Louis Kahn
American
February 20th 1901- March 17th 1974
- Kahn trained at the University of Pennsylvania.
- He completed his bachelor of Architecture in 1924.
- He served as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1954.
- He was elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1953.
- In 1955 he became a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught until his death in 1974
- He did not find his distinctive architectural style until he was in his fifties.
- His work infused the International Style with what he called “a poetry of light”.
- He was known for creating monumental architecture that responded to the human scale.
- He was also concerned with creating strong distinctions between served spaces and servant spaces. Servant spaces, spaces that serve other spaces, such as stairwells, corridors and restrooms.
- One of his famous quotes:
“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.”
- His designs include:
- Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1951-1953), first significant commission of Louis Kahn and his first masterpiece.
- First Unitarian Church, Rochester, New York (1959-1969)
- Kimbell Art Museum, Forth Worth, Texas (1967-1972)
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Louis I. Kahn is widely considered one of the masters of 20th century architects, for his works and designs still affect the world today. Kahn’s teaching and well known buildings left his students, and public in general, with a better understanding of matter and the light around it. From his work with the International style, people became more open to a style capable of being beautiful and functional all over the world.
For Kahn, form did not necessarily follow function; nor did his projects celebrate all the new possibilities of industrial materials. His take on materialization left the world with the sense that new is not always what is best. He taught and demonstrates through numerous projects that to grasp a sense of what is around, it is important to notice, and build on, the natural light and intensity that is already in the area. He leaves with us today numerous of his spectacular buildings such as the ones above and many, many more.
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Robert Venturi
American
June 25 1925 (age 87)
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Venturi graduated from Princeton University in 1947 where he was a member-elect of Phi Beta Kappa and won the D’Amato Prize in Architecture.
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He received his M.F.A. from Princeton in 1950.
- He briefly worked for Louis Kahn in Philadelphia.
- From 1954 to 1965, Venturi held teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as Kahn’s teaching assistant, an instructor, and later, as associate professor.
- Venturi helped redirect American architecture away from a widely practiced modernism to a more exploratory design approach that openly drew lessons from architectural history and responded to the everyday context of the American city.
- He proposed alternatives to the functionalist mainstream of 20th-century American architectural design. He became the unofficial dean of the movement known as postmodernism.
- His architecture has had world-wide influence, beginning in the 1967s with the dissemination of the broken-gable roof of the Vanna Venturi House and the segmentally arched window and interrupted string courses of Guild House.
- Venturi is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, the American Institute of Architects, The American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
- He was awarded The Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1991.
- His designs include:
- Vanna Venturi House; Philadelphia (1964) won the AIA Twenty-five Year Award and was recognized as a “Masterwork of Modern American Architecture” by the United States Postal Service in May 2005.
- Gordon Wu Hall; Princeton University, New Jersey (1983)
- Children’s Museum; Houston, Texas (1992)
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Unofficial dean of Postmodernism (structures that used modern building materials and decorative elements to create a variety of novel effects), Robert Venturi is considered to be one of the 20th Century’s most influential Architects. From the United States to hundreds of countries around the globe Venturi’s designs have influenced all. Still alive at age 87, he continues to leave his mark in the stones structures of our planet.
Turning the modernist’s cry “Less is more” against itself, Venturi declared “Less is a bore.” This firm has become known for an eclecticism that draws itself from surprising sources, such as historic design styles and popular culture, including contemporary commercial architecture and advertising. As society continues to evolve and become even more materialistic, it is believed that the works of Robert Venturi’s will become the stepping stones for the greats of the 21st Century.
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Arthur Erickson
Canadian
June 14th 1924-May 20th 2009
- Erickson was born in Vancouver,
- He was the architect and planner behind over 500 projects world wide.
- He studied at UBC and later at McGill University of Montreal where he earned a degree in architecture in 1950.
- Erickson taught at the University of British Columbia and designed houses in partnership with Geoffrey Massey.
- He launched his international career in 1963 with his entry in the design competition for the Simon Fraser University campus in Burnaby, British Columbia, which he won with his associate, Geoffrey Massey.
- In 1973, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1981.
- He became legendary for his unwillingness to stay in any one place for more than a few days.
- His global outlook that gave his design a universal quality.
- In 1986, he received the AIA Gold Medal.
- Most of his buildings are modernist concrete structures designed to respond to the natural conditions of their locations, especially climate.
- Erickson’s well-known projects include:
- Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada (1965 onward in stages)
- Government of Canada pavilion, Expo ’70, Osaka, won top architectural award (1970)
- Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington, USA (2009)
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Through is Globalization of Architecture Erickson leaves us with the sense that designs can be of a universal quality, they must not be reduced to a single style or “ism”, architecture can simply be defined as architecture. Master of the 20th Century, his buildings will remain masterpieces of centuries more. His understanding of climate and basic needs for specific locations was one of the first of his kinds and will remain useful tool for architects of today. He leaves with us hundreds and hundreds of spectacular plans and designs, built and on paper, that will without a doubt hold onto his wonderful legacy.
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