Michael Merrill

Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces

It was not by chance that Louis Kahn’s move into his profession’s spotlight coincided with the crisis of modern architecture: representing, as his work increasingly did, those aspects of space which modernism had so ambitiously removed from its program. Kahn’s rethinking of modern architecture’s paradigm of space belongs to his most important contributions to the métier. In tracing the genesis of the unbuilt project for the Dominican Motherhouse (1965–69), we are given a close-up view of Kahn at work on a few fundamental questions of architectural space: seeking the sources of its meaning in its social, morphological, landscape and contextual dimensions.

This rich and multivalent project opens the way to a second section, which sheds new light on several of major works in a timely reappraisal of Kahn’s work.The result of extensive research, illustrated with unpublished archival material and new analytic drawings, this affordable volume is an indispensible companion to Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out.

It was not by chance that Louis Kahn’s move into his profession’s spotlight coincided with the crisis of modern architecture: representing, as his work increasingly did, those aspects of space which modernism had so ambitiously removed from its program. Kahn’s rethinking of modern architecture’s paradigm of space belongs to his most important contributions to the métier. In tracing the genesis of the unbuilt project for the Dominican Motherhouse (1965–69), we are given a close-up view of Kahn at work on a few fundamental questions of architectural space: seeking the sources of its meaning in its social, morphological, landscape and contextual dimensions.

This rich and multivalent project opens the way to a second section, which sheds new light on several of major works in a timely reappraisal of Kahn’s work.The result of extensive research, illustrated with unpublished archival material and new analytic drawings, this affordable volume is an indispensible companion to Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out.


“From previously unpublished material and new analytic drawings this book explores Louis Kahn’s Dominican Motherhouse, his unbuilt masterpiece.”

– Arch Daily

“[Merril’s second book on the Dominican Motherhouse is] comprehensively illustrated with archival material and is more than adequate in presenting the detailed results of Merrill’s archival research."

– Architecture Review


 

Author(s): Michael Merrill

Design: Integral Lars Müller

240 pages, 215 illustrations

2013, 978-3-03778-315-3, English
CHF 24.00
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Michael Merrill

MICHAEL MERRILL (1960) born 1960 in La Jolla, California, is an architect, educator and author. He holds a professional degree in architecture from California State University at San Luis Obispo and a doctoral degree from University of Karlsruhe in Germany. He has practiced independently and collaboratively in the U.S.A. and Europe, with prizes in national and international competitions. He has taught architectural design and theory at the Technical Universities in Karlsruhe and Darmstadt, served as a university guest critic, and lectured widely. The recipient of numerous research grants, Merrill has spent extended periods as visiting research faculty at the University of Pennsylvania´s Architectural Archives. He is the author and editor of a series of books based on the design artifacts of Louis Kahn.