(audience applauding) - Thank you, Wendy, that was wonderful. Our next speaker is William Whitaker, who is the curator of collections, and collect . . . curator,
and collections manager of the Architectural Archives of the University of
Pennsylvania School of Design, which is one of the world's
leading repositories of architectural records,
including those related to the life and work
architect Louis Kahn. Bill trained as an architect
and architectural historian at the University of New Mexico and at the University of Pennsylvania. He has organized and
curated over 30 exhibitions, including retrospectives on
Antonin and Noémi Raymond, and on Anne Tyng. He also directed research
for a landmark retrospective on the architecture and
design of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and associates, organized by the
Philadelphia Museum of Art. Bill is coauthor of
the award-winning book “The Houses of Louis I. Kahn,"
which Yale Press published in 2013, and this was the
first comprehensive study of the architect's house designs, and one critic called this book, quote, "A spellbounding account of the artistic "and intellectual maturation
of one of the most important "and influential architects
of the last century. "It is quite simply
the most important book "on Kahn to be published
in over two decades." I want to note that Wendy's
biography was not published until four years later, so this critic was not making a
comparison to Wendy's book. As curatorial consultant for Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture, Bill has been an indispensable member of the team that produced
the exhibition's world tour. I have tremendous gratitude to Bill. A large portion of this show
draws from the Kahn archives at Penn, and, quite
literally, this exhibition could not have happened
without their loans. But Bill has been so generous and helpful at the Kimbell in so
many other ways as well, including giving press
tours, and docent training, and helping with the installation as well. He arrived over a week ago, I believe, and he's been hard at work
at the Kimbell ever since, helping us put this show together. As keeper of the Kahn archive, Bill has an intimate
and expert understanding of the architect and
has been a vital resource for many projects
preserving Kahn's legacy. He helped to bring to fruition one of Kahn's unbuilt projects, the Roosevelt Memorial in Four
Freedoms Park in New York, which is the topic of his talk today. Please welcome Bill Whitaker. (audience applauding) - Great. I'm actually not gonna
talk about FDR. (chuckles) Being here at the Kimbell, how could you not reflect
on this amazing building in this amazing place we're at? So, as Eric mentioned, I'm
trained as an architect, so I'm gonna be bringing that training into my talk today, and in fact, I think I bring that into all the work that I do at the archives. It's part of a school of design, rather than a library or a museum, and so seeing the preservation
of these materials as a fundamental tool in learning and educating the public, I
think, is incredibly important. And so it's a great
privilege to be involved in exhibitions that not
only get the material out in the world, but get me out in the world, and so I'm learning as much from you as you are from me, I hope. So, just a random thought that came up when Wendy was talking about Lou leaning against the analytical study, where he's critiquing the man standing. I heard him, he has wrote
somewhere, "the lonely polecat". (chuckles) This man, who's at a distance. Anyway, so I'm gonna talk
about a few things today. My lecture title is Uncrating Kahn. Obviously, making reference to the fact that we put these treasures in crates. When we send them out in the world, they arrive here at museums,
and they're uncrated, and what's the process behind that? Not so much as curatorial,
selecting, all of that, but it's that question of engagement, and how the public, and even architects and others engage with the work, so really it's unpacking
the mind of the architect and the way of thinking. I'm gonna primarily do that
through looking at a series of drawings very closely,
a number of which are in, and on view, in the exhibition, so you'll be able to go back
and look at those more closely after my discussion this morning. But of course, I'm gonna
show you great images of the buildings, and
walk you through them, and do many other things
as an architect would. I'm gonna focus on four
projects in particular. Two houses and two monumental works. The Fisher House and the Esherick House, and the Salk Institute and
the Kimbell Art Museum. And then lastly, I'm just gonna, a quick reflection on the
idea of change over time, on the idea of continuity with the past. So, I wanna start with a
story that I heard yesterday. We gave a special gallery tour for some of the alumni from
the University of Pennsylvania, who live in the Dallas area, and others traveled farther
afield for that tour, but Jane and Duane
Landry, who are architects in Dallas and are native Texans, came up to me after the talk and just gave me a really delightful story that I think resonates with
what I wanna talk about today. So I'm quoting them
directly from yesterday. So they were young students who left Texas to go to the East Coast. It's the mid-1950s, and
it's exciting times. America had been at war,
there was the Depression before that. The 1950s,
especially the mid-50s, are a time of optimism, and
really, architects and others are really very much
looking towards the future. They went to Yale, and managed
to stay there a semester in the fall of 1955, and
discovered that Lou Kahn had left Yale at that time and had gone to Philadelphia, to the
University of Pennsylvania. So, they very smartly took the
train down to Philadelphia, (chuckles) if I may say so myself, and met with the incredible
dean, Holmes Perkins. When I started working at the archives as a young masters
student in the early ‘90s, I used to part Holmes’s car. (chuckles) (audience laughing) And so, they met with Perkins
in the old Hayden Hall, and Perkins was one of
those old school deans, who could make things
happen, and they expressed their interest in coming to Penn, and in studying at this incredible school that was growing up around Kahn, but included many other
figures like Ian McHarg, Aldo Giurgola, and many others. And so, after a brief discussion, Perkins gets up and
sees Lou Kahn and says, "Hey, Lou, why don't you come over "and talk to these people for a while?" So, they, I think they
knew who Lou Kahn was, and they went down to the
lower level of the building where there's some battled furniture and the coffee machine, and
proceeded to sit with Lou for a couple hours. And Lou gave them a couple hours, and these are people
he didn't know, right? And if you stay around
long enough at the archives and you meet a lot of
people who worked for Lou, were students of Lou, they
all were infinitely frustrated at the fact that someone would come in, anybody from anywhere,
who had an interest, Lou would drop what he
was doing, (chuckles) and spend time with them, right? And it was like Wendy was saying, they were the sounding
board in that moment, and it gave him this
extraordinary opportunity to talk something through with someone. So, the Landrys were at Penn thereafter. They graduated, they came back to Texas, they worked on many amazing projects, they worked for O'Neil Ford,
one of the great architects here in Texas, someone I greatly admire, and if I can sneak out and
get to the little chapel up in Denton, I will. (chuckles) But not today. It's a work that I've been
thinking about for a long time. And they ended our conversation with a beautiful little gem of thought. At some point, they've, we've
had this great experience in architecture. We've worked for a lot of great things. What did I, what did we
get from Lou Kahn, right? What was the takeaway? And, you know, they met
with him for two hours, he sat on some of their juries, they never had him as
a specific architect, they lived in the area,
they saw the Kimbell when it was first opened,
they had that impact of seeing the work. Well, what Jane said
is, what they took away is that a building is a living thing. And it was a really nice way of saying it. Wendy's, the title of Wendy's
book is You Say to Brick, so Kahn is talking to things. He's seeing architecture
in rather unusual ways, but the idea of a building
being a living thing, it's a visceral thing, it's
not that it's a person, but it does have character. It has resonance, and
it's affected by things, as we all are in our emotional lives. So, thank you for that
story, and it was a nice way to begin. (chuckles) So then, I want to move on to the idea that I've gotten to
spend the past seven days here at the Kimbell, and for someone who has seen Kahn's work from
many different points of view, from students, from people
who worked with him, the clients, and I'm showing you here, Ric Brown and Lou Kahn,
here at the Kimbell. In 1972, they're doing a
walkthrough in August '72, a month or so before the official opening. They're tuning up the building, and looking very sharp in doing so. And I had visited the Kimbell many times, seven, eight times. I jumped in a car as a
student with my classmates and drove the 10 hours from Albuquerque and came here to see
it for the first time, but only a day at a time,
a few hours here and there over the course of 25, 30 years. I've been here for seven days straight. I have been in this building
with this incredible staff, here, and I, it's no exaggeration to say that all of the staff, I
observed an incredible respect for this Kahn building, and
it's like in everything they do, from the housekeeping staff
to the installation staff, to the curatorial staff, to the director, this is a building that
expects something of you and is very demanding in a way
that is an elevating thing, right, and you can see them respond to it, and in the way that they do the work, the joy that they bring to it, and that's a special
thing, and I got to do that for seven days. (chuckles) And that was really
exciting and wonderful, but it's the idea that a great building, regardless who designs
it, asks something of you, and if you are realizing that
in the way you work in it, you live in it, you participate in it, that's something very special. And so that's one thing
that I wanna reflect on. The second thing I wanna reflect on is I really wanted to be
over there (chuckles), talking in the Kahn
building, and I (chuckles), I mean no disrespect to anyone. This is far easier,
it's a bigger audience, a bigger auditorium, but I've been in lots of Kahn buildings, I had the pleasure of
working in it all week. I wanted to stand at the bottom, at that auditorium,
looking out at you people and experience the building
from that point of view, because I think Kahn
probably thought about that. And that that experience
of being in a building with a very thoughtful architect, you can take joy in how
one experiences a building and the different opportunities
that you have in using it. So perhaps, someday in the future, I'll be able to experience
it from that side, but there's also this idea that you, and I'm pointing to
Ric Brown and Lou Kahn, and here's Marshall
Meyers, on that August day where they're doing the
inspection tour in the auditorium. Here they are, Lou's sitting down, checking out the furniture. (audience murmuring) And then a slightly different version of that image we know so well, in color. It got me thinking of an experience I had. A dear friend and
a mentor passed away. She was an architect,
and I was asked to speak at her memorial service. And
this was in an old church in Philadelphia. Her parents were Episcopal ministers. Missionaries, rather. And so it had to be at a
great Episcopal church, and this was in Philadelphia. Old St. Peter's Church. It's the church that
George Washington went to. It's a very strange church. It's got the pulpit on one side, and then straight ahead on
the other side is the altar. This is not a typical church,
but things are very symmetric, and on either side are the pews, but, of course, they're very strange, because the congregation
has to go that way, and then they have to go that
way, and they have to turn, and so there are seats on either side, so they're little booths, right? So, I had prepared some remarks, and just had a few notes on my pad, and I have to say, I had never
been in this building before. And so it was my turn to speak, and you had to go outside of this space, you had to go into this dark area behind. There was a strange little
door with one of those old, 18th-century door handles
with hammered iron. You opened this thing,
it was a square door with an arch in it, and then you emerged, you had to duck down and you emerged out into the middle of the
church, and you were on axis, everyone was on either side of you, right? It was a beautiful pulpit that was broad, and it had a wonderful fabric there, something that you'd want
to put a special book on. And beside you, there
was a little seat, here, that if you had occasion to,
and I did not (chuckles), although maybe I felt weak in the knees every once in a while during my talk, that you could sit down. Above me, almost like a wineglass, was a column and then
a much narrower pulpit, so standing above me,
like a rocket ship almost, was this very small pulpit with a special hexagonal element above, where about 10 feet above me, one could also speak from, right? And then there were balconies
up at about that height, surrounding this space. So I got to speaking,
and I wasn't exactly sure where it was going, I had a few thoughts. And then you could feel how the architecture was giving something to you. That broad space there,
you opened up your arms, you stretched out a bit. Your chest could open
up and then you were, you could see the people. They were very close, in
fact, they could be behind you at certain instances, but you felt like you were engaging, and
you felt like they were, the building was asking
you to do something, and elevate something,
and I think I did okay. But then it got me
thinking, this occasion, of the talk today, of that space up above, and that little space, and
how it was a reserve space. We weren't giving our talks up there. Maybe you need to wear special clothes to get up there, but at certain times, you have to even elevate
higher, and there, in that upper pulpit, was no place to sit. It's not as broad, it's tighter, and you have to push harder. That's maybe where the special
services happen, right? So the shaping of that
space and how architecture is creating a structure that allows you to engage in different
ways, and is supporting you as a participant in it,
becomes very interesting. There's a wonderful chapter in Moby Dick that is a sequence of things
that almost sounds like... a Lou Kahn lecture. It's the street, the chapel, the pulpit, and the sermon, and so, if you
look at the little chapter, and if you've read Moby
Dick, it's a very long book, but it has hundreds of chapters, and they're all about three
pages long, more or less. The one on the pulpit is
a description of a pulpit, and it's the prow of a ship,
and the priest has to come out and go up, he describes
him going up a rope ladder to get there, and he
pulls the rope ladder up, and he's separated from the congregation, and it's this distancing
and remove from the world that's being emphasized there, and that idea of a prow of a ship, meaning you're leading the world, is what, how one might summarize
what Melville is saying. And so the idea that there is aspects and moments in architecture
where you need to push out into a different world,
and somewhere beyond what we're knowing, and that
architecture can support those things, I think is
an interesting reflection. This idea that elevated use again, that you find a way to
get into that territory through how you're shaping architecture. This is something that
makes Kahn very special, and I think a great
architect to learn from. So, just one last
thought before moving on. Some things are sacred,
some things are not, whether or not they are religious, right? So that there can be the
sacred in the everyday, there can be the sacred in an art museum, a sacred in a house, and
there is something in, I think, all of Kahn's
architecture that seeks that out. Okay. So I forgive you for not
being over here. (chuckles) - [Eric] It’s a question of numbers. - I got it, I got it, I'm
totally onboard. (chuckles) And this is a nicer stage, it's broader, and this is a huge screen, so... But this is one of the things, I think, I was missing, is being
at the bottom looking up, and the wonderful red glass, and the glow. When you, of course, build a space that needs to be darkened down, the wonderful lunettes at the end, that Wendy was describing,
the clear stories on the side. You need to have a softer, darker light. Kahn, of course, commissioned
glass from France, the same people who had
made the stained glass for the cathedrals, to do that. What is that red glow and the color of the fabric at the end? What does that bring to you as a speaker? So, let me move on. So, the... Kahn had a series of
important clients in his work, and he perhaps did his best work when he had clients who
carried on a rapport, understood where he was going
and were patient with it. They challenged him, they fought with him, but they understood what he was pursuing, and many of the staff did this as well, so I just wanna introduce you
to Norman and Doris Fisher. Sadly, they've both
passed away at this point, but they're people that
I got to know quite well, and they had great stories about Lou Kahn, and just, they commissioned
a house in 1960, right as Kahn, right before
Kahn got internationally famous and super busy. They waited four years to start
construction on their house, and they went through four
or five different designs, almost each one was completely
different than the other. Although at the core of the design was, was something I'll talk about in a moment. And then, it took three years to build. Same timeframe as the
Kimbell, actually. (chuckles) Their young, teenage daughters had moved from elementary and middle
school to high school by the time they moved in. And so, in some ways, one might think that they suffered greatly, waiting for this incredible work, but in fact, they knew
what they were getting, they were patient, they
had that sensibility that people like Jonas Salk, Jules Prown, and many others had in working with Kahn. And so they, they also lived
in their house beautifully. It was very comfortable for them, and I began giving tours of
the houses about 20 years ago, and have given many over the years. They're all private houses, and the tours are usually for architecture students. But it gave me time to talk to the Fishers and hear their stories and
start to absorb things. So Norm Fisher had a favorite story. Of, and here is the Fisher
House from the garden side, versus the street side. There was never a front and
a back to a Kahn building, and so I really should
be showing you an image on the other side, but
this is a better image. And so when the house was first finished, this is a suburban bedroom
community in Philadelphia. It was a community in which
Norm had his medical practice. He was just a family physician. The family could bike over
from where they had the office in the house, and watch, and see the house under construction. And they had neighbors who
were friendly with them, and so, but it's basically
a commuter neighborhood, and people would walk
over and go to the train. So one of the neighbors
who was a close friend, talking to other neighbors
who were just around and nosy and curious about this strange building being built on a block of
otherwise Craftsman bungalow and Colonial Revival, were skeptical of this building. Were not, were very resistant to this strange thing
landing and being resistant to the idea of it being different, and maybe not seeing the understanding that is behind it. So
Norm's story was this, is, a man was walking by the house, they were talking about, "Well,
what do you think of it?" And the small group of people said, "I don't know, it's a little
weird, it's a little strange." And another guy, who was,
had a glint in his eye, said, "I'm gonna wait until it's uncrated." Right? (chuckles) (audience laughing) So, a box, crates are really great. They're utilitarian. I think there's crates here that have held some of the great arts
of the 20th century, so they are containers and vessels that can, that hold very special things, and they do it in a non-ostentatious way, so maybe that would actually
be a compliment for Kahn. But Doris had another story that she told, and I had a class with students, and we were all gathered,
sitting in the house, when she was telling us this story. Let me go inside. So it's this wonderful house of two cubes, and in how one connects
the different parts of the building, you're
creating a sense of a character of a building, how it connects to a place, and that's something I'm
gonna go into more in my talk. And you can see this connecting point between a cube that has the bedrooms, a view out into the nature
and to the landscape, and then a view into the living cube, where there's a place for eating, a sitting area, an inglenook, and then the kitchen
in a two-story volume. The light moves through this
house in very beautiful ways. So, Doris had an interesting story. Their friends, once they moved in, had followed this odyssey and this drama of four years to build,
four years to design, three years to build. They were equally as skeptical
as the guy on the street. And, but, they had the benefit
of coming into the house, and spending time with it,
and having dinner there, and what Doris revealed is,
that was very interesting, and she came to expect this of people, and to take time and to
take care to watch for it, is that over time, the
people who were skeptical and saying, "Oh, this was crazy. "You guys were fools,
this makes no sense." Over time, they would get quiet. Maybe at a dinner party,
they'd be criticizing what was done, and then,
Doris would describe, "I would see the moment
where they would get it." Right, something about
that building gripped them at that moment in time, and it took people longer than others, and maybe
some people never got it, but it does grip, it does engage, and so, fundamentally, what I wanna
talk about today is that: what is it about Kahn's
buildings that grip us in their experience, and again, as an architect, I think that's
what all architects seek out in their work, and the
idea that someone responds in that way, that they say it's wonderful, is something that even Kahn
said he was looking for in his work. Okay. So, here's that wonderful inglenook, which is, Vitra built a beautiful,
full-scale construction of it in the exhibition. The only thing they're
missing, and I'm pointing here to the fireplace made of local stone. A realization I had in the gallery where the final space in the gallery is dedicated to a special
exhibition on Kahn's pastels. On the north wall, there's
a sequence of images of places in Egypt, and
there's a wonderful, very vivid pastel of two columns, one of the Egyptian temples,
and Kahn is drawing out every one of the joints between the stone. This is in shadow, they're red
in color, there's electric. And here at the, it got me thinking that he's thinking the same
thing at the Fisher House, where he takes the mortar,
and he deeply rakes it out. In fact, you can see the
fingers of the masons where they pushed in the mortar. He's making this electric
connection between materials. In the pastel, he's
doing it in vivid color. Here, he's doing with a shadow joint. So, the wonderful way in which
light comes into this space, and the way that the room is shaped around the journey of
light through the day. At the Kimbell, it's much
more. It’s a sanctuary of art. It's symmetric, it has a
graceful scale and a repose. This is a family place, right? It's not gonna have that
same sense of symmetry, and it gives you the sense of invitation of the sitting area, and
how I always describe it is, you pass by this space every morning. You are in your bedrooms,
you're getting dressed, you're running out, and
you're having your breakfast on your way out to your medical clinic, or you're off to school, or what not. This is the light in this
house in the morning. There's no grand views. These faceted windows
that come into the space in a strange way are shaping light. They're giving lots of
exciting little vistas, as Norm Fisher described it. But this light on this bench,
and Kahn changes the material from cypress, which is
has good rot resistance, to oak, which is
resilient against touching and just daily use. The light, when it hits
oak, is truly beautiful, and it sparkles in a way
that cypress doesn't. And so every day, you pass by that space. Maybe it becomes an unconscious thing, but that's the invitation
that this building gives, for the family to gather around, to pause there, to spend time there, and then to connect as
a family in that space. So, the idea of the architect at work, and I'm gonna be looking
at some of his drawings, and the work that an architect
does in the drafting room, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. These are sketches of the Fisher House. Kahn working on the
project for the first time. This is the fall of 1960. And you can see him at
work, with charcoal and a bunch of different sketches, and all of a sudden, he
doesn't quite know what to do. (chuckles) He's still thinking about it. (chuckles) Okay, he's got some direction. Didn't take him as far as he needed to go. But then into drawings, and into how he would
describe things to others. So this is the Esherick House, so the second project I wanna talk about, and this is a wonderful
house up in Chestnut Hill. We associate the beauty of natural light with Kahn's architecture,
and the Trenton Bath House is an incredible work where
you see that come together, but I think the Esherick
House is the first work where that powerful
sense of natural light, and the ability that he
has to fully manipulate it, comes into its first mature expression. I wanna see that through the point of view of a couple of drawings. This is a perspective
that he would have shown to the clients, to Margaret Esherick, a single woman, a bookseller. So this is a one-bedroom house. This is a house that faces a park. It's in the woods. It has a beautiful austerity to it. He envisioned a
forecourt, surrounded by trees before you arrive at the building. This is also a drawing that he presented to one of the local
families, the Woodwards, who up in Chestnut Hill,
had a lot of control over what was built there. They were taste makers in a sense, and they owned the land, and
they wouldn't sign over the deed until they had seen the design. So this was a design that was
shown to Charles Woodward, and he was concerned that
this would be a detriment to the neighborhood. So Kahn had to make a
few alterations to it, but in it, you can see figures, you can see some objects in the windows, but a wonderful sense of
color and light and space. This drawing, however,
is the kind of drawing that Kahn was making at that desk. Maybe by himself, where he's
moving back and forth from. He's thinking, he's moving
around it, he's considering it. This is really one of, I think, the, in terms of connecting
us with this thinking, one of the most important drawings, or at least revealing
is maybe a better way, that we have in the collection. So, one can assume that Kahn
starts, in the beginning, in this drawing, in the middle, and that he's drawing an elevation. And really, it's a drawing
where he's studying the nature of the windows in the building, that which will bring light and
shape light in the building, to make room for natural
light in the building, and much like the
perspective we saw before, it's colored, it has much
of the same color palette. It shows elements like vegetation, vines growing up the side of
the concrete block walls, a figure standing here in the shadow, and Kahn often liked to
have figures in shadow in his drawings. So I'm thinking of Wendy's comment again. But here you also see, and
I'm pointing to objects that are in the windows. These little knickknacks or
tchotchke that are around. Maybe there's a plant here that
he includes in this drawing. So, he draws that first. Then he's working on details, so he's starting to surround that, on the margins of the drawing, with details of how individual member, wood members are coming together. So we're seeing a
section through the wall, and we're talking about
a cut through here, and then looking across that, and how the glass will be pushed forward, and a ventilating pair of shutters that open out with no glass,
but a screen that pulls down. So you can see, F for fixed,
and I'm pointing to that on the drawing, and
then V for ventilating, where you see the recesses inside. So you have this push and pull, and he's thinking about that. So surrounding the
margins are those details. And then, he pulls in
closer, and he leaves a note to the staff people,
and I'm sorry it looks like that's gotten a little out of focus, or a little grainy, and you
can read the transcription, but basically, the summary
is he's giving directions to the staff, and in this case, we can identify it as Marie Kuo. And it, I need you to draw a section from the top to the bottom,
and from the side to the side of the windows, and
all our other decisions will be based on what we learn there. If you're not sure of what you're doing, talk to Bert or Dave,
and you can also consult with our builder, right? And so, this is an architect
in a decisive moment, where you see his creativity, and I think I got the drawing again. You see him drawing this first. You see him doing the details, and then giving a set of
instructions of what to do next. So, he literally is picturing
the entire life of a house. He's seeing the people in the house while he's designing the details. So he's engaging with that sensibility, and literally coming
up with a drama of use, and so, in his drawings and elevations and studies for
architecture, you often see these sorts of elements and figures, where there's dramas
playing out in his drawings. Interestingly, when you
go to the pastel show, and you walk around, and you
see the beautiful pastels that are quite moving, and maybe capturing his emotional feel and connection with that space, there are very few, if any, figures in those drawings, so again, the way architects make drawings and what they choose to
include in a drawing and exclude in a drawing, and this is always a
constantly changing process, provide us insights into the questions they're asking in that moment, the things that are
compelling them forward in their decision-making, so we see a lot in a drawing like this. So... Making room for natural light. So here, let's go a little bit further into the Esherick House. The view from the street,
you see the thickened, faceted thickness of the walls, so the exterior woodwork, the
glass pulled to the outside and then inset, we've, a recessed back or the ventilating shutters that open up, and you can see in the difference of the unweathered wood
versus the weathered wood that thickened. So this is giving room and making room for natural light to
interplay with the surfaces and to create a drama. Of course, the stucco on the outside is very beautifully done, and it also will pick up
subtle changes in the light. On the inside, in the living room, and if you run a diagonal
through this space, south is that way, so we're
getting the morning light moving through this space,
and that thickened facade. Here it is with those shutters open, and how dramatically it
changes our perspective on this space. These shutters, by the way,
you have to open, right? So he's allowing you to engage
and change the nature of how the building
relates to the landscape. This is not just drawing the curtains, although in a sense it is. This is physically built
into the architecture. You touch the architecture
and you're turning something, you're turning a latch
and you're opening it up. Kind of like my experience
at old St. Peter's Church with that 18th-century latch. You get engaged, you become
aware, your alertness comes on. The beauty of the natural
light coming in this space becomes evident. The way he's shaping the windows and positioning them in
different vantage points so they're capturing
different qualities of light throughout of the course of the day. The tall windows opening
up to Pastorius Park, this narrow window,
bringing a slice of light, which is also blocked by the chimney, so this is not a window
meant to be viewed out of, it's a shaper and a sculptor of light. And you see how, coming across, that slice of light moves
throughout that space through the course of
the day, and, of course, it's changing throughout the year. That's something that
very beautifully happens at the Kimbell, and I think
you're well aware of that. White oak here. White oak here, Apitong, a
kind of teak, on the other side. Wood that sparkles and engages
versus wood that doesn't. So those material
subtleties of the interior or a building are very important, and they're not meant to
be bright, ostentatious. These are subtle relationships, and so beautifully
realized at the Kimbell, also here in the Esherick House. And then beautifully, outside, where you just see the simple
austerity of the house. That chimney, like a sundial of sorts, creating a very mysterious sensibility as one approaches the house. Not such a domestic-looking house, right? This is, again, that
kind of crate or a box, but it's this incredible jewel. What Vincent Scully called
a brimming chalice of light. So, the fascination that architects have with the play of natural light, of course, is throughout art, and here
I'm showing you a group of paintings by Claude Monet,
of the Rouen Cathedral, where he spent months, and
capturing, essentially, the same view of that cathedral throughout the course of the day. A fascination that, I think,
artists and architects and landscape architects share alike. And what is it about that
journey of the course of the day that can be so delightful and wonderful? And we're coming towards
the end of the day. Maybe we're at the
afterglow of the sunset. Becomes an intoxicating
thing if you reveal it in the proper way, and of course, an artist can do that on a canvas. An architect has to do that in a context. So the beautiful series
of pastels of Corinth. You see this theme repeated,
and even in the drawings of Siena and other places that Kahn made, and especially the pyramids,
you sense that he had to spend the entire day
there to see that journey from dawn to dusk, and even
into later parts of the day. And you see this series of
drawings made in January of 1951, and he's moving around and experiencing the
different light qualities. This drawing is particularly beautiful. There's a sequence of slides
in the landscape section, taken by George Patton,
the landscape architect for the Kimbell, someone
who traveled with Kahn in 1950-51 as a fellow. Patton took photographs of the journey and was at Corinth, was at Egypt, and you see the beautiful,
vivid color of Patton's slides. These are Kodak Ektachrome. They have not turned a bit in their color for over 60 years now, and
you see that same color in Kahn's pastels, right? And so that color awareness,
he's not doing it there on the site. Often he's doing those sketches
much later, weeks later, but that vivid color sense
that's in his imagination stays there, so we're getting a sense of just how much is in his mind when he's thinking about
the smallest things, right? So the Salk Institute, the second building I wanna talk about, and
I'll talk about a couple of buildings here, to take us
into that sense of character. And we've talked about making
room for natural light, and I'm gonna continue to talk about that, the idea of how Kahn is defining
the character of a place, so something fundamental about the way that we engage with the buildings, and how we're gonna elevate
our experience of them, what he's aiming at in that, and in that sense of landscape. I'm emphasizing the sense of
landscape here at the Kimbell. But the Salk Institute, and again, that sense of changing light quality. Just to stay with that for a moment. At the end is the Pacific. Behind us is the American continent. On either side, these two
buildings for science. This wonderful water feature, that is, is it the buildings pulling
apart and separating, like the division of cells? Or is it the gravity that's
pulling it in, right? It's in this interesting
balance and sense of balance. We see how, through the course of the day, the building, like the Esherick House, is being very responsive
to revealing the quality of natural light in this wonderful plaza made from the same travertine used here at the Kimbell Art
Museum, which of course, comes from Tivoli in Rome,
and it's the travertine that was used by the Romans. So what else would you
use if you're Lou Kahn? Towards the end of the day,
again, that sense of the dusk, or the afterglow, and
then elements like this where you, even the moonlight
reveals the building in wonderful ways. There's of course some
artificial light there, but when asked about how to
light his buildings at night, Kahn often referred first to, well, obviously, it should be
revealed in moonlight, right? And the poetry and power
of moonlight in the garden is something that should
be appreciated first in thinking about how to
illuminate a Kahn landscape and a building. But that wonderful courtyard space, which is this awe-inspiring space, was actually a cloistered garden, and that view that we
have, that's on symmetry, and you get this sense of the
grandeur and sublime view, that wasn't what they thought at first. It was a cloistered garden,
and we see a model view here, and if you go to the gallery,
you'll see this model, but in a later state. So I think you're familiar
with the idea in art where there would be a painting, and over time, the artist changes it. It might have been recorded
and photographed in some way, but there's different states. So this model changed three or four times. We have photographs that
Kahn took that reveal that. Here, we see the cloistered
garden in that space. It's a monastic experience at first. So, I take you to the next
drawing I wanna show you, and to unpack this a little bit. This is not a drawing
that's in the exhibition. It's a blueprint. This is very light-sensitive,
and I didn't bring it with me with a good high-resolution scan, so I had my assistant,
Heather, photograph it on her phone and email it to me, so that's why this strange thing is here, so that's my fault. (chuckles) It's also, I had to
correct the perspective, so this is not quite exact, but you can see the Salk Institute, that canyon landscape, here. The Pacific is up here and
I'm pointing to the sketch at the top center. The laboratories in the rectangular box are placed here, and
maybe a sequence of spaces for scientific research or for housing, and out here is a wonderful element that was conceived of, that
would be a meeting house. A place that Picasso
could come and be a part of inspiring connection
and thinking about science in new and dynamic ways. If we go a little bit closer,
something really wonderful is revealed, and when we were
out in the venue in La Jolla, we had the opportunity to
meet with Jonas Salk's sons, Jonathan and Peter, and
Jonathan told a wonderful story about, in 1959 or 1960, the
family was living in Pittsburgh. They had a summer cottage
on a lake in West Virginia, and one weekend they were all down there, and Lou Kahn came out with an assistant, and they spent the weekend, Jonas, Lou, and Lou's assistant,
working on the project. And Peter saw that and had a conversation with his father during
that that he recalled, which I'll get back to in a minute. So what excites me about
this is, look at this. X and Y, and these funny
things coming together, and you see male 23. So what are we seeing there? It's DNA, right? (chuckles) So, Crick is part of
Salk, and he's someone who has a little bit
to do with DNA, right? So, and then you see a
figure standing by a counter with cabinets, here, and
then you have a description in the middle of the drawing, here, where it's listing out
warm rooms, cold rooms, storage rooms, laboratory.
You're getting an inventory of the things that a scientist
needs to have close at hand. So what do we think is going on here? This might have been the drawing at the cabin in the woods,
and there is Jonas Salk describing to Lou Kahn, this
incredible mind-blowing idea of DNA as a fundamental building
block of our experience. Okay? So then to pull back out again, you see other lists and other site plans, and how things are developing. There's a list of those different elements that are gonna be part
of the scientific space, the laboratories, again, maybe beginning with the site at the
center of the drawing, and maybe with a sense
of the landscape beyond, but then filling in all
these details around that, and then this little jewel here, where you see this
little mysterious thing, and so, what Jonathan Salk said is, "My Dad was so excited,
he came and said, oh, "do you know about the
monastery in Assisi?" So you see here is Assisi,
and you see here, this sketch. Okay? So Kahn is talking about
that monastic experience and has something very specific in mind. So there's the church,
here's the monastery, there's an approach, and
it's connected to a town. And so this got me thinking,
well, the Salk Institute has this place of elevated use, this kind of scientific
research. It’s symmetric. It's rather solid in the way this is, but it faces to a town, right? And the meeting house,
one of the docents on the tour asked why
that was such a jumble. It got me thinking, well,
maybe that's a town, and that's this medieval Italian town that's a jumble that sits on a hillside, which becomes very interesting. So there's that sketch, and this, and you get a pretty good sense of what he's thinking about there, and he's bothering to
draw the town, right? So, of course, this is
a place he had visited in 1928-29 and made this
very beautiful drawing. You can see his more
stylized signature down here, but a beautiful drawing, figures included, of the approach to this. We see that in a modern day photograph. A little bit more distant, you can see how people are gathered. There's a bit of enclosure and some views out into the landscape as you approach, but there's this great
portal that you see here, and then there's an upper set of stairs, and then an upper entrance. So here's the entrance that Jonas Salk walked through every
day going to the Salk. He parked his car down the hill, he walked along this brick
path that leads you in. There's a set of steps,
this wonderful tower form, there were steps below. So most everyone who comes
to do scientific research on a daily basis, entered the Salk, comes at it in the way
that you approach Assisi. You walk under the building,
and you go to that side. You walk into the building,
and you pass through a series of spaces that includes the laboratories, includes these spaces
where you can do research. It includes places where you can interact with other scientists, and
you have places of retreat. You have these wonderful studies, and these balcony spaces. You have shutters that
you can open and close in the way that you can
with the Esherick House, engaging you with changing
perspectives on the landscape. And you have these
wonderful balcony spaces where there's blackboards included, where the kind of conversations and exchanges that can happen, that energize scientific research, occur. And then, you get this, right? So, this is not a space
where when you first arrive, it's this big view, although,
when you go there now, this is more what you get. But as a conception,
it's more of a journey, and it's a landscape journey, and it's a profound
connection with landscape. So, there are, of course,
examples for this. These two buildings
separated to allow the world to pass through. This is in London, in Greenwich. We see the Royal Naval
Observatory up here. These are by the English
architect, Sir Christopher Wren, and at the bottom of the
drawing is the Thames. We see two buildings facing an open space to a water body, and then beyond is this, at the top center of the drawing, is this wonderful little cube of a space. That's the Queen's House by Inigo Jones. So, if you're in England
in the 18th century, the world revolves in some
ways around the monarch, and so you part the
waters, part the landscape, and you create that
relationship of the power of the monarch in relation
to these buildings, but this wonderful building
splits apart into a duality. We have examples here
in the United States. Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village at the University of Virginia, where groups of buildings, where learning and thinking occur, then give way to a garden,
to an open space, to a lawn, at the center of which is a library. Of course, for a school
of higher education, that makes sense. Books are a vessel, but of course, in this wonderful print
from around the time that the University of Virginia
was completed in 1815, 1817, we see, of course, the sun
rays bringing enlightenment into the space. There's even a rainbow
over here, lest we forget. But of course, Jefferson's (mumbles) thinking about the American continent and its potential is
telling us to go forth. So what is Kahn giving us, right? So not only is it that
view out to the Pacific, with that vista, it's also the view back into the American continent,
and this sense of nature, and the world that is
being brought through and channeled that through that space, that really makes it
one of the most sublime, transcendent spaces on the planet, but it's that it's looking two ways, and in how you get to that
space that elevates the purpose. So while people come there
every day, they do their work, the building is demanding
something of them, and I think it brings
out a sense of respect in the work that they do, similar to the experience
here at the Kimbell. And so here we are at the Kimbell. And I'm not go inside the galleries in what I'm talking about here. I want to explore the
outside a little bit more, and to look at a couple
of drawings in a moment, but the wonderful way in which light is so magically brought
through the building. The way in which the landscape elements, the fountains, the
stillness of this moment, revealed in this beautiful photograph. What a beautiful place
sitting in the portico is at any time of the day,
but just how responsive that is to the outside world. The stones, the light effects
at the end of the day, the vista up the west lawn,
and the trees that are there that are creating that
sense of space and repose, for the experience of art, and at times, depending on where you are, the sounds become more
animated and engaged. Here, the weir edge of the fountain, activating a sense of
sound, and maybe dulling some of the traffic on Camp Bowie. And at times when the wind is blowing, you get this inner,
interesting chattering of it. That sound of walking on the gravel, that is so beautiful, and the movement around that landscape through the trees as a way of preparing
you for the experience of the art that's inside, and
that there's this austerity of the kind of trees that are used. On one side, they're gnarly, and
they twist along Camp Bowie. Along the car side, they gently branch out and they give shade for the cars. On the by-foot side, you have the wonderful yaupon holly trees. You have the allee of trees from the Will Rogers Pavilion,
and on the south side, you have the crepe myrtles backed up by another group of trees that are . . . stand with more grandeur
than the crepe myrtles. And then, moving up that west lawn area, and the perspective back, how it's giving that building a sense of perspective, a place to have a picnic. The Four Freedoms Park
and the Roosevelt Memorial was mentioned, and I give
a great talk about that, but one of the aspects of that project is the beginning of
the memorial experience is a grove of trees under
which you can gather and you can have a picnic, right? So there are things that
are amenities, if you will, things that are offerings, that
are part of the structure of the building and the landscape; that are part of the opportunity
to walk into this building and stand in front of some
of the great works of art. So, this trip, I had the opportunity to see a drawing that I
haven't seen in person before, and so, Patty Decoster,
who's the Registrar, and Larry Eubank, who's
the Facilities Manager, who's been around here at the Kimbell since the construction days,
took me down into the vault, and opened this wonderful cabinet, and pulled out a drawer, and placed on top of a viewing table a framed drawing that Kahn had sent along with two pages of a letter sent to Mrs. Kimbell. This was in June of 1969. Kahn apologizing for the fact that he was gonna miss the
groundbreaking ceremonies for the Kimbell. He had an emergency in Ahmedabad. He hadn't paid attention to the project as much as he should've, and
they were really frustrated, so he had to go. So he missed a great moment here, but basically, he took
that as an opportunity to talk about some of
the landscape qualities that he envisioned for
the Kimbell project. And so, there's a sketch,
and this is the sketch as it's reproduced in the books. Seeing it in person, in sepia-colored ink, on a beautiful piece of paper, his handwriting to Mrs. Kimbell, is a very special thing,
but he's describing this, and what we've come to learn is actually, much of this drawing is
done by Harriet Pattison. They're quickly doing
this, and she's drawn out some of these things, and
then Kahn is coming in and lettering over some of it, but it's describing the
vision of this building. And so I wanna read a few
notes from the letter. And I think I've got enough
time 'cause I'm almost done, so. First of all, he's apologizing
for not being there, and saying something
just beautifully simple. "I hope you will find my work
beautiful and meaningful." He goes on to talk about
the entrance of the trees, that he describes, and
I'm pointing to the area in the center, where he
says entrance forecourt. He says it's the by-foot entrance, as opposed to the by-car,
or automobile, entrance. Again, no front or back, right? They're different characters
of how you're experiencing and arriving at the building. That there's an allee of trees that link Camp Bowie and Lancaster, and that there are two open porticoes, and you can see that labeled clearly, that flank the entrance terrace. In front of each portico
is a reflecting pool, which drops its water
in a continuous sheet about 70 feet long. The sound would be gentle. The stepped entrance court passes between the porticoes and their pools with fountain around, which one sits on. So he's creating lots
of great places to sit, and they're very thoughtful places to sit, the benches and the other elements. So, there was an idea
of how water would move through the site that was more ambitious than what was built. You know there's the fountains
facing the porticoes, which provide beautiful reflections. At one point, there was a source fountain in the middle of the court where
the yaupon hollies are now, where there would be the
beginning of the journey of water, an odyssey of water, a drama of water, as Harriet characterizes it,
that then would terminate in the south lower
courtyard and would flow out through a grotto in the way that you see in many of the Italian
Renaissance gardens, which are terraced gardens, so you have, beyond the travertine, a
bit of the Villa d'Este, and other great Italian
Renaissance gardens in the design development of this project. So let me read on a little bit more. So, and then he very clearly
talks about that idea of the west lawn gives
the building perspective, so that experience of how
you approach the building. So, the next drawing,
I need a little help, so I need a volunteer,
so I ask Nathaniel Kahn to come up, if he will. And if you are very observant,
I have my tape measure here, so, one thing that I struggle with when you're showing stuff
in a presentation is, these drawings have a physicality to them, they have a scale. So what I wanna show
is this drawing, okay? So why don't you come over here, and I'll take the architecture side, you take the landscape side. - [Nathaniel] Very good. - [Bill] And we'll hold this up. This is a 16-foot tape measure, and I struggled with how
to get you guys to realize, and I'm just, Nathaniel's
walked across the screen, and we're at 16 foot
there, and if we put it up, you can see that, as projected, it's, I don't know, it's
maybe about 18 feet or so? This drawing is actually
15 feet long, okay? So, many of the drawings
I showed you are not, they're huge and they're
actually quite tiny. Thank you. On behalf of the Academy. (laughs) (audience laughing and applauding) So, I was saying, the way that
an architect makes a drawing reveals much about what is preoccupying or drawing them artistically. So that little drama that I created was to help you guys understand
the scale of this drawing, and that the Kimbell, in its section, and this is a little bit
before what was built. So you can see here, in the middle, is the Maillol sculpture
that is in the courtyard where the restaurant is. For a time, was considered
in many different places around the landscape. It's here in that pool in the center. But then you see all of this space that takes you up the
hill towards the street, where the Carter Museum is,
and that you get a sense that in order to understand the magnitude of the landscape, that
sense of the perspective, that leads up to the building,
he needed to draw it out, and that you see there's
little bits of differences here or there in the design, and just, he's almost just recording
this gentle slope that's about 10 foot difference, that then you see revealed most clearly down in the difference in elevations between the by-foot side and
the car, the by-car, entrance. But he's gotta see that so that he's understandings
its nuance, its character, and this shows just how
important landscape is in Kahn's imagination.
So one of the things that I really, I think I'm very proud of, as being part of the Vitra exhibition, and this was not my thinking, this was Jochen and Stanny, the curators, thinking about the structure. We've got to talk about
landscape with Kahn, and it's given us a way to really reconsider its significance, and the people who were a part of that. So Harriet Pattison, being
very close to Kahn in this, is really helping him
figure out that nuance. Being there as the sounding board, so there are many collaborators, Marshall, on this project. August Komendant on the,
and Marshall Meyers, but it's a fusion of things. Kahn is bringing all of these
things together at once, so it's part of what makes
the building so powerful and significant. So, the idea of, and let me
get back to my notes for a second. That, where was it? That profoundly connects
us with the Kimbell is Kahn's idea that a
museum needs a garden. And that sense of a
museum needing a garden is in many museums, and I just wanna show
you a beautiful museum in Philadelphia, designed by
Kahn's teacher, Paul Cret. And so, I've mentioned
a lot of collaborators. There are collaborators
that architects carry in their imagination, that follow them and look at everything they do, and Kahn talked about Paul Cret, and the architect Le Corbusier being two people who
were his great teachers. One he knew well, he worked
for, he was a student of. The other, the best we can tell, this is Corbusier, he never met. But these are people you
answer to as an artist, and he held out. Cret was one of those individuals, and Kahn trained in the
classical architecture that is emanating out
of places like France in the 19th and early 20th century, and is very influential
to the city, beautiful, in our country, was an
incredible educator and... influence in that, but
he was not an architect just looking back in time. He was also looking progressively forward, seeing architecture as an evolution. That classicism can be as responsive to the modern world as modernism was. So this is his wonderful
entrance to the Rodin Museum. It faces the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which is this grand-scale gesture connecting our city hall in
Philadelphia to our art museum. Their strong allees of
trees that go up and down this boulevard, it's quite wide, Parisian, almost Champs-Elysees, scale. Beyond a few rows of allees of trees, you have this wonderful entrance
portico with two columns. Just out of view is
Rodin's famous sculpture of The Thinker, right? So you pass through this gateway, which is a construction of
the Rodin Museum in Paris. Almost like a ruin, something
that engages the history, and, perhaps, suggests
that sense of continuity. There's lots of places to sit here, and often you see people
sitting in that space. You walk through that gateway,
and you're in a garden. You're on gravel, you hear your foot fall, moving through this space. You have a pool that is gently reflecting, and then a weir edge with water cascading into a smaller basin. You have to walk around, so
you're not directly entering this building. You have this question of
approaching the building in an unusual way, and then when you get up, the entrance is actually not here. You have to go left or right. You have a choice to make. In this case, left or right,
and Kahn at the Kimbell, it's by-foot or the by-car entrance, into a wonderful interior
that has a gentle size and scale, a top-lit gallery. This is a building that
Kahn knew quite well in Philadelphia, and was finished right at the time he was
completing his degree at Penn. So, I'm not saying that that
is what he's thinking about when he's designing the Kimbell. I'm showing you that that's
just part of a tradition in architecture, among some architects in how you look to the
past, and you engage with the architecture of the past, and in how we as
architects, or the public, the people who experience,
and work, and play, and live in those buildings,
respond to those places. Places to sit, things that
you are being empathetic and understanding with
how people use space and experience space. So, all of those
experiences of the landscape that you move through, to
then get inside the Kimbell, are of course preparing you
for the experience of art, elevating you, allowing
you to let your guard down as you move into that space. So, you see a drawing like this where Kahn is attempting
to encapsulate his thinking about architecture, saying
it comes from the making of a room, and that there's
particular character and quality to the making of a room that involves the quality
of light that's inside. The character of the structure, and you see a figure by a fireplace, under a beautifully shaped vault with a column that's another
presence in the space. You see another figure by the window that is not in shadow, perhaps
is sitting in a ray of light, and that idea that there is, again, a figure standing in shadow,
becomes very interesting. Kahn quoting a great American
poet, Wallace Stevens. Misquoting him, really, but thinking about what building, what slice of
light does your building have, and that the powerful
dimension that comes in, but also this wonderful idea
of the kind of conversation that is made possible in a
certain character of room. With two people, three people, the idea of an engagement
versus a performance, as Wendy suggested, I think
becomes an interesting thing. So he's thinking of the light of that, he's thinking of people. In a house, he's thinking about places where a family is coming together, or the inhabitant is engaging
with the life they wanna live. So just a few images of the
interior of the Kimbell. Three sketches that,
like the Corinth drawing, shows this building at
different times of the year. So the delicate, gentle light here, you see just in shades of pink and white. Some idea of the silvery, nice light that so beautifully graces
the vault surfaces so evenly, thanks to Marshall's natural
light fixture design. Here just intuited the
will that it should be in a certain way, but
it's got its garden space. The museum needs a garden. This is perhaps in spring, and the pink and gentle greens giving
way to a more solid canopy of growth. Figures in that space
engaging with art and nature, both through the quality of light and the presence of landscape. And then on a dull day, where the light very much recedes down. Kahn described the Kimbell as a big house, and the experience of art
should have that be part of its character, and so the idea that at times of the
day it gets very dark, almost too dark for the experience of art, but then it's light
again, and you feel that, whether you're aware of it or not, and that's part of what's
the magic of the building, I think. And so, in closing, just
touching on that idea of change and continuity with the past. This is the cover of Fort
Worth Press for October 1972, and this is showing the interior
of the Kimbell galleries. Perhaps this is even the
gallery where the Kahn show is. You see a group of people
sitting on a series of chairs that remind me both of Hans
Wegner and Mexican vernacular. You see a great rug, a Persian rug similar to the wonderful rug that's in the Yale Center for British Art. You see the art set against wood walls. That's changed a lot. When you go over to the Kimbell now, it's a very different experience, and things change and things evolve and, but this is where it began,
and it has that sense of a big house, right? And so, bringing forward that idea of the kind of conversation you would have if you were in a room with two people, rather than more people, and that idea that this building is really designed to embrace that sense of change, as landscape and nature involve. I'll end with just the notion, thinking about the possibility
of this hotel next door, and that idea of change,
and the idea of a presence being there that is an
intruder, in a sense, on a conversation between
a building and a landscape, and that, how that profound
sense that, I think, Fort Worth has one of the only examples of on the planet, is it is
just so special here, that that will then have
an intrusive quality of this other entity being
part of the conversation. A rather loud (chuckles)
intruder, perhaps. So it's hoped that the
exhibition being here, these sorts of conversations
and exchanges we're having, will help come to a happy resolution, so that some of the quality
of the experience of art, that Kahn's design, the landscape design, all those people who are
a part of the design, including the clients,
including the people who take such great care
of the Kahn building, are a part of, will
continue into the future. So, that wonderful sense
that Kahn is with us, he's in these buildings,
he's in his drawings. We hear his voice because
he saw them in the drawings that he, he saw ours in
the drawings that he made, I think we should celebrate,
and I think this exhibition does that very well, so thank you. (audience applauding) - Thank you, Bill. You're invited to come back
and give another lecture in the Kahn auditorium. (audience laughing) Now we'll take a break now. (audience applauding) It's almost noon and we'll
come back at 2 o'clock to hear from Jules Prown and
the children of Louis Kahn, so 2 o'clock, see you then.
