Tim Vreeland
This is the third in a series of four articles describing three extraordinary 20th century architects whose types form a 7-1-4 configuration (Fig. 31)
This is the third in a series of four articles describing three extraordinary 20th century architects whose types form a 7-1-4 configuration (Fig. 31)
Born in 1901 in Estonia of Jewish parents, Louis Kahn immigrated to the United States in 1904. He and his parents settled in Philadelphia, a city that became his lifelong home. Both his parents were artistically talented and encouraged their son at an early age in the direction of music and painting. His mother was a Mendelsohn and the young Kahn was introduced to German culture. As a small child, playing with hot coals in a grate, he was attracted by their bright color and badly scarred his face when the pinafore he was wearing caught fire (see Fig. 11 in Part 1, EM #199).
As a boy he helped support his family by playing the piano in a silent movie house. When the theater owner later substituted an organ for the piano, young Lou improvised and learned to play it overnight rather than lose his job. On weekends he walked twenty blocks to take the free art classes offered at the Fleischer Sketch Club. Helen Fleischer, the philanthropist behind the classes, was so impressed by his skill at playing the piano that she gave him a grand piano. As there was no room for it in the tiny Kahn tenement flat, Lou exchanged it for his bed and slept on the piano.
As a boy he helped support his family by playing the piano in a silent movie house. When the theater owner later substituted an organ for the piano, young Lou improvised and learned to play it overnight rather than lose his job. On weekends he walked twenty blocks to take the free art classes offered at the Fleischer Sketch Club. Helen Fleischer, the philanthropist behind the classes, was so impressed by his skill at playing the piano that she gave him a grand piano. As there was no room for it in the tiny Kahn tenement flat, Lou exchanged it for his bed and slept on the piano.
When Kahn was offered a music scholarship and a fine arts scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy, he turned down both to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Penn was then the leading Beaux Arts school in the country, offering an academic education in the arts modeled after the renowned `Ecole in Paris. Paul Phillipe Cret, a transplanted Frenchman, was its leading teacher and he introduced Kahn to the fundamental principles of architecture with their emphasis on symmetry, composition and axiality. As a consequence, the logic, the order and the classic discipline of his Beaux Arts training never left him. His love of pure Platonic solids – cubes, spheres and tetrahedra as primary forms – never left him, even after his introduction later to the International modern style.