My Architect: A Son's Journey
- Year:
- 2003
- 553 Views
Louis I. Kahn,
whose strong forms of brick and concrete
influenced a generation
of architects and made him,
in the opinion of most
architectural scholars,
America's foremost living architect,
died Sunday evening
apparently of a heart attack
in Pennsylvania Station.
He was 73 years old.
Besides his wife, Mr. Kahn
leaves a daughter, Sue Ann.
When I first read that obituary,
I have to admit I was
looking for my own name.
I was his child too, his only son.
I didn't know my father very well.
He never married my mother,
and he never lived with us.
But I can still remember every detail
of the few times we spent
a whole day together.
On this afternoon, we had a picnic.
He painted with watercolors,
and my mother snapped these pictures.
He died when I was 11.
The circumstances of his death
have always fascinated me.
He was bankrupt and alone on
his way back home from India.
He collapsed in the
downstairs men's room
in Penn Station, New York.
The police couldn't identify him,
because, for some unknown reason,
he crossed out the
address on his passport.
They took him to the city morgue,
where he lay unclaimed for three days.
What was he thinking at the end?
Had he seen anyone?
Had he talked to anyone?
Had he really decided to leave his wife
and come and live with
us like my mother said?
For years, I struggled to be satisfied
with the little piece
of my father's life
I'd been allowed to see.
But it wasn't enough.
I needed to know him.
I needed to find out who he really was,
so I set out on a journey
to see his buildings
and to find whatever was
left of him out there.
It would take me to the
other side of the world
looking for the man who left
me with so many questions.
My father had been dead 25 years,
so there wasn't much time left
if I wanted to meet
any of his colleagues.
I figured I'd start at the top:
the guy with the glasses.
- Mr. Johnson.
- Good to meet you.
- Oh, it's a pleasure to meet you.
- You're Lou's son?
Yes.
Generations go by quickly, don't they?
I've just decided Lou was
the most beloved architect of our time.
- Really?
- Yeah... Well, think of anybody else.
Frank Lloyd Wright was
too cantankerous to love.
Mies van der Rohe wasn't...
you couldn't talk to him at all.
Corbusier was mean.
But Lou, now, there was a man.
All my buildings don't add up
to what his three or four buildings,
because he, when he
did get a client...
however he ever got any
clients is a mystery,
because artists don't get jobs.
Every time I've tried to do art,
I've ended up with a...
I've made much less.
Nothing to be ashamed of, naturally.
I do it the other way.
I do it by numbers and...
and public fame and all that.
But Lou did it by being an artist.
He'd sit and work on art, see?
And I always wished... I think he
did too... wished he knew me better,
and I always wished I knew him better.
- Why?
- Well, you know,
there's some things
that don't go into words.
It's animal
attraction...
his mind, really,
because his person...
to look at him wasn't much a pleasure.
- It wasn't?
- It couldn't be.
See, he was so scarred.
Funny, he never talked to me
as directly as he should have.
- Who?
- Lou.
He never came here, though.
- Didn't he ever come here?
- To the glass house?
That's strange, 'cause
I built it in '49.
Possible. Possible.
Do you think Lou would
have liked this house?
- No.
- Why?
Oh, rigid boxes, you know. He...
He was his own artist.
He was free compared to me.
The first time I'd gotten
a real sense of Lou's legacy
was when I was a student up the road
at Yale University.
My father was only 5'6"
but he cast a long shadow in New Haven.
last major buildings here:
the Yale Art Gallery in 1953;
and right across the street,
the British Art Center,
finished after his death.
I used to wander around in
those buildings on weekends.
They were silent and mysterious,
and I half expected Lou to just appear
from around the next corner.
There were rows of books
about his work in the library.
He hadn't built very many buildings,
but apparently they had changed
the course of architecture:
the Salk Institute,
the Kimbell Art Museum,
the Exeter Library,
the Capital of Bangladesh.
My art history
professor, Vincent Scully,
had been a friend of Lou's,
but he always talked about him
like some long-dead ancient hero.
It was unsettling.
From the very beginning he was after
symmetry, order, geometric clarity,
primitive power,
enormous weight...
as much as he could get,
like this great monster that stands
in the middle of this space.
You know as I said too, I think, before:
enduring monuments.
He wants his materials to kind of last,
which is a permanent work in the world.
That's what he's after.
You know, it was such a wonderful thing
to be close to somebody
who really was changing everything.
You said at one point that
he wanted to make everything right.
- He wanted to make it perfect.
- Perfect.
You know, in Jewish mysticism,
which I know almost
nothing about, but...
God can only be known
through His works, right?
And since the messiah
hasn't come yet, hmm,
the works of any Jewish architect
might be the works of God.
And you take those pictures of Louie
when he's looking into the light
and when he's enjoying
silence like this,
it's... it makes
the hair stand up,
because it really is like that, as if
he's in some way communicating
with this fundamental thing, that
God is in the work.
So it has to be perfect, you see.
It has to be perfect.
It can't be impatient.
It's timeless.
I wanted to ask you.
Do you think...
did anybody know
that Lou had three families all at once?
No, I didn't.
As a matter of fact, for years
I didn't know Lou was married.
- Really?
- Yeah.
That was part of his mystery.
My mother and I lived on
the outskirts of Philadelphia
at the end of a secluded road.
Lou would visit every once in a while,
mostly at night.
We never knew quite when it would be.
He'd call at the last minute
and say he was on his way.
My mother would frantically
whip up a five-course meal
and have a Martini in a
frozen glass waiting for him.
I got to stay up late,
and Lou would tell me
wonderful stories about India
and elephants and tigers.
In the middle of the night,
we'd all bundle into the car
and drive him back downtown.
I'd lie in the backseat.
We were all silent.
When I asked my mother why
we couldn't all live together,
she explained that his wife
wouldn't give him a divorce.
Why didn't he just run away?
We'd stop at the end of Clinton Street
and let him out.
He'd walk down the block
and disappear into the dark house,
his wife's house.
Her name was Esther.
They had a daughter named Sue,
who was 20 years older than me.
When I was in first grade,
I found out I had
another half sister, Alex.
Her mother was a lady named Anne.
Then there was my mother and me.
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