Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out reconstructs the design intelligence behind one of the twentieth century's most significant unbuilt works, assembling over two hundred mostly unpublished drawings into a sustained study of how Kahn thought through architecture.
About This Book
At the centre of this book is the Dominican Motherhouse project (1965–1969), an unbuilt masterpiece that Kahn developed through an extraordinary density of personal design drawings. Michael Merrill weaves these drawings — produced by Kahn and his associates — together with close, informed commentary to construct what amounts to an intimate biography of a single architectural idea. The result is not a survey but a slow, attentive reading: of how form is tested and revised, how spatial ideas accumulate meaning, and how the act of drawing itself becomes inseparable from the act of designing. For anyone serious about architectural design process, Kahn's mature working method emerges here with unusual clarity and force.
Key Features
- 240 pages of mostly unpublished design drawings by Louis Kahn and his associates, with sustained critical commentary
- Text and editorial framework by Michael Merrill
- Extended case study of the Dominican Motherhouse project (1965–1969)
- Published by Lars Müller Publishers
What You'll Discover
- How Kahn used drawing not to record decisions but to discover them — a process of patient, iterative search rather than singular vision
- The hidden dimensions of the Dominican Motherhouse: a project whose spatial and conceptual richness is only fully legible through its drawing sequence
- The relationship between architectural conception and human perception in Kahn's mature practice — how he thought about how buildings would be experienced
- Why Kahn remains an “architects' architect” — and what contemporary designers can still draw from his culture of making
About the Author
Michael Merrill is the author of this study, bringing lively and informed commentary to bear on Kahn's drawing practice and design process. His approach combines archival depth with critical interpretation, constructing a narrative from the drawings rather than simply cataloguing them.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 240
- Dimensions: 30 x 24 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783037782217
- Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and architectural historians interested in design process and drawing; students and academics studying twentieth-century modernism; anyone seeking to understand how Louis Kahn's spatial ideas were developed and tested through the act of drawing.