Through sheer determination and courage, Kahn has researched the nature of concrete in the form of precast, cast in place or blocks. Each of his renowned works in exposed concrete, such as the Yale Art Gallery, the Richards Laboratories, the Bath House, the Salk Institute, the National Assembly, the Kimbell Museum, the Exeter Library and the Yale Center for British Art, is itself an important chapter in the history of architecture for the exploration into concrete’s formal expression, beyond the lesson of Le Corbusier. Kahn’s obsession on concrete fabrication processes, on the formwork and the mix design, is systematically examined in two volumes. The authors illustrate Kahn’s vision with documents that have never been revealed in other essays, drawing heavily from original sketches, plans, specifications, worksite photographs, and correspondences with collaborators, engineers, technicians and contractors. The first volume Exposed Concrete and Hollow Stones focuses on the first ten-year period of Kahn’s research on concrete. Moving through the many construction systems experienced by Kahn, from the discovery of exposed concrete in the form of béton brut at the Yale Art Gallery, to the precast and poured-in-place techniques, to the values of joint, growth and ornament, the essay culminates in the reconstruction of the artistic and technical characteristics of two great worksite, the Richards Laboratories and the First Unitarian Church and School. The second volume, Towards the Zero Degree of Concrete, covers the following fourteen years and leads the reader along Kahn’s path to the true “nature of concrete,” focusing on his main techniques and poetic discoveries such as the “liquid stone” of the Salk Institute, the “smooth finish” at Bryn Mawr and the concept of “monolithic” at the Yale Center for British Art.

The proceedings of second conference of the Construction History Society, which took place on 20 and 21 March 2015 at Queens' College, Cambridge, featuring 28 peer-reviewed papers covering a wide variety of subjects on the theme of construction history.

This book examines the idea of organism in the work of Louis I. Kahn, from the turning point of Rome to the project for Venice. It presents an original interpretation of the work of Kahn during one of the most fruitful periods of his career, when he was working on a particular design method based on an entirely novel way of interacting with the past. Beginning with a meticulous documentation and analysis of Kahn’s experiences in the twenty years from 1930 to 1950, the book sheds new light on the relationship between Kahn’s work and the modern movement. The arguments are supported by case studies, including that of the Palazzo dei Congressi in Venice based on Kahn’s words (like his lessons in Venice at IUA, International University of Art, in 1971) and others as the Trenton Bath House, the Salk Institute (La Jolla), the Kimbell Museum (Fort Worth), the Yale Gallery and the Mellon Center for British Art (New Haven) and more. Unlike much of the by now well-established literature on Kahn’s work, Louis I. Kahn in Rome and Venice suggests that the basic premise of Kahn’s invention is the idea of spatial, constructive organism, which explains how he created forms that were inextricably anchored in the past, without imitating any one kind of ancient architecture. The main objective of the book is to explain Kahn’s methodology to architects and students, showing how he was able to design an architectural object with the characteristics of the best designed objects: organisms, in which each part contributes, with the whole, to creating "something made of indivisible parts".

Louis I. Kahn was one of the most influential architects, thinkers and teachers of his time. This book examines the important relationship between his work and the city of Rome, whose ancient ruins inspired in him a new design methodology. Structured into two main parts, the first includes personal essays and contributions from the architect’s children, writers and other designers on the experience and impact of his work. The second part takes a detailed look at Kahn’s residency in Rome, its effects on his thinking, and how his influence spread throughout Italy. It analyses themes directly linked to his architecture, through interviews with teachers and designers such as Franco Purini, Paolo Portoghesi, Giorgio Ciucci, Lucio Valerio Barbera and the architects of the Rome Group of Architects and City Planners (GRAU). Rome and the Legacy of Louis I. Kahn expands the current discourse on this celebrated twentieth-century architect, ideal for students and researchers interested in Kahn’s work, architectural history, theory and criticism.

The Estonian-American civil engineer August Komendant (1906–1992) worked with numerous famous architects and engineers on several of the 20th century’s most iconic buildings. Concrete was Komendant’s passion through decades. He used his expertise in designing structures as different as the Kadriorg Stadium grandstand in Tallinn, Estonia (Elmar Lohk, 1938), the Habitat ’67 experimental housing complex in Montréal, Canada (Moshe Safdie, 1967) and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, USA (Louis I. Kahn, 1972). Komendant combined technical expertise with a keen sense of aesthetics: as an engineer, he valued the timeless and enduring qualities of architecture. He knew that miracles require more than spreadsheets and a budget – the creative impulse is essential.

The making of shadows is an act as old as architecture itself. From the gloom of the medieval hearth through to the masterworks of modernism, shadows have been an essential yet neglected presence in architectural history. Shadow-Makers tells for the first time the history of shadows in architecture. It weaves together a rich narrative – combining close readings of significant buildings both ancient and modern with architectural theory and art history – to reveal the key places and moments where shadows shaped architecture in distinctive and dynamic ways. It shows how shadows are used as an architectural instrument of form, composition, and visual effect, while also exploring the deeper cultural context – tracing differing conceptions of their meaning and symbolism, whether as places of refuge, devotion, terror, occult practice, sublime experience or as metaphors of the unconscious. Within a chronological framework encompassing medieval, baroque, enlightenment, sublime, picturesque, and modernist movements, a wide range of topics are explored, from Hawksmoor's London churches, Japanese temple complexes and the shade-patterns of Islamic cities, to Ruskin in Venice and Aldo Rossi and Louis Kahn in the 20th century. This beautifully-illustrated study seeks to understand the work of these shadow-makers through their drawings, their writings, and through the masterpieces they built.

Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890–1970, documents how architects made environmental technologies into resources that helped shape their spatial and formal aesthetic. In doing so, it sheds important new light on the ways in which mechanical engineering has been assimilated into the culture of architecture as one facet of its broader modernist project. Tracing the development and architectural integration of air-conditioning from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the advent of the environmental movement in the early 1970s, Joseph M. Siry shows how the incorporation of mechanical systems into modernism’s discourse of functionality profoundly shaped the work of some of the movement’s leading architects, such as Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gordon Bunshaft, and Louis Kahn. For them, the modernist ideal of functionality was incompletely realized if it did not wholly assimilate heating, cooling, ventilating, and artificial lighting. Bridging the history of technology and the history of architecture, Siry discusses air-conditioning’s technical and social history and provides case studies of buildings by the master architects who brought this technology into the conceptual and formal project of modernism. A monumental work by a renowned expert in American modernist architecture, this book asks us to see canonical modernist buildings through a mechanical engineering–oriented lens. It will be especially valuable to scholars and students of architecture, modernism, the history of technology, and American history.

Expanding Fields of Architectural Discourse and Practice presents a selection of essays, architectural experiments and works that explore the diversity within the fields of contemporary architectural practice and discourse. Specific in this selection is the question of how and why architecture can and should manifest in a critical and reflective capacity, as well as to examine how the discipline currently resonates with contemporary art practice. It does so by reflecting on the first 10 years of the architectural journal, P.E.A.R. (2009 to 2019). The volume argues that the initial aims of the journal – to explore and celebrate the myriad forms through which architecture can exist – are now more relevant than ever to contemporary architectural discourse and practice. Included in the volume are architectural practitioners, design researchers, artists, architectural theorists, historians, journalists, curators and a paleobiologist, all of whom contributed to the first seven issues of the journal. Here, they provide a unique presentation of architectural discourse and practice that seeks to test new ground while forming distinct relationships to recent, and more longstanding, historical legacies. Praise for Expanding Fields of Architectural Discourse and Practice 'The story told by the authors of this work can thus be considered as the central tool of an architectural transgression.' Critique d’art

Drawing Imagining Building focuses on the history of hand-drawing practices to capture some of the most crucial and overlooked parts of the process. Using 80 black and white images to illustrate the examples, it examines architectural drawing practices to elucidate the ways drawing advances the architect’s imagination. Emmons considers drawing practices in the Renaissance and up to the first half of the twentieth century. Combining systematic analysis across time with historical explication presents the development of hand-drawing, while also grounding early modern practices in their historical milieu. Each of the illustrated chapters considers formative aspects of architectural drawing practice, such as upright elevations, flowing lines and occult lines, and drawing scales to identify their roots in an embodied approach to show how hand-drawing contributes to the architect’s productive imagination. By documenting some of the ways of thinking through practices of architectural handdrawing, it describes how practices can enrich the ethical imagination of the architect. This book would be beneficial for academics, practitioners, and students of architecture, particularly those who are interested in the history and significance of hand-drawing and technical drawing.