Architect: Louis Kahn

Sky Architecture

Sky Architecture

On this day in 1933, a certain gorilla scaled the Empire State Building. King Kong might have had an easier time if he had taken the lift. This design for the elevator shaft, by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, is held in the Drawing Matter collection. Here are are more examples… Read More

AH: Christ & Gantenbein on Louis Kahn

AH: Christ & Gantenbein on Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn’s drawing is a floor plan, a typical plan. It is characterised by the stark expression of the poché. The coal-coloured stains lend the drawing the quality of a painting. Their roughness contrasts with the minuscule dots suggesting the mullions of the facade. It’s a sketch on paper, not on… Read More

Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 2

Drawing, Movement and Medium: Michael Webb in conversation with Mark Dorrian, Episode 2

Mark Dorrian and Michael Webb

Mark Dorrian: I’ve loaded some images – Michael, by the way, doesn’t know what’s coming up. After showing this, the drawing of the building, I thought it would be useful to show a couple of slides about the context in which this project then appeared. The Furniture Manufacturers Building is… Read More

Louis Kahn: Kansas City Office Building

Louis Kahn: Kansas City Office Building

The Kansas City Office Building – never built but designed in many variations between 1966 and Louis Kahn’s death in 1974, in close collaboration with the structural engineer August Komendant – is a clear example of the poetics of weight and mass in contrast with prevailing ideals of structural lightness.… Read More

Simplification

Simplification

Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg

The first of these short excursions into work on paper looked at how drawings were used to place built forms in their settings. Grounded in traditions of illustration, they were spacious, suggestive and pictorial. Architects draw to many purposes. In Part II, on Simplification, we turn from the arts of… Read More