Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn, 87, a retired drill press operator for Bell & Howell, died Saturday at his home in Thousand Oaks following a sudden illness. Kahn was born Dec. 23, 1909, in Milwaukee. He spent his childhood and early adult life in Milwaukee, and in 1939 he moved to Chicago, according to his daughter, Arlene Adrian of Newbury Park. After moving to Chicago, Kahn got a job with a company that sold leather to shoe repair shops. In 1940, he married his wife of 56 years, Erna.

Anne Tyng, a pioneering female architect whose ideas about geometry influenced Louis Kahn's modernist buildings and who later had a child with him, has died. She was 91. Tyng died Dec. 27 in Greenbrae, Calif., where she lived, said her daughter, Alexandra Tyng. Although Tyng was among the first group of women to graduate from Harvard University's architecture school in 1944, she struggled her entire career to be taken seriously. Firms would not hire her because she was a woman.

Over the objection of the late architect Louis Kahn's family and several prominent figures from the world of architecture, the San Diego Planning Commission approved Thursday a 113,000-square-foot, $19.6-million addition to the Salk Institute, Kahn's La Jolla masterpiece. If there are appeals to Thursday's decision, as has been threatened by a former Kahn associate, the matter will probably be presented to the San Diego City Council in mid-July, city planner Mike Tudury said.

Facing a student questioner at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology shortly before his death in 1974, the great architect Louis I. Kahn belittled his own achievement. Noting that he began his artistic career at age 3, he added: "And I can definitely say I think I've accomplished nothing." This self-disparagement was no mere affectation. Steven Korman, a client, recalls holding Kahn as he sobbed that his own father had never respected him.

The San Diego Planning Commission has approved a controversial addition to the Jonas Salk Institute, originally designed by architect Louis Kahn. The plan was approved unanimously at a Thursday meeting, with Dr. Jonas Salk appearing to speak in favor. Although relatives of the late architect have banded together to lobby against the addition, no one spoke against the proposal at the meeting. Fifteen letters were received by the commission, a majority of them in opposition to the plan.

On its surface, the documentary "My Architect," which traces an illegitimate son's painful quest to understand a distant father, is about dishonesty. But the film's subtext is the more baffling link between creative genius and human fallibility, between a man who created some of the 20th century's most moving architectural works and one whose personal life left deep psychological scars on those closest to him.

Nicolai Ouroussoff's article on the Museum of Modern Art's "Un-Private House" exhibition ("At MOMA, Homes for a World in Flux," July 2) brings to mind a comment by the late Louis Kahn regarding a particular profession. He said, "They are like chickens who think they can fly." He continued, "And when they lay an egg, they think they have had an idea." Architects face formidable social and moral dilemmas today as in: The failure of a great democracy to realize a built environment commensurate with its unique political achievement.

Facing a student questioner at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology shortly before his death in 1974, the great architect Louis I. Kahn belittled his own achievement. Noting that he began his artistic career at age 3, he added: "And I can definitely say I think I've accomplished nothing." This self-disparagement was no mere affectation. Steven Korman, a client, recalls holding Kahn as he sobbed that his own father had never respected him.

When the visionary American architect Louis I. Kahn died in 1974 at age 73, his front page New York Times obituary listed a wife and a daughter as his only survivors. Not quite. For Kahn, a flawed man whose buildings were impeccable, left not one but three families, all living within a few miles of each other in the Philadelphia area but never sharing the same physical space until the funeral.

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.

When the visionary American architect Louis I. Kahn died in 1974 at age 73, his front page New York Times obituary listed a wife and a daughter as his only survivors. Not quite. For Kahn, a flawed man whose buildings were impeccable, left not one but three families, all living within a few miles of each other in the Philadelphia area but never sharing the same physical space until the funeral.

On its surface, the documentary "My Architect," which traces an illegitimate son's painful quest to understand a distant father, is about dishonesty. But the film's subtext is the more baffling link between creative genius and human fallibility, between a man who created some of the 20th century's most moving architectural works and one whose personal life left deep psychological scars on those closest to him.

Nicolai Ouroussoff's article on the Museum of Modern Art's "Un-Private House" exhibition ("At MOMA, Homes for a World in Flux," July 2) brings to mind a comment by the late Louis Kahn regarding a particular profession. He said, "They are like chickens who think they can fly." He continued, "And when they lay an egg, they think they have had an idea." Architects face formidable social and moral dilemmas today as in: The failure of a great democracy to realize a built environment commensurate with its unique political achievement.

Louis Kahn, 87, a retired drill press operator for Bell & Howell, died Saturday at his home in Thousand Oaks following a sudden illness. Kahn was born Dec. 23, 1909, in Milwaukee. He spent his childhood and early adult life in Milwaukee, and in 1939 he moved to Chicago, according to his daughter, Arlene Adrian of Newbury Park. After moving to Chicago, Kahn got a job with a company that sold leather to shoe repair shops. In 1940, he married his wife of 56 years, Erna.

Sixty-seven eucalyptus trees have crashed to the ground on what now resembles an open pit. A fleet of bulldozers has begun excavating, pushing the defenders of a classic work of architecture to the brink of no return. It may appear that the battle is over, but the critics of a controversial expansion of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies say the real fight has just begun. In recent days, the skirmish between the institute and some of the nation's premier architects has widened to include state and national offices for historic preservation and agencies that give the research facility up to $28 million a year in federal money.

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.

For Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, designing the Louis I. Kahn retrospective now at the Museum of Contemporary Art (through May 30) was a student's opportunity to pay tribute to his master. "When I was young and looking only at modern things," Isozaki recalls, "Kahn taught me about history and its monuments. I learned the importance of simple geometries, the subtle distribution of light in a space and that concrete can be beautiful."

It will be another year before the impressive retrospective on the life and work of American architect Louis I. Kahn reaches the site of its inspiration and organization: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Imagine the Acropolis, or Stonehenge, being confronted by bulldozers. Imagine one of the 10 most important pieces of 20th-Century architecture being irrevocably damaged. Imagine being suitably outraged and having no one listen. And if that wasn't enough, imagine having as your adversary a renowned scientist who invented the vaccine for polio. That's the fix in which an elite corps of international architects say they find themselves, with nowhere to turn.

For Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, designing the Louis I. Kahn retrospective now at the Museum of Contemporary Art (through May 30) was a student's opportunity to pay tribute to his master. "When I was young and looking only at modern things," Isozaki recalls, "Kahn taught me about history and its monuments. I learned the importance of simple geometries, the subtle distribution of light in a space and that concrete can be beautiful."