Phillips Exeter Academy Library - Architectural Interpretations

Architectural Interpretations

Architectural experts sometimes differ in their interpretations of Kahn's design. Why, for example, are the cross beams at the clerestory windows above the atrium so massive? Carter Wiseman says, "While they appear to be—and indeed are—structural, they are far deeper than necessary; their no-less-important role was to diffuse the sunlight coming in from the surrounding clerestory windows and reflect it down into the atrium." Sarah Goldhagen thinks there is more to the story, asserting that "the concrete X-shaped cross below the skylit ceiling at the Exeter Library is grossly exaggerated for dramatic effect." Kathleen James-Chakraborty goes even further: "Above, in the most sublime gesture of all, floats a concrete cross brace, illuminated by clerestory windows. Its weight, which appears ready to come crashing down upon the onlooker, revives the sense of threat dissipated elsewhere by the reassuring familiarity of the brick skin and wood details." Kahn similarly floated a massive concrete structure above the sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, which he designed a few years earlier.

Another issue is the extent to which Kahn deliberately introduced elements into some of his buildings that give them the ageless atmosphere of ruins. Kahn himself spoke of "wrapping ruins around buildings", although in the context of another project. In his essay "Louis I. Kahn and the Ruins of Rome," Vincent Scully argues that Kahn followed this practice in several of his buildings, including this library, saying, "And in his library at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Kahn won't even let it become a building; he wants it to remain a ruin. The walls don't connect at the top. They remain like a hollow shell". Romaldo Giurgola, on the other hand, avoids this interpretation in the entry he wrote for Louis Kahn in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects. In it, while discussing the arrangement of exterior components of Kahn's National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, Giurgola wrote, "This relationship with daylight was the determining element behind this solution, rather than the formal desire to 'create ruins,' as some critics have suggested." In the very next paragraph Guirgola describes the chamfered corners of the library at Phillips Exeter by saying only that Kahn used this device to show that the structural importance of the corner is greatly reduced in buildings like the Exeter library that are constructed with reinforced concrete and other modern materials.