Watch ONLINE via ZOOM from the safety and comfort of your home. A link with instructions will be provided three hours prior to this virtual lecture. 

Louis Kahn and the Thoughtful Making of Spaces

presented by William Whitaker

Louis Kahn (1901-74) was not an architect driven by practical considerations alone, rather he reinvigorated architecture with a renewed sense of monumental form and possibilities for human – perhaps even spiritual – connection. For Philadelphians, Kahn remains an artist of international significance to this day – some fifty years after his death on March 17, 1974. How Kahn conceptualized architecture in his own mind and developed these ideas through designs into the actuality of building will be explored through his surviving letters, drawings, and the structures themselves – many of which are kept in the University of Pennsylvania’s Architectural Archives. Each work represents a translation of experiences and ideas exchanged across table-tops and across continents; a layered, complex back and forth – in space and time – over a broad global spectrum. 

William Whitaker is curator of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. He is coauthor (with George Marcus) of The Houses of Louis Kahn and Uncrating the Japanese House: Junzo Yoshimura, Antonin and Noemi Raymond, and George Nakashima (with Yuka Yokoyama). Trained as an architect at Penn and the University of New Mexico, Whitaker works closely with the archival collections of Louis I. Kahn, Lawrence Halprin, and the partnership of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, in support of teaching, scholarship, preservation, and public engagement. 

He has co-curated over forty exhibitions including Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry (Graham Foundation and Penn’s ICA), and Design With Nature Now (with the McHarg Center) – a major program of exhibitions, conference, and public programs that highlight the dynamic and visionary approaches to landscape design and development in the face of climate change and global urbanization. He is project director for, What Minerva Built, an exhibition project charting the life and work of America’s first independent female architect, Minerva Parker Nichols. 

$15 | General Admission

$10 | Alliance Member

Complimentary access available to current students and to Art-Reach ACCESS Card holders.

*Students, please email photo of valid student ID to Vinni Cheng tours@preservationalliance.com to register.

*Art Reach ACCESS Card holders, please email member name and member number to Vinni Cheng tours@preservationalliance.com to register.