It is the beginning of the Winter Quarter and I am now in Architecture 361, Architecture Theory: Special Topics. We started the quarter off with several readings from Louis I. Kahn and his works. What we begin to look at here is: Form is what. Design is how."
As nearly all students have, I have heard of and seen projects by Louis Kahn, but never knew how big of an impact he has made on architecture of today. I was extremely impressed with what Kahn had to say about his approach to architecture and the things that have influenced his projects over the years.
I would like to start with a quote that I came across in Jan C. Rowan's "Wanting To Be: The Philadelphia School": "I believe the architect's first act is to take the program that comes to him and change it. Not to satisfy it, but to put it into the realm of architecture, which is to put into the realm of spaces." Looking back onto the projects that I've done over my short 2 years of studio, I realize that one key facet of design I was leaving out was this transformation of the program into the realm of architecture. By doing this, you begin to view your design as the arrangement of spaces that solve the problem you are given. When you allow the program to become a system of spaces, you are allowing yourself to understand your project and how the solution begins to take nature and form itself. I feel like what a designer does when he doesn't allow this change to happen is prohibiting himself/herself to a more pleasing design.
Allowing your project to form itself by nature is something else that Kahn talks about. When Kahn tells his story about the brick who wanted to be an arch, Kahn is saying that you have to allow architecture to begin to form the way it naturally wishes to flow. As a designer we cannot force designs to happen and yield a project that is monumental of any sort. It is easy, however, to force a design for a project when the project is really screaming back at you that it not what it needs to be.
After reading this week's literature about Louis Kahn I am inspired and have an additional perspective of architecture. There are innumerable quotes from Louis Kahn that could inspire and drive architects to become better designers of architecture.
By what inner way does a building "take nature and form itself" where and what is the germination and genesis of this . . . is it via a set "recipe" or is it as Kahn implies, intuition as our most exacting sense . . . what is intuition in the realm of the psyche (can you test for an "intuitive aptitude," like math and verbal skills?)
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