Architectural indulgences or homes for living in?
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Concrete Expressions: New Monumentality, New Brutalism
On Monumentality
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Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (1938)
if it is a monument it is not modern, and if it is modern it cannot be a monument.

Monumentality in architectural discourse of the 1940s
-Architectural historian Sigfried Giedion, architect Jos Luis Sert, and artist Fernand Lger, Nine Points on Monumentality;
-Paul Zucker, ed., New Architecture and City Planning (1944):
-Louis Kahn, Monumentality

J.L. Sert, F. Lger, and S. Giedion, Nine Points on Monumentality
Conclusion:
Monumental architecture will be something more than strictly functional.  It will have regained its lyrical value.  In such monumental layouts, architecture and city planning could attain a new freedom and develop new creative possibilities, such as those that have begun to be felt in the last decades in the fields of painting, sculpture, music, and poetry.
(we can imagine Picasso, Brancusi, Naum Gabo, Calder, even Lgers work)

Kahn, Monumentality, in Paul Zucker, New Architecture and City Planning (1944)
No architect can rebuild a cathedral of another epoch, embodying the desires, the aspirations, the love and hate of the people whose heritage it became.  Therefore the images we have before us of monumental structures of the past cannot live again with the same intensity and meaning.  Their faithful duplication is unreconcilable, but we dare not discard the lessons these buildings teach, for they have the common characteristics of greatness upon which the buildings of our future must, in one sense or another, rely.

Monumentality conclusion (Kahn):
I do not wish to imply that monumentality can be attained scientifically or that the work of the architect reaches its greatest service to humanity by his peculiar genius to guide a concept toward a monumentality.  I merely defend, because I admire, the architect who possesses the will to grow with the many angles of our development.  For such a man finds himself far ahead of his fellow workers.

Louis I. Kahn, 1901-1974
Intentions
If I were to define architecture in a word, I would say that architecture is a thoughtful making of spaces.  It is not filling prescriptions as clients want them filled.  It is not fitting uses into dimensioned areas It is a creating of spaces that evoke a feeling of use.  Spaces which form themselves into a harmony good for the use to which the building is to be put
I believe that the architects first act is to take the program that comes to him and change it.  Not to satisfy it but to put it into the realm of architecture, which is to put it into the realm of spaces.
Louis Kahn

Map of Europe
Paul Philippe Cret, Main Building, University of Texas, 1933
George Howe and Lescaze, PSFS (Philadelphia Savings Fund Society) - now Hotel Loews, Philadelphia
Louis I. Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

Entrance, Chapel Street elevation (south faade)
Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

Early perspective sketch from the southeast, showing the existing 1928 building in the foreground and Kahns addition
View of New Haven, Connecticut
Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

Plan


Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

West faade


Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

North elevation with glazed curtain wall
Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

Exterior views of north elevation
Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

Reflected ceiling plan
Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

Adath Jerusalem Synagogue, Philadelphia, 1954: geometric archaic forms: triangle circumscribed by circle
Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

 Interior view of tetrahedrons
Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-53

Stairwell looking up
Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74

Treated stainless steel panels and glass asymmetrically organized
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74

Ground floor plan, typical floor plan, + section
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74

Interior perspective of double-height light court
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74

Library court
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74

Interior view of galleries
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74
Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-74

Interior view of conservation lab
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965

Model, Summer 1962
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965

Laboratories seen from the cliffs
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965

Ground floor plan of laboratory wings: containing head buildings for office use, oriented toward the ocean; longitudinal rectangular laboratories, and service rooms at the opposite end
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965

Perspective of Meeting House, 1961
Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965

Early sketch with vegetation in central courtyard
Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965

Perspective of courtyard with poplars, before December 1965

Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965

Study Tower and office interior

Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965

Study Tower and laboratory wing with stair towers
Kahn, Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1965

massing evocative of Tuscan hills + differentiated areas
Kahn, Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1965

differentiated space + towers with sheltered walkways
Kahn, Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1965

differentiated space
Kahn, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, State of Gujarat, India, 1962-1974

a complete environment for learning
Kahn, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, State of Gujarat, India, 1962-1974

Guest houses with cylindrical stairwells and view of courtyard with administrative wing on left, library (centre), and auditorium (right)
Kahn, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, State of Gujarat, India, 1962-1974

Faade detail + Interior of Phillips Exeter Academy Library

Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959-1965

Canal emptying into lower reflecting pool
Jonas Salk Institute, La Jolla (nr. San Diego), California, 1959-65
there is a time of day when the sun, reflecting on the ocean, merges with light reflecting on the rivulet of water in the trough bisecting the central court.  Ocean and courtyard are fused Architecture and nature are joined in a metaphysics of place
Stephen Holl

Kahns use of materials
Kahn used materials in a way that anticipated the effects of weather and age, and in this he departed radically from the Modernists.  The stains that rapidly appeared on the stucco of Gropiuss Graduate Center at Harvard made it look shabby and cheap.  By contrast, the streaks on the concrete and the bleaching of the teakwood panels at Salk made the building appear durable and strong, recording years of salt spray and bright sunlight.  Kahns are clearly buildings with a past - and a future.
Carter Wiseman


Details: cast-in-place concrete with projecting joints and lead tie-hole plugs (top left); travertine paving stones in central courtyard (top right); concrete structure and oak wood interior door (below left); concrete wall with rainwater scupper at walkway floor along outer edge of labs (below right)
Louis I. Kahn
On New Brutalism
New Brutalism
Alison + Peter Smithson and the Hunstanton Secondary Modern School, Norfolk, England, 1949-54
Gerhardt M. Kallmann, Noel M. McKinnell, and Edward F. Knowles, Boston City Hall, 1969
Paul Rudolphs Six Determinants of Architectural Form, 1956

We must learn anew the meaning of monumentality
The environment of the building, its relationship to other buildings and to site;
(in terms of scale; proportions)
2. Functional aspect: must consider the building as a whole, and human response;
3. Particular region, climate, landscape and natural lighting conditions;
4. The particular use of materials (find the potential of the material);
**5. The psychological demands of the space (through use of symbols) to arouse curiosity, wonder, anticipation;
6. The spirit of the times (zeitgeist).

Paul Rudolph, Yale School of Art and Architecture, New Haven, Connecticut, 1953
Paul Rudolph, Yale School of Art and Architecture, New Haven, Connecticut, 1953

As seen from the rooftop of an adjacent building
Paul Rudolph, Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York, 1963-67
McGill University campus, Montral
Fleming and Smith, Frank Dawson Adams Building, 1951

Housing Engineering and Geology
functionalist, steel-frame, 4-storey blg, with large windows for natural light; bridge
ARCOP, Stephen Leacock Building, McGill University, 1965

ARCOP, a firm contributed to by Affleck, Desbarats, Dimokopoulos, Lebensold, and Sise who were also responsible for the University Centre
Dobush, Stewart, and Bourke, Stewart Biological Sciences, 1965
Stewart Biological Sciences, Dobush, Stewart, and Bourke, 1965

Model
Dobush, Stewart, and Bourke, McLennan Library Building, 1969, and
Redpath Library Building, Montral
Marshall, Merrett, Stahl, Elliott, and Mill Architects, Burnside Hall, 1970
Education Building, Ellwood, Aimers, and Henderson Architects, 1971
Chadwick, Pope, and Edge Architects, Samuel Bronfman Building,
McGill University, 1971
Dobush, Stewart, and Assoc., Rutherford Physics Building, 1977

on the roof there are 2 astronomic observation domes used to study stars
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