Dialogues exchanged between Louis I. Kahn, Anne Tyng and Colin Rowe. Trenton Jewish Community Center
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_zarch/zarch.2018113212Keywords:
Louis I. Kahn, Anne Tyng, Colin Rowe, Trenton Jewish Community Center, Revision of the modern movement, Patterns of growthAbstract
The 1950s represent a major turning point in Louis Kahn’s career; a time in which his determination to comprehend Architecture’s quintessence led to the formulation of a series of decisive transformations in the conception of order and modernist space. His intuitions about the autonomous and indivisible condition of the ‘room’, based on the intimate agreement between the envelope and its structure, entwined with a simultaneous interest in the growth processes of forms, partly influenced by key figures in the North American context such as Buckminster Fuller and Robert Le Ricolais, and above all due to his intense collaboration with Anne Tyng. The evolution of the design for the Trenton Jewish Community Center can be regarded as paradigmatic of this junction of interests. Through it one can see how the transition from a ‘cellular’ layout of organic appearance to a regular chequered plan with classical connotations is naturally assumed. The main purpose of this article is to shed new light on the reasons for such changeover. It therefore proposes to recreate the hypothetical creative process of the architect, by re-drafting the different versions of the design, searching to reveal the key episodes within the decision-making process, such as the debate established between Kahn and Colin Rowe following the latter’s visit to Philadelphia, which may have prompted a radical change in the proposed arrangement model.
Downloads
References
Brownlee, David B., y David G. De Long. 1991. Louis I. Kahn: in the Realm of Architecture: [exhibition]. New York: Rizzoli.
Cortés, Juan Antonio. 2013. Historia de la retícula en el siglo XX. De la estructura dom-ino a los comienzos de los años setenta. Valladolid: UVA.
Eisenman, Peter. 2011. Diez edificios canónicos 1950-2000. [1a ed. en inglés: 2008]. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
Gabriel, J. François. 1997. Beyond the cube: the architecture of space frames and polyhedra. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Gargiani, Roberto. 2014. Louis I. Kahn - Exposed Concrete and Hollow Stones: 1949-1959. Laussane: EPFL Press.
Juárez Chicote, Antonio. 1998. Continuidad y discontinuidad en Louis I. Kahn: material, estructura y espacio. Tesis doctoral. Dirección: Juan Carlos Sancho Osinaga. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Escuelta Técnica Superior de Arquitectura.
Juárez Chicote, Antonio. 2008. “Entrelazamientos materiales”, Arquitectos: Revista del Consejo Superior de los Colegios de Arquitectos de España, no 185: 56–59.
Juárez Chicote, Antonio, y Francisco José Moreno Sánchez-Cañete. 2017. “Tyng Toy, 1949. Resonancias desde los inicios de una pionera desconocida”, RITA, no 07 (abril): 154–60.
Kahn, Louis I. 1957. “Louis I. Kahn”, Architectural Review 121, no 724 (mayo): 344–45.
Kahn, Louis I., y Anne Tyng. 1997. The Rome Letters 1953-1954. New York: Rizzoli.
Kepes, Gyorgy, ed. Vision + Value Series. New York: G. Braziller, 1965-66.
Le Ricolais, Robert. 1973. “Structural research 1935-1971”, Zodiac, no 22: 18–19.
Lucan, Jacques. 2009. Composition, non-composition: Architecture et théories, XIXe-XXe siècles. PPUR presses polytechniques.
Marcus, George H., y William Whitaker. 2013. The Houses of Louis Kahn. New Haven; London: Yale University Press.
McCarter, Robert. 2005. Rediscovering an Architecture of Mass and Structure / Jewish Community Center. Louis I. Kahn. London [etc.]: Phaidon.
McQuade, Walter. 1957. “Architect Louis Kahn and his strong-boned structures”, Architectural Forum, no 107 (octubre): 134–43.
Moneo, Rafael. 1993. “Geometría como única morada”, AV monografías, no 44: 2–3.
Rowe, Colin. 1956. “Chicago frame”, Architectural Review, no 120 (noviembre): 285–89.
Rowe, Colin. 1973. “Neo-Classicism and Modern Architecture II”, Oppositions, no 1 (septiembre): 1–26.
Rowe, Colin, y Robert Slutzky. 1963. “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal”, Perspecta 8: 45–54.
Schaffner, Ingrid, ed. 2012. Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry. Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, 2012.
Solomon, Susan G. 2000. Louis I. Kahn’s Trenton Jewish Community Center. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Tyng, Anne. 1969. “Geometric extensions of conciousness”, Zodiac, no 19: 130–62.
Tyng, Anne. 1985. Louis Kahn’s ‘Order’ in the creative process. Louis I. Kahn: L’uomo, il maestro, 277–90. Roma: Kappa
Valena, Tomas, Tom Avermaete, y Georg Vrachliotis, eds. 2011. Structuralism Reloaded? Rule-Based Design in Architecture & Urbanism. Stuttgart, London: Axel Menges.
Waddington, Conrad Hal. 1969. Behind Appearance: A Study of the Relations between Painting and the Natural Sciences in This Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Whyte, Lancelot L. 1951. Aspects of Form, A Symposium on Form in Nature and Art. Nueva York: Pellegrini & Cudahy.
Wright, Frank Lloyd. 1992. Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings. New York: Rizzoli.
Wurman, Richard Saul, ed. 1990. What will be has always been: the words of Louis I. Kahn. New York: Acces and Rizzoli.