Lecture by Anna Bronovitskaya: Louis Kahn (USA, 1901–1974)

DESCRIPTION

Anna Bronovitskaya’s next subject is one of the most influential philosophers and artists among architects, author of a number of hugely original projects who gained wide recognition after the age of fifty.

During the time when architecture strived for airiness, he was creating emphatically heavy, monumental buildings revealing the qualities of their construction materials, such as concrete, brick, and wood. No one equals Kahn in the orchestration of natural light which produces, in balanced proportion, artistic effects and a comfortable environment. He brought to the limit of excellence each of his projects, so while academics praise Kahn’s Salk Institute Laboratories, artists hail Yale University Art Gallery and Kimbell Art Museum, and readers and librarians adore his Philips Exeter Academy Library. The architect’s designs are always perfectly inscribed into the landscape reflecting the spirit of the site where they are located.

An eccentric and stubborn person, Louis Kahn was unable to control either his intimate or social life. Even though he worked on major commissions and was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Kahn was heavily in debt and died on a railway station in New York. Postmortem, however, he became a genuinely iconic figure among architects.

ABOUT THE LECTURER

 

Anna Bronovitskaya is an architectural historian, director of research at Moscow’s Institute of Modernism. She teaches at the Moscow School of Architecture (MARCH) and has dozens of publications on twentieth century architecture to her name. In 2016, Garage published the guidebook Moscow: Soviet Modernist Architecture. 1955–1991 which Bronovitskaya co-authored with Nikolay Malinin. In 2018, Garage published the book Alma-Ata: Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955–1991, A Guidebook by Anna Bronovitskaya, Nikolay Malinin, and Yury Palmin.

SUPPORTED BY

Dornbracht

HOW TO TAKE PART

Entrance is free, but space is limited. Please arrive early.

Priority booking for GARAGE cardholders. Please send requests to members@garagemca.org