The Texture of Kahn

“Monumentality is enigmatic. It can’t be created intentionally. It is not necessary the best material or the most advanced technology…” Louis Kahn.

Texture is the physical and chromatic property that the surfaces of the objects have to express its identity and provide visual and tactile sensations.

Texture can provide a completely different ambient in each space and road. It can help dramatize spaces and provide heat in some cases. Some texture are frequently more attractive and give a character to the building. The materiality it about a road in which the architect can express in its totality.

Kahn is considered as a Brutalist. This is because he always looked that the material used in his projects be showed in brute, the way it was. But his work is a composition of natural and artificial textures.

Fisher House

He preferred concrete and brick, but he also used stone, wood and glass.

The Four Freedoms Park in New York uses concrete to shape the parts in which people can walk on in the complex. The use of this material creates sensations of order and continuity where the grass acts as a second texture delimited by the previous one. The contrast of intense green, along with the different textures of the concrete created very light spaces.

The Library of the Phillips Exeter Academy is a visual austere building that uses brick in its façade, along with glass, it contrasts with grass in the context. The interior is enriched with life and movement due to texture compositions. Wood is used to cover railings and elements closer to the human scale, while concrete represents the strength of the structure.

The Salk Institute in US is an example of the material’s personality. The façade and structure on this complex is concrete. For Kahn, the markings in Salk take as much importance that they are elements that “humanize” the project. Besides concrete, wood and glass are used and they provide the façade a bigger clarity in the complex, defining rooms.

Material treatment makes Kahn’s work more imposing. His work has often been confused with historical patrimony.

The designed in Bangladesh imposes itself over a water mirror. It’s an ingenious way to use texture, where water makes the huge structure float, but also gives a moving color palette before a liquid texture. The design of his work seems to be from other times and at the same time it stays majestic.