Louis Kahn - Designs

Designs

• 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), a breakthrough in Kahn's career that helped set new directions for modern architecture with its clear expression of served and servant spaces and its evocation of the architecture of the past.
• 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.
• First Unitarian Church, Rochester, New York (1959–1969), named as one of the greatest religious structures of the 20th century by Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic. Tall, narrow window recesses create an irregular rhythm of shadows on the exterior while four light towers flood the sanctuary walls with indirect natural light.
• Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in Dhaka, Bangladesh (1962–1974)
• Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh
• Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in Ahmedabad, India (1962).
• National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), Dhaka, Bangladesh (1963)
• Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, New Hampshire (1965–1972), awarded the Twenty-five Year Award by the American Institute of Architects in 1997. It is famous for its dramatic atrium with enormous circular openings into the book stacks.
• 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).
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, Roosevelt Island, New York (1972–1974). Construction completed 2012.