NONFICTION - May 23, 1993

LOUIS I. KAHN: In The Realm Of Architecture by David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long, introduction by Vincent Scully (MOCA/Rizzoli: $65; $40 paper; 448 pp.) Published to accompany a major exhibition organized by MOCA, this book is intended to be the definitive scholarly source on Louis Kahn, a visionary architect who thus far has been given short shrift in the history books. A deeply philosophical idealist and early advocate of public housing, Kahn wrestled with the monumental architecture that typified public buildings of the 20th Century and attempted to invest it with a humane quality, as well as a sense of history.

A Neo-Platonian at heart, Kahn believed that the future of architecture lay not in turning its back on the past, but in reinterpreting the essential qualities at the heart of the great buildings of history. Kahn loved ruins for the way they revealed the soul of a structure, and he regarded natural light as of paramount importance in any structure. Just fourteen Kahn projects were completed in a career that spanned almost five decades, but in the best of them he sculpted light with a sensitivity and elegance worthy of James Turrell (pictured above, an upward view of the entrance court at the Yale Center for British Art).

A somewhat eccentric character who claimed not to read or write, Kahn would make a good subject for a biographer, but one doesn’t learn a great deal about him here. Organized into six sections that interweave chronology and Kahn’s philosophy of architecture, this highly technical book seems intended instead as a compendium for students and architects. If that’s not the case, the authors presume a familiarity with architectural terms on the part of the layman that’s wildly optimistic.

One could also fault the authors for their unpoetic descriptions of Kahn’s buildings. As can be seen in Grant Mudford’s stunning color photographs of Kahn’s completed projects, these amazing buildings really do call for accomplished description, but the text often feels relentlessly dry, if thorough. This exhaustively researched book is positively jampacked with nuts and bolts details of Kahn’s work, and though those details are often quite dull, given a close reading they do clearly chart the creative process of a great mind.