Louis Kahn
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"Louis Isadore Kahn" ( – March 17, 1974) was an American architect, based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own Atelier (art)/atelier in 1935. While continuing his private practice, he served as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957.

From 1957 until his death, he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Kahn created a style that was monumental and monolithic; his heavy buildings do not hide their weight, their materials, or the way they are assembled. Louis Kahn's works are considered as monumental beyond modernism. Famous for his meticulously built works, his provocative proposals that remained unbuilt, and his teaching, Kahn was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. He was awarded the AIA Gold Medal and the RIBA Gold Medal. At the time of his death he was considered by some as "America's foremost living architect."

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Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.

All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to light.

To express is to drive.And when you want to give something presence, you have to consult nature.And there is where Design comes in.And if you think of Brick, for instance,and you say to Brick,"What do you want Brick?"And Brick says to you"I like an Arch."And if you say to Brick"Look, arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lentil o.

A Work of Art... is not a living thing ...that walks or runs.But the making of a life.That which gives you a reaction.To some it is the wonder of Man's Fingers.To some it is the wonder of the Mind.To some it is the wonder of Technique.And to some it is how Real it is.To some, how Transcendent it is.Like the 5th Symphony it presents itself.

Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column became.

Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.

Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.