Thirty
years after his death, there are few architects as universally
beloved as Louis Kahn. In many ways he represents the ideal
design architect, much more an artist than a businessman.
His projects were pure, his motives pure. A legend in our
time. What the film My Architect does is to try and
reconcile this man with a real man with real flaws. It turns
out that Louis Kahn was not a good man at all. He was married
with a daughter, yet fathered two children with two different
mistresses. He never took responsibility for those children
or his fractured family, allowing the work to obscure everything
else. Lou threw himself into his work as his personal life
burned around him. Today he has left behind three children
who never really knew him and a body of work that almost makes
you forgive him for it all. This film is narrated and directed
by Nathaniel Kahn, one of his two illegitimate children, and
is nothing but a personal quest of a man in search of his
father.
Louis
Kahn was born in Estonia but grew up in North Philadelphia.
When he was very young he suffered through a terrible accident
that left him with visible scars on his face. He played piano,
got a scholarship to Penn, traveled to Europe and started
his own practice in Philadelphia when he was 50, at a firm
bankrolled by his wife Esther. His list of completed projects
was short, yet almost every one is a legend. The Richards
Medical Center, the Salk Institute, the Exeter Library, the
Kimball Art Museum, the buildings in Dacca. He died alone
in the men's room at the unpleasant, underground Penn Station
in New York in 1974, his firm in debt for half a million dollars
and his body unclaimed for days since he had crossed off his
address on his passport.
The
film uses interviews, archival footage, long, slow, romantic
images of downtown Philadelphia and tours of his completed
work in an attempt to define the man. It is sometimes successful
though often not. Many of the interviews come off as self
indulgent, episodes of a man talking about his father as if
he experienced a closeness he keeps telling everyone he lacked.
An early interview with Philip Johnson outside his glass house
is however almost worth the price of admission- his slow reaction
when he realized that Lou never bothered to come up to Connecticut
to see his glass house is an extraordinarily revealing episode
about both men. Other big name architects make appearances
but add little, with the exception of a story by Moshe Safdie
and a comment by a much more successful I.M. Pei, saying that
it is more important to complete one masterpiece than it is
to complete many projects. A telling comment both on Kahn
and on the legend he became.
Not
everyone loved him. Publicity ready architect Robert A.M.
Stern does his best to try and take Kahn down a peg, stressing
the fact that he was an architect looking for work and not
a design god. Ed Bacon, a man who publicly fought with Kahn
over redevelopment plans in Philadelphia stands his ground
against Lou's son, explaining with passion how horrible Kahn's
plans for downtown Philadelphia would have been. Bacon has
a point, the radical plans (although never fully developed)
would have imposed an order over center city Philadelphia,
destroying any chances at urbanism with beautiful concrete
forms.
The
real reason to see this film is to see the tours of the buildings.
Each of them has a soul and a grace that somehow makes you
forget about Kahn as a person. You can begin to understand
his drive, that the work was more important than his life
and they survive as monuments to that fact. It really makes
you question what defines success. Kahn's personal life was
a mess, his firm was a mess, he lost money on every single
project he ever worked on with the exception of the Salk Institute.
People who worked for him talk of a man who demanded almost
inhuman hours from his staff. Still, what stands beyond all
of that is the work. As an architect is it more important
to make money or do exceptional work, as a person is it more
important to lead a good, happy life or do exceptional work.
Kahn always chose the work.
It
is probably no coincidence that both of the women who had
extramarital children with Kahn also worked with him. Both
are still alive and interviewed in the film. Both still seem
devoted to him, neither talk badly about him despite his rampant
irresponsibility toward themselves and their children, all
they seem to do is warmly reflect on the times they spent
with him and his endearing charm. Nathaniel's mom even holds
to the improvable idea that Lou crossed off his address on
his passport because he was planning on moving in with her
and giving up his wife, the woman who had bankrolled his firm.
The children also have an unnecessary reunion, one where they
talk of the abstract idea of family inside a Kahn house. Everyone
he touched seems scarred by his actions, yet they all forgive
him and find solace in the work. Eventually even Nathaniel,
a man who spends the entire film talking about his search,
comes to the same sudden conclusion- a surprise happy ending
to a story that really doesn't have one.
The
final scenes are absolutely beautiful- slow, romantic, mystical
mages of National Assembly Building in Dacca, Bangladesh.
There has never been a movie that makes you want to go to
Bangladesh more than this one- that building looks better
in this film than ever before. It charms much the way Kahn
must have, as a viewer you begin to sympathize both with Nathaniel
and the women whose lives Kahn recklessly changed forever.
Maybe the work is what's really important, maybe what strangers
think is more important than the people who love you. Such
a complicated life.
Click here to learn more about Louis
Kahn and see more pictures at ArBITAT Architects
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