ARCHITECT LOUIS KAHN

BIOGRAPHY
Know as : Louis Isadore Kahn Itze- Lieb
Schmuilowsky ( After Birth)
Born : February 20,1901, in saarema, Estonia
Nationality : American
Father : Leib schmuialowsky
Mother : Bertha Mendelssohn.
Died :17 march 1974 in new York City.
Education : Local industrial art school university of
pennsylvania

ROLE
An Architect
Educator
Philosopher
CAREER
• Kahn’s Career began as a teacher at Yale University in 1947
• Professor at MIT in 1956
• Professor at University of Pennsylvania town 1957 until his
death
• Visiting lecturer at Princeton University from 1961 to 1967
• Elected Fellow in the AIA in 1953.
• Co-Founder of the Architectural Research Group in 1932
• Fellow of the royal Institute of British art in 1972

AWARD
• AIA Gold Medal in 1971.
• Royal Gold Medal by RIBA in 1972
• Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize
• Gold medal for Architecture from NIAL
PHILOSOPHY
• Architect called him “A philosopher among Architects”
• He is known for his ability to create Monumental
Architecture
• Used Geometric form Brick & Concrete
• Theory of Light & silence
• Influenced by ancient Greek & Italian Architecture
• Served & Servant space
• “Architecture is the thoughtful making of spaces. It is the
creating Spaces that evoke a feeling of appropriate use.”
• Architecture is the reaching out for the truth
• Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from
selection, affinities, integration, love.
• Every time a student walks past a really urgent,
expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his
college, it can help reassure him that he does have that
mind, does have that soul.
BUILDING TECHNIQUE
• 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.
• His palette of materials tended toward heavily textured brick
and bare concrete, the textures often reinforced to highly
refined surfaces such as travertine marble.  
• Kahn was able to make the concrete material of the building
look both solid and airy. He used sunlight and water bodies to
create a truly special building.
• Khan was famous for combining Modernism with the weight
and dignity of ancient monuments.
• All of Kahn's buildings share a common solidity and heaviness
• Their weightless-looking structures were mostly made of glass
and metal.
The Yale Art Gallery in New Haven
YEAR: 1951-1953
LOCATION: New haven, Connecticut, united states
INTRODUCTION
• The Art Gallery of Yale University was the first major
commission for Louis Kahn and is considered his first
masterpiece.
• The architect designed it during their stay at the School of
Architecture at the university, which had been invited as a
critic.
• This building was the first of three art museums that Kahn
 would design throughout his career and represented a
dramatic change for the conventional architecture of
museums in America and in all institutional buildings as a
whole.
• Kahn’s design has been celebrated not only for its beauty,
geometry and light, but also for his innovations in structural
engineering, and has served to catalyze many of his basic
ideas about architecture.
• This work marked the emergence of Kahn as a designer who
did not adhere to the then prevailing idea of “form follows
function” is distinguished by the international style.
HISTORY
• This gallery was founded in 1832 by a donation of about 100
works of art of American painter John Trumbull.
• Trumbull was the same who designed the gallery on the top
floor had two exhibition halls receiving natural light.
• Later this gallery served as an office for the dean and
treasurer of the university until it was demolished in 1901.
• In 1926 he began construction of a new building to meet the
art collections of the University dispersed to various places
on campus.
• The Gallery of Fine Arts, was designed by architect Egerton
Swartwout and opened to the public on September 27, 1928.
• Currently, the gallery consists of three interconnected
structures: the gothic building Swarthout, the 1866 Hall
Street and the main building, designed in 1953 by 
Louis Kahn.
CONCEPT
• With the Yale Art Gallery, Louis Kahn sets new concepts such as symmetry, clear separation between space
and space used server and a new vocabulary based on the triangle and the circle. The triangle as a figure
appears on the stairs and as structural concept in the construction forged rosettes.
DESCRIPTION
• The building is constructed of brick, concrete, glass and steel became a significant departure from neo-gothic
style dominant so far in the Campus of the University.
• From the street, the building is perceived as a facade of brick, windowless, monolithic, is the southwest
facade.
• It was the extension of an existing building in an empty corner is connected with the old building through the
alignment of facades in the face of the building.
• The glass front entrance and make a style utterly opposed to the existing architecture. It is in the walls facing
the northeast and northwest where several pieces are rectangular glass curtain wall. Stone lines marked on
the exterior, on Chapel Street, the layout of the interior levels.
• In the back of the Yale Art Gallery, the wooden sliding shutters frame the huge windows along the three
levels of the building projecting forward of the glass façade.
• The building’s interior is characterized by a system of precast concrete roof that houses the gallery lighting
and ventilation. The roof, at the time, was an innovative structural engineering hollow concrete tetrahedrons,
which combine a number of functions and give the interior a rich and changing quality.
PRECAST CONCRETE ROOF
SPACES
• It was conceived as a unique, modular, consisting of two
prismatic, two rectangles of 43×25 meters the highest.
• Two areas served by a central core where there are facilities,
elevators and stairs, spaces servants.
• The exhibition rooms are created using modular panels that
subdivide the space.
• When it opened in November 1953, the Gallery of Art and
Design Centre of the University had ample open spaces for
the exhibition of the work and study spaces for use by
students of art and architecture.
ACCESS
• The entrance stairway at Yale is located at the bottom
of a space formed by the recession of the flat, white
wall which gives access to a door built of glass.
• From the outside access to a hall that is diverted to
the open spaces of the first floor.
• The horizontal continuity of this space is broken by
the central elements: the circular enclosure of the
main staircase, the elevator, the core mechanics, and a
second exit stairway into the backyard.
THE LADDER
• The staircase is a triangle of three stages involved in a
cylinder and that is not reflected to the outside.
• The concrete cylinder penetrates vertically through the
floor levels and is an affirmation of human finitude.
• Noting the stairs from the upper floor is it was designed
and executed in vertical drop into the deep space, into an
abyss, is suspended between the baseline and the
triangular structure of the roof.
• The staircase is topped with a triangular element repeats
concrete floor, with a key role for the entry of light as in
the edge of the silo, between it and the roof of the main
gallery is covered by curved blocks glass allow light to
fill the cylinder, leaving the triangular structure of the
roof as a black void against the light.
• Although this triangular ladder is the most recognized
and studied the gallery, the building has another staircase
at the opposite end
STRUCTURE
• Modulated rectangular structure of concrete that is not only
supporting but also contributes to the image of the building.
• The Art Gallery of Yale University, was first used concrete
roof structure consists of a tetrahedron with special armor
that exposes the light fixtures and duct air conditioning.
• It also reduces the height of the floor-to-floor, channeling the
air through the structure.
• Driven by technology, Kahn used these tetrahedral concrete
panels and slabs that formed both the floor of a room as the
roof of which was on the ground floor while leaving
adequate space for the placement of the various building
systems.
• The resulting spaces, between which lies a core of
movement, remained free of the strict definition of walls.
MATERIALS
• The concrete structure is seen on the roof making a hollow
triangles solution, which eliminates the false ceiling.
• The enclosure is made through brick walls and curtain walls,
glass and steel.
• The amounts of these curtains of glass-cage form a pattern
that descend from the cornices of the terrace to ground level
being locked inside the formwork
• The floors are tile triangular lattice formed tetrahedral
concrete panels. Inside most raw materials are no longer
calling attention to the concrete walls where they hang the
works of art.
• The horizontal bands on the brick facades are limestone.
RENOVATION AND EXPANSION (2004–12)
RENOVATED GALLERY
• In 2004 the Gallery embarked on a major renovation of all three of its buildings.
• Completed in 2012 by Ennead Architects (formerly Polshek Partners), the renovation included an addition
to the upper level of the Old Yale Art Gallery that created room for a rooftop sculpture terrace.
• Eight new classrooms were added to enable educators to teach from the collection, and the Nolen Center for
Art and Education was developed as a major resource for teaching and learning.
• The renovation and expansion enhanced the Gallery’s role as one of the nation’s most prominent
teaching institutions.
OTHER PROJECTS:-
The Salk Institute
• The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is an independent, non- profit,
scientific research institute located in La Jolla, California
• The institute employs 850 researchers in 60 research groups and focuses
its research in three areas: Molecular Biology and Genetics;
Neurosciences; and Plant Biology
• The entire 27-acre (11 ha)
• It consists of two symmetric buildings with a stream of water flowing in
the middle of a courtyard that separates the two.
• The Salk Institute’s open environment teeming with empty space is
symbolic of an open environment for creation, the symmetry stands for
scientific precision, and submerging crevasses allow warm, natural light
to enter the buildings like the intellectual light that leads to discovery
• The concrete was made with volcanic ash relying on the basis of ancient
Roman concrete making techniques, and as a result gives off a warm,
pinkish glow
• The design also included living quarters and a conference building, but
they were never actually built.
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth
• The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, hosts a small but
excellent art collection as well as traveling art exhibitions,
educational programs and an extensive research library
• The museum is composed of 16 parallel vaults that are each 100
feet (30.6 m) long, 20 feet (6 m) high and 20 feet (6 m) wide
(internal measurements).
• Kahn built this museum in the early nineteen seventies. This large
museum has long rooms with curved or vaulted ceilings.
• Inside, all of the walls can be moved to best fit the art collection.
• The ends of the vaults, which are made of concrete block, are faced
with travertine inside and out.
• The steel handrails were "blasted" with ground pecan shells to
create a matte surface texture.
• A open porches flanking the entrance would create a good
transition from the lawn and courtyard to the galleries inside.
• Skylights- lighting consultant, determined that a reflecting screen
made of perforated anodized aluminium with a specific curve
could be used to distribute natural light evenly across the cycloid
curve of the ceiling
IIM, Ahmedabad , India
• The IIM is spread over 67 acres of lush greenery in Vastrapur. He
conceived the design as a blend of austerity and majesty.
• This modern residential institute is built entirely in traditional brick
construction.
• He included spaces for casual interaction while achieving a balance
between modernity and tradition that captured the spirit of timeless
India. Spaces for casual interaction
• The broad airy corridors, the amphitheater like classrooms and
transition spaces in the complex enhance interaction among the faculty,
students and visitors.
• His design was given shape by a team of architects from the National
Institute of Design.
• Its contemporary design is responsive to local climate and is now a
much admired campus. It has inspired generations of students to
achieve excellence while retaining humility.
• The highlight of the campus is the Louis Kahn Plaza, the sheer
magnificence of which has played host to major interactions and
celebrations. It is surrounded by the faculty wing, library and
classrooms from three sides.
CONCLUSION
• He used brick and concrete in new and special ways
• Kahn also paid careful attention to the use of sunlight and airy buildings
• All of Kahn's buildings share a common solidity and heaviness
• Their weightless-looking structures were mostly made of glass and metal
• 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.
• Kahn was able to make the concrete material of the building look both solid and airy. He used sunlight and
bodies of water to create a truly special building.
THANK YOU !!