entering his fifties when he built his first major design, the Yale University Art Gallery (1951-1953) in New Haven, Connecticut. In this building the open lofts of the galleries are "served" by an inner "servant" core containing such services as stairs and an elevator. The ceiling of each gallery is a concrete space frame (with a pattern of tetrahedrons) which allows the mechanical services to spread horizontally without intruding into the gallery. Kahn was beginning to distinguish between primary, human-oriented spaces and the necessary, but secondary, support spaces. He first crystallized his approach to "served" and "servant" spaces in his modest, but critically important, Trenton Bath House (1955-1956) in New Jersey.

Kahn emerged as a major figure in architecture with his Richards Medical Research Building (1957-1961) at the University of Pennsylvania. This work can be interpreted as a summary of the positive accomplishments of modern architecture in its clarification and expression of functions (once more through "served" and "servant" spaces), honest use of materials, and use of advanced structural systems (precast-prestressed concrete). Yet Kahn was striving for something more. Despite the requisite emphasis on technology in such a commission, he was just as concerned with the human side of the scientists, both as a scholarly community and as independent researchers. Also, his use of picturesque "servant" towers clad in brick provided a visual link with the older and more traditional buildings nearby.

Kahn had thoroughly absorbed his sources. He was able to unite characteristics of modern architecture with those of historical architecture, which he knew well from his Beaux-Arts training. By extending the potential of modern architecture toward a new stability and inner security, while responding to the architecture of the past, Kahn became a pivotal figure in the history of architecture during the 1960s and 1970s.

In the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1959-1965) at La Jolla, California, the laboratory buildings are grouped with Classical formality around a central court, the west end of which is open to a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean. In the world of modern architecture, then dominated by glass boxes, Kahn was searching for a meaningful monumentality. Walls and voids, rather than glass and transparency, dominate. The exposed concrete of the structure was cast with such refinement that it almost ascends to the level of a precious material. Kahn was attempting to rethink all aspects of his architecture, as if he was at the very beginning of architecture.

Kahn was a great maker of rooms. He felt that a room worthy of the name should clearly exhibit its structure and be animated by the presence of natural light. With spare and economical materials he was able to create a very special, naturally lit inner space for the meeting room of the First Unitarian Church (1959-1967) in Rochester, New York. His supreme expression of the importance of natural light within architecture was his museums, particularly the Kimbell Art Museum (1966-1972) in Fort Worth, Texas, with its skylights running the length of the building's vaults, and the Yale Center for British Art (1969-1977) in New Haven, Connecticut, with its sky-lit top floor and the two grand interior courts bringing natural light down into the building.

To Kahn a city was a place of "assembled institutions." He made several unexecuted proposals for modifying and rebuilding his own Philadelphia. His greatest opportunity to build on a large scale was the Capital Complex for Dacca, Bangladesh (originally planned as a second capital for Pakistan), begun in 1962. The central assembly hall of this problem-laden commission was completed in 1984, a decade after Kahn's death. In his monumental use of basic geometric forms for this complex he approached the character of the ancient ruins he so admired. In the Third World he had begun to build works that truly appeared to be emerging from the very "beginnings" of architecture.

At the peak of his creativity, yet overworked and financially troubled, Kahn died in his early seventies in a New York train station after a trip to India. It is possible to consider him the most significant American architect of the 20th century since Frank Lloyd Wright. Before his death in 1974 he received a gold medal from the American Institute of Architects in 1971 and a royal gold medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1972.

Louis I. Kahn
Personal information
Name	Louis I. Kahn
Nationality	American
Birth date	February 20, 1901(1901-02-20)
Birth place	Arensburg, Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire
Date of death	March 17, 1974 (aged 73)
Place of death	New York City, New York
Work
Significant buildings	Yale University Art Gallery Salk Institute Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban Phillips Exeter Academy Library Kimbell Art Museum
Significant projects	Center of Philadelphia,Urban and Traffic Study

Biography

Early life

Jesse Oser House, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania (1940)

Louis Kahn, whose original name was Itze-Leib (Leiser-Itze) Schmuilowsky (Schmalowski), was born into a poor Jewish family in Kuressaare on the Estonian island of Saaremaa, then part of the Russian Empire. At age 3, he was badly burned on his face and hands in an accident involving a coal fire, while jumping over the bonfire on St John's Day^[2]; he carried these scars for the rest of his life.^[3]

In 1905, 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 couldn't 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

The National Assembly Building (Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban) of Bangladesh

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]

In 1928, Kahn made a European tour and took a particular interest in the medieval walled city of Carcassonne, France and the castles of Scotland rather than any of the strongholds of classicism or modernism.^[6] After returning to the States in 1929, Kahn worked in the offices of Paul Philippe Cret, his former studio critic at Penn, and in the offices of Zantzinger, Borie and Medary in Philadelphia.^[5] In 1932, Kahn and Dominique Berninger founded the Architectural Research Group, whose members were interested in the populist social agenda and new aesthetics of the European avant-gardes. Among the projects Kahn worked on during this collaboration are unbuilt schemes for public housing that had originally been presented to the Public Works Administration.^[5]

Among the more important of Kahn's early collaborations was with George Howe.^[7] Kahn worked with Howe in late 1930s on projects for the Philadelphia Housing Authority and again in 1940, along with German born architect Oscar Stonorov for the design of housing developments in other parts of Pennsylvania.^[8]

Louis I. Kahn did not find his distinctive architectural style until he was in his fifties. Initially working in a fairly orthodox version of the International Style, a stay at the American Academy in Rome in the early 1950s marked a turning point in Kahn's career. The back-to-the-basics approach he adopted after visiting the ruins of ancient buildings in Italy, Greece and Egypt helped him to develop his own style of architecture influenced by earlier modern movements but not limited by their sometimes dogmatic ideologies.

In 1961 he received a grant from the Graham Foundation to study traffic movement^[9]^[10] in Philadelphia and create a proposal for a viaduct system. He describes this proposal at a lecture given in 1962 at the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado:

In the center of town the streets should become buildings. This should be interplayed with a sense of movement which does not tax local streets for non-local traffic. There should be a system of viaducts which encase an area which can reclaim the local streets for their own use, and it should be made so this viaduct has a ground floor of shops and usable area. A model which I did for the Graham Foundation recently, and which I presented to Mr. Entenza, showed the scheme.^[11]

Kahn's teaching career started at Yale in 1947 and he was eventually named Albert F. Bemis Professor of Architecture and Planning at MIT in 1962 and Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1966 and was also a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University from 1961 to 1967. Kahn was elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1953. He was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1964, He was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968 and awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the highest award given by the AIA, in 1971^[12] and the Royal Gold Medal by the RIBA in 1972.

Death

In the year 1974, Louis Kahn died of a heart attack in a men's restroom in Pennsylvania Station in New York City. He was not identified for three days, as he had crossed out the home address on his passport. He had just returned from a work trip to India, and despite his long career, he was deeply in debt when he died.

Personal life

Kahn had three different families with three different women: his wife, Esther, whom he married in 1930; Anne Tyng, who began her working collaboration and personal relationship with Kahn in 1945; and Harriet Pattison. His obituary in the New York Times, written by Paul Goldberger, famously mentions only Esther and his daughter by her as survivors. But in 2003, Kahn's son with Pattison, Nathaniel Kahn, released an Oscar-nominated biographical documentary about his father, titled My Architect: A Son's Journey, which gives glimpses of the architecture while focusing on talking to the people who knew him: family, friends, and colleagues. It includes interviews with renowned architect contemporaries such as B. V. Doshi, Frank Gehry, Ed Bacon, Philip Johnson, I. M. Pei, and Robert A. M. Stern, but also an insider's view of Kahn's unusual family arrangements. The unusual manner of his death is used as a point of departure and a metaphor for Kahn's "nomadic" life in the film.

Important works

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (1966)

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1951–1953), the first significant commission of Louis Kahn and his first masterpiece, replete with technical innovations. For example, he designed a hollow concrete tetrahedral space-frame that did away with the need for ductwork and reduced the floor-to-floor height by channeling air through the structure itself. Like many of Kahn's buildings, the Art Gallery makes subtle references to its context while overtly rejecting any historical style.
Richards Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, (1957–1965),^[13] regarding which Kahn said, “No space you can devise can satisfy these requirements. I thought what they should have was a corner for thought, in a word, a studio instead of slices of space.”
The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California, (1959–1965), was to be a campus composed of three main clusters: meeting and conference areas, living quarters, and laboratories. Only the laboratory cluster, consisting of two parallel blocks enclosing a water garden, was actually built. The two laboratory blocks frame an exquisite view of the Pacific Ocean, accentuated by a thin linear fountain that seems to reach for the horizon.
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India (1962).
Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in Dhaka, Bangladesh (1962–1974), considered to be his masterpiece and one of the great monuments of International Modernism.
Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, New Hampshire, (1965–1972), awarded the Twenty-Five year award by the American Institute of Architects.
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, (1967–1972), features repeated bays of cycloid-shaped barrel vaults with light slits along the apex, which bathe the artwork on display in an ever-changing diffuse light.
Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, (1969–1974).

Timeline of works

Interior of Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, New Hampshire (1965)

All dates refer to the year project commenced

1935 – Jersey Homesteads Cooperative Development, Hightstown, New Jersey
1940 – Jesse Oser House, 628 Stetson Road, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania
1947 – Phillip Q. Roche House, 2101 Harts Lane, Conshohocken, Pennsylvania
1951 – Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut
1952 – City Tower Project, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (unbuilt)
1954 – Jewish Community Center (aka Trenton Bath House), 999 Lower Ferry Road, Ewing, New Jersey
1956 – Wharton Esherick Studio, 1520 Horseshoe Trail, Malvern, Pennsylvania (designed with Wharton Esherick)
1957 – Richards Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, 3700 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1957 – Fred Clever House, 417 Sherry Way, Cherry Hill, New Jersey
1959 – Margaret Esherick House, 204 Sunrise Lane, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1959 – Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, California
1959 – First Unitarian Church, 220 South Winton Road, Rochester, New York
1960 – Erdman Hall Dormitories, Bryn Mawr College, Morris Avenue, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
1960 – Norman Fisher House, 197 East Mill Road, Hatboro, Pennsylvania
1962 – Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India
1962 – National Assembly Building, Dhaka, Bangladesh
1963 – President's Estate, Islamabad, Pakistan (unbuilt)
1965 – Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Front Street, Exeter, New Hampshire
1966 – Kimbell Art Museum, 3333 Camp Bowie Boulevard, Fort Worth, Texas
1966 – Olivetti-Underwood factory, Valley View Road, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
1969 – Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut
1971 – Steven Korman House, Sheaff Lane, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania
1972 – Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, Four Freedoms Park, Roosevelt Island, New York City, New York (unbuilt)^[14]

Legacy

360° panorama in the courtyard of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California (1959–65).

Louis Kahn Memorial Park, 11th & Pine Sreets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Louis Kahn's work infused the International style with a fastidious, highly personal taste, a poetry of light. His few projects reflect his deep personal involvement with each. Isamu Noguchi called him "a philosopher among architects." He was known for his ability to create monumental architecture that responded to the human scale. He was also concerned with creating strong formal distinctions between served spaces and servant spaces. What he meant by servant spaces was not spaces for servants, but rather spaces that serve other spaces, such as stairwells, corridors, restrooms, or any other back-of-house function like storage space or mechanical rooms. His palette of materials tended toward heavily textured brick and bare concrete, the textures often reinforced by juxtaposition to highly refined surfaces such as travertine marble.

While widely known for his spaces' poetic sensibilities, Kahn also worked closely with engineers and contractors on his buildings. The results were often technically innovative and highly refined. In addition to the influence Kahn's more well-known work has on contemporary architects (such as Tadao Ando), some of his work (especially the unbuilt City Tower Project) became very influential among the high-tech architects of the late 20th century (such as Renzo Piano, who worked in Kahn's office, and Norman Foster). His prominent apprentices include Moshe Safdie, Robert Venturi and Jack Diamond.

Many years after his death, Kahn continues to inspire controversy. Interest is growing in a plan to build a Kahn-designed Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, Four Freedoms Park at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island.^[15] A modest New York Times editorial opined:

There's a magic to the project. That the task is daunting makes it worthy of the man it honors, who guided the nation through the Depression, the New Deal and a world war. As for Mr. Kahn, he died in 1974, as he passed alone through New York's Penn Station. In his briefcase were renderings of the memorial, his last completed plan.^[16]

The editorial describes Kahn's plan as:

...simple and elegant. Drawing inspiration from Roosevelt's defense of the Four Freedoms – of speech and religion, and from want and fear – he designed an open 'room and a garden' at the bottom of the island. Trees on either side form a 'V' defining a green space, and leading to a two-walled stone room at the water's edge that frames the United Nations and the rest of the skyline.

Critics note that the panoramic view of Manhattan and the UN are actually blocked by the walls of that room and by the trees.^[17] Other as-yet-unanswered critics have argued more broadly that not enough thought has been given to what visitors to the memorial would actually be able to do at the site.^[18] The proposed project is opposed by a majority of island residents who were surveyed by the Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation group currently working extensively on the island.^[19]

The movement for the memorial, which was conceived by Kahn's firm almost 35 years ago, needed to raise $40 million by the end of 2007; as of July 20, it had collected $5.1 million.^[20] There is a merest hint in Architectural Record about the often-heard argument that it must be built because it was literally Kahn's last project;^[21] and this is rebutted by those who've said the plans aren't enough like Kahn's other work for it to be touted as a memorial to Kahn as well as FDR.^[22]

In this context, Roosevelt himself had something to say: "There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still."^[23]

Gallery

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1951–53).	Coffered ceiling in Yale University Art Gallery (1951–53).	Stairwell in Yale University Art Gallery (1951–53).	Reconstructed model (2008) of Trenton Bath House, Ewing, New Jersey (1954).
Wharton Esherick Studio, 1520 Horseshoe Trail, Malvern, Pennsylvania (1956). Designed with Wharton Esherick.	Interior of First Unitarian Church, Rochester, New York (1959)	Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India (1962).	Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (1969–74).

Notes

^ Voolen, Edward (2006). Jewish art and culture. Prestel. p. 138. http://books.google.com/books?client=firefox-a&um=1&q=%22The+Estonian-born+architect+Kahn+(1901-1974)%2C+who+immigrated+with+his+family+to+Philadelphia+in+1906%22&btnG=Search+Books. "The Estonian-born architect Kahn (1901–1974), who immigrated with his family to Philadelphia in 1906"
^ "Kus sündis Louis Kahn?" (in Estonian). Eesti Ekspress. http://paber.ekspress.ee/viewdoc/48EBEEC2DFC8B555C22571F1003A8A93. Retrieved 2006-09-28.
^ Commstock, Paul. "An Interview With Louis Kahn Biographer Carter Wiseman," California Literary Review. June 15th, 2007.
^ SBS Hot Docs Jan 15, 2008 My architect: A son's journey
^ ^a ^b ^c Louis Isadore Kahn (1901–1974) – Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
^ Johnson, Eugene J. "A Drawing of the Cathedral of Albi by Louis I. Kahn," Gesta, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 159–165.
^ Howe, George (1886–1955) – Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
^ Stonorov, Oskar Gregory (1905–1970) – Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
^ Philadelphia City Planning: Market Street East Project Page
^ MoMA.org | The Collection | Louis I. Kahn. Traffic Study, project, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Plan of proposed traffic-movement pattern. 1952
^ Kahn, Louis I.; Robert C. Twombly. Louis Kahn: Essential Texts. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 158. ISBN 0393731138.
^ AIA150 – The 150th Anniversary of the American Institute of Architects
^ Richards Medical Building from World Architecture Images.
^ Saffron, Inga. "Changing Skyline: One more masterpiece by Kahn nears reality." Philadelphia Inquirer. August 23, 2009.
^ Press Releases from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute
^ "A Roosevelt for Roosevelt Island," New York Times. November 5, 2007.
^ COMING TO LIGHT: The Louis I. Kahn Monument to Franklin D. Roosevelt
^ Huxtable, Ada Louise. "Roosevelt Memorial Design Hits Snags; Skillful Blend Museum Idea Dropped Must Look Beautiful," New York Times. May 1, 1973.
^ New York City, Southpoint Park Plan Complete for Roosevelt Island: The Trust for Public Land
^ Dunlap, David W., "A Campaign to Build a Long-Delayed F.D.R. Memorial," New York Times. October 26, 2007; "Roosevelt Island May Soon See FDR Memorial," New York Sun. October 26, 2007. Link for New York Times photographs of project site
^ Is Kahn’s FDR Memorial Back on Track? | News | Architectural Record
^ Braudy, Susan. "The Architectural Metaphysic of Louis Kahn; 'Is the center of a column filled with hope?' 'What is a wall?' 'What does this space want to be?'" New York Times Magazine. November 15, 1970.
^ Roosevelt | Organizational Partners; Quotation web site

References

Curtis, William. Modern Architecture Since 1900 (2nd Ed. ed.). Prentice-Hall. pp. 309–316. ISBN 0135866944.
Kahn, Louis I.. Louis I.Kahn: Complete Work 1935–1974 (2nd Rev. and Enl. Ed edition ed.). Birkhauser Verlag AG. pp. 437. ISBN 3764313471.
Leslie, Thomas.. Louis I.Kahn: Building Art, Building Science. New York: George Braziller. ISBN 0807615404.
McCarter, Robert. Louis I. Kahn. Phaidon Press Ltd. pp. 512. ISBN 0714840459.
Wiseman, Carter. Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style: A Life in Architecture (1st Ed. ed.). New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0393731650.
Larson, Kent. Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks. New York: Monacelli Press. pp. 232. ISBN 1-58093-014-X.
Rosa, Joseph. Peter Gossel. ed. Louis I.Kahn: Enlightened space. Germany: Taschen GmbH. pp. 96. ISBN 3822836419.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Louis Kahn

Louis I. Kahn – Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project
The Louis I. Kahn Collection – The Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania
Exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania on Louis I. Kahn Interiors
Great Buildings Online – Louis I. Kahn
The Works of Louis I. Kahn, a personal collection of photographs taken at various Kahn buildings.
Honoring Louis Kahn's Legacy on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth
My Architect, biographical movie (IMDb, 2003)
Yale University Art Gallery – Louis I. Kahn building, information from the Yale University Art Gallery on the renovation effort.
The Trenton Bath House of Louis Kahn
Friends Of The Trenton Bath House
Louis Kahn buildings
Redefining the Basemap
Louis Kahn traffic studies
Kahn Project Amherst College
Aerial image of the Olivetti-Underwood factory, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Louis Kahn at Find a Grave
Una nuova fabbrica in America: lo stabilimento di Harrisburg (Italian only, several exterior and interior photos of the Olivetti factory in Harrisburg, PA)

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