Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style: A Life in Architecture

Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style: A Life in Architecture is not a monograph containing photos of Kahn’s masterpieces. Although it is technically a biography, Carter Wiseman offers readers something more. Wiseman manages to bring Kahn to life through his words.  It is a book that is about more than architecture, it’s about the life of Kahn, his pain, anguish and tortured relationship with architecture. For any student or architect that has fallen in love with Kahn’s work, and his religion of architecture, then this book is a must read. For anyone that is a skeptic or hater, this book gives an invaluable insight into the spirit of Louis Kahn. Wiseman uniquely organizes the book not around the projects that Kahn completed in his illustrious career, but around Kahn’s relationship with his clients. Each masterpiece designed and built by Kahn is as much a result of Kahn’s talents and perseverance, as its clients whom are Kahn’s greatest disciples. Many books about Kahn focus on Kahn and his work, but Wiseman tells the story of an architect, who had the fortune of having a succession of clients that made his career possible, and how the masterpieces that are loved by all would not have been built if not for the blind loyalty of Kahn’s patrons . I used to think an architect was only as good as his library of books, but in Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style: A Life in Architecture we learn that an architect is only as good as his clients. An important lesson for any young aspiring architect.

Book Statistics:

Author: Carter Wiseman
Price: $22.00-$40.00
Publication Date: March 2007
Format: Hardcover
Length: 288 pages
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
ISBN: 0393731650
ISBN-13: 9780393731651

Quotes from the Critics:

“It is not merely a collection of Kahn’s architectural works….it gives…a richness and layering not usually associated with architecture books.” (Urban Land, Howard Kozloff)

“Louis I. Kahn is lavishly illustrated…and contributes the most comprehensive analysis of the architect’s life and works to date.” (DocoMomo, Olivia Klose)

Publisher Synopsis:
The first in-depth biographical study of the brilliant but elusive architect who fundamentally redefined twentieth-century architecture. Now ranked with Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, Louis I. Kahn brought a reverence for history back into modern architecture while translating it into a uniquely contemporary idiom.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with colleagues, coworkers, clients, and family members and illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs this book documents the uniquely American rise of a poor immigrant to the pinnacle of the international architectural world.

It illuminates the richly diverse personal relationships Kahn had with such clients as Jonas Salk and Paul Mellon, and the romantic entanglements that mystified even those closest to him. While celebrating the genius of Kahn’s art, the book provides an invaluable portrait of the man who created it.