Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture, Design Museum

This exhibition will survey architect Louis Kahn’s work through sketch-books, original drawings, models and photographs. Interviews with internationally renowned ‘starchitects’ Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Peter Zumthor and Sou Fujimoto will note how Kahn, who passed away in 1974, continues to influence their own particular design practices and philosophies.
The history
Born in 1901, Kahn emigrated from his native Estonia to Philadelphia in 1906 with his mother and siblings to join his father Leopold Khan. A talent in both art and music at school, Khan won a scholarship to study architecture at The University of Philadelphia. The formative training he received under Paul Cret combined with a two-year architectural tour of Europe in 1928, were both informative to his own design approach.
Khan, a deep thinker and theorist, formed the Architectural Research Group in 1931, which became a forum for debating poignant architectural issues such as mass-housing. Understandably, at this point in his career, Khan began to take cues from French modernist architect, Le Corbusier.
The exhibition
This show covers six broad themes: City, Science, Landscape, House, Eternal Present (focusing on architectural history) and Community. Highlighted projects will include The Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla California, 1959-65), The Kimbell Art Institute (Fort Worth Texas, 1966-72), the breathtaking National Assembly Buildings in Dakar (1962-1983) and the posthumously realised Roosevelt Memorial, (2005-2012). An ‘architects architect’, these projects reveal an intuitive feeling for plan, form and structure. We encounter a virtuosity with materials, particularly with in-situ poured concrete and an amazing ability to capture natural light. 
Critical view…
Above all, you gain a real sense of the crux of Khan’s ideology: that human based activities can inform an architecture that can further elevate those activities. Architect Shamsul Wares, interviewed by Khan’s son for the film My Architect, says ‘he gave us democracy, he’s not a political man but in disguise he has given us the institution for democracy’. What greater evidence of the ‘Power of Architecture’ is there than that...?