Design & Desire in the Twentieth Century

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while and asking yourself, “OK, I understand this blog is all about design but where’s the desire in the Twentieth Century?” To all of you, I say, “Hold on, here it comes.”

Of the many documentaries on architecture and design, “My Architect” is the most personal and emotionally engaging. As director Nathaniel Kahn explains, the film is, “a son’s journey to find his father.” You could take that at face value, but what makes the film so extraordinary is that the director’s father was no ordinary father, he was Louis I. Kahn, perhaps the most influential American architect of the second half of the Twentieth Century. The relationship between father and son was no ordinary relationship, either. Nathaniel was Kahn’s only son and the youngest of three children that Kahn had by each of three women in his personal life. Of course, it isn’t all that unusual to have three wives, after all wasn’t Frank Lloyd Wright married to three different women? The difference in Kahn’s case is that his relationships with his families were concurrent, although Khan of course was only legally married to one of them. Kahn led three secret lives. Many of his colleagues who were interviewed in the film, including:  Phillip Johnson, I. M. Pei, and Vincent Scully were unaware that Louis Kahn had even one family!

Louis Kahn’s death was almost as mysterious as his life; he died of a heart attack in the men’s room on the lower level of Pennsylvania Station in New York City in 1974. His body lied unclaimed in the New York City morgue for three days because Kahn had scratched out his address on his passport and had no other identification on him. Son Nathaniel was just eleven years old at the time of his father’s death and recalled reading about the event in the newspaper.

View the trailer for “My Architect” here.

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Instititute, La Jolla, CA (1965).
Source:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Salk_Institute1.jpg

Through the making of the documentary Nathaniel hoped to come to a deeper understanding of his father by interviewing people who knew Louis Kahn. The documentary consists of interviews with the architectural legends mentioned earlier, Kahn’s associates, clients, students, the people who work in his structures, and even the Philadelphia cab driver who transported Kahn to his office every day. Footage of Kahn’s magnificently imposing structures serve not only as a framework for these interviews but also form a chronological timeline for referencing the architect’s career.  Among Kahn’s buildings are the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art, the Richards Medical Research Building, the campus of the Salk Institute, the Kimball Art Museum, and his masterpiece, the Capitol Building and Parliament Complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a project completed in 1983, nine years after the architect’s death. While it is usually a nearly impossible task to render the three-dimensionality of architecture on film, the director seems to have successfully suggested the monumentality that these buildings possess. Truthfully, I am at a disadvantage, however, to really judge as I have not had the opportunity to visit any of Kahn’s work in person. Joseph Vitarelli’s sensitive haunting score compliments both the beauty of the architecture and heightens the emotions evoked throughout the film.

Yes, but what about the desire? In 1930, Louis Kahn married Esther Israel, seven years after he had graduated form the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in architecture. A daughter, Sue Ann, was born in 1940. Seven years after Sue Ann’s birth Kahn opened his own office with his wife’s help. Kahn, during this time, designed in the International style, the dominant style of that period, but he had no passion for it. 1950 was a turning point for Kahn. While in Italy serving as Resident Architect at the American Academy in Rome, he drew inspiration from the ancient ruins in Italy, Greece and Egypt. He began to develop a vision for modern architecture that would be as monumental as these ruins had been in their age.

Shortly after his return to the U.S. in 1951, Kahn engaged in his first extra-marital relationship with Anne Tyng, a young architect in his office. The two became close while working on a public bath house for a park in Trenton, New Jersey. A very melancholy scene occurs when Nathaniel takes Miss Tyng to revisit to the site: Anne wanders through the bath house recounting her experiences working on the building with Kahn, and then remarking in astonishment on its utter dilapidation. According to her, “Kahn said that work was the most important thing. The one thing you could count on.” Anne had a daughter by Kahn in 1954, and broke off the relationship with him shortly after that. Apparently Anne could count on her work more than she could count on Kahn.

Next, Nathaniel moves on to Kahn’s third relationship, with the woman who is his mother, landscape architect Harriet Pattison  — almost thirty years Kahn’s junior. The two met at a party in Philadelphia (by the way, all three families resided in the Philadelphia area). Harriet on Kahn: “He was completely absorbed by ideas,” she added that she and the architect shared “a great love of what they were doing.” Clearly Harriet’s family was unhappy about the relationship; her brothers hated Kahn. In an interview with Harriet’s sisters, Posie begins to tell Nathaniel about Harriet: “There was a certain romanticism in your mother…” when sister Edwina breaks in, “…that drove me up the wall!” One begins to get the gist of the family dynamics here. Harriet, herself, is presented with a dreamy rather other-worldly outlook living alone in her big house on the coast of Maine. She appears almost delusional in her opinion of her relationship with Kahn, but who knows? We weren’t there. Harriet’s appearance leaves both her son and the viewer to make their own conclusions.

Louis I. Kahn with son, Nathaniel (circa 1970).
Photo: Harriet Pattison; © 2003 Louis Kahn Project, Inc.
Source: http://www.offoffoff.com/film/2003/images/myarchitect.jpg

Esther Kahn died before Nathaniel had the opportunity to speak with her; one even wonders if she would have even given him permission to do so. We’re left with a video interview of Esther (who looked as if she had been made up by the same makeup artist who worked on Joan Crawford towards the end of her life) prattling on about Kahn’s musical talent on the piano.

The filmmaker’s journey takes him to Jerusalem where Kahn had hoped to build a synagogue in the Old City. The loss of this commission was one of the architect’s greatest professional disappointments. Nathaniel makes no pretense to hide his fascination with either the city or with the young female Israeli soldier who answers his questions.

Louis I. Kahn, The Capital Complex, Dhaka, Bangladesh (1983).
Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Jatiyo_Sangshad_Bhaban_%28Roehl%29.jpg

Nathaniel’s journey ends in Bangladesh where he may have come closest to finding his father in an emotional interview with Bangladeshi architect Shamsul Wares. Kahn’s influence still lives through Wares’ deep devotion to him. Wares says, ‘Kahn paid his life for this [the Bangladesh Capitol Building]…His failure to satisfy family life is a sign of his greatness, and his son will understand this.”

Nathaniel Kahn created this film in order to attain a better understanding of who his father was, yet Louis I. Kahn still remains an enigma to both his son and to me. What I do comprehend, however, is the undeniable influence that Kahn had on others, especially the three women who sacrificed so much to remain in this unconventional long-term relationship and on his only son, who, in “My Architect,” revealed much more about himself than perhaps he had originally intended. Lastly, after watching the film I developed not only respect Kahn the father as a great artist whose work will continue to endure, but also an appreciation for Kahn the son as a talented film maker as well as a warm thoughtful person.

For Further Reading:

Hughes, C.J. (2010, August 13). Louis Kahn Synagogue Expansion Stirs Controversy. http://archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/2010/08/100813louis_kahn_synagogue_controversy.asp

Karas, David. (2010, July 22). Work in progress at ‘Ewing’s national treasure’ - Officials tour bath house, work of famed architect.
http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2010/07/work_in_progress_at_ewings_nat.html#mode_smoref_twitt

Robinson, Duncan. (1997).  The Yale Center for British Art: A Tribute to the Genius of Louis I. Kahn. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Sudjic, Deyan. (2004, July 25). Tell Me About My Father. The Observer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2004/jul/25/architecture

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