Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture review: monuments were his thing
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Version 0 of 1. In one of the more toe-curling moments in cinema, in Indecent Proposal, the architect played by Woody Harrelson stands in front of his rapt, cute students and, as a back-to-front slide of Le Corbusier's Ronchamp chapel flicks by, purports to quote Louis Kahn. "Even a brick," breathes Harrelson, "wants to be something. It aspires. Even a common, ordinary brick wants to be something more than it is… better than it is. That is what we must be." This is not precisely what Kahn said in his address to bricks, but never mind. The clip establishes the Estonian-born American as a true visionary, as someone for whom the art of building is worth sacrificing everything, for which (as the plot of the movie suggests) it might be worth selling your wife's body. A more insightful, nuanced and beautiful portrayal of the architect was offered in another film, My Architect (2003), by his son, Nathaniel. Here, the younger Kahn tries to understand both the works and the complexities of a man who was born in poverty in 1901 and died in 1974 with large debts. Most strikingly, he had three children, unknown to each other, with his wife and two long-term lovers. Neither piece of film would work, or exist, if it wasn't for the mythic force of Kahn's architecture. He dared to be monumental in a technocratic age. He invoked Egypt and Rome, and Nature and Light. He built with cylinders, vaults and pillars. He could be bombastic and mawkish, to the extent that Rem Koolhaas claims that, as a student, he found a Kahn talk so unbearable that he crawled out on his hands and knees. But he had an exceptional skill and sensitivity with materials, structure and light. A Kahn space at its best is like orchestral music – it envelops, seizes the emotions and imprints the memory. All of which makes it a good idea for London's Design Museum to show a major exhibition of his work, the first for more than two decades, the more so as it's a chance to see some of the drawings that were at the core of Kahn's creative being. From an early age he drew and drew, and his buildings can be seen as extensions of this urge into three-dimensional, permanent form. He thought through drawing, which was also a sort of handwriting for him, and his sketches sometimes come with numbers and words scribbled alongside. They have a fragile, open quality, usually freehand, wobbly-lined affairs in soft pencil or chalk. At the same time that they describe the fixed forms of his designs, they evoke the intangible and such things as atmosphere and light. They represent the coming into being of something, rather than a final result. Alongside the drawings are the study models with which Kahn developed projects such as the National Assembly building of Bangladesh, in which colossal structures would be explored through hand-size artefacts of thin brown card or wood. As good as both are previously unseen footage by Nathaniel Kahn, of the parliament animated by subcontinental sunlight and civic life, of a wooden Pennsylvanian house in green, moist gardens and of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The latter, with the help of time-lapse photography, captures the coexistence of permanence and transience that makes Kahn good. The Kimbell is a massive, symmetrical work of travertine walls and vaulted concrete that could be plain pompous, but in the film as in life its weight dissolves into shadows, the patterns of trees and flickers of light on running water. Less illuminating are large models of Kahn's buildings made for the exhibition, dead things that betray the animation of the original work, and a selection of photographs of his buildings that are not on the whole evocative or informative. In one strange moment, a full-scale mock-up of a window seat is placed in front of a photo of the original. This photo actually tells more than the model, as it describes materials, light and setting, but you can't see it well because the model is in the way. The sequencing of exhibits is confusing. It has a thematic structure that assumes you already know the projects, but even if you do, it is sometimes hard to work out how a drawing connects to a model, connects to a photograph. The Vitra Design Museum in Switzerland, where the show originated, wants to stress Kahn's interest in science and engineering, as a counterpoint to the usual perception of him as a monument builder. This side of him is worth highlighting, but I think they're trying too hard to be different. Monuments (of a subtle and complex kind) were, in the end, his thing. Kahn might have said, in the same way that he addressed bricks: "Exhibition, what do you want to be?" And Exhibition might have replied: "I want to be the drawings, study models and the films, all lucidly organised." Then it would have been terrific. Ditto if it fully celebrated some of the wonderful personal items it has, such as the drawing chalks and battered suitcase that Kahn took on his sketching travels. As it is, I pause before recommending it to people outside the Kahn fandom. You should go, because there is great stuff there, but to understand its subject, watch My Architect first. |