A thoughtful selection of the celebrated architect's speeches and writings. This unique anthology draws from Louis Kahn's speeches, essays, and interviews, some never previously published, to capture the evolution and central tenets of the influential American architect's thinking from his early work of the 1940s to his death in 1974. Professor Twombly's introduction and headnotes offer incisive commentary on the texts.

Louis Kahn (1901-1974), arguably the last great modern American architect, lectured wrote essays, was interviewed and appeared at panel discussions, and issued countless statements to the press. Kahn published a handful of essays, but he preferred public speaking-whether formal lecture or more often, seemingly improvised remarks. All was not as casual as it may have appeared, however: as with his buildings, which he rethought, reworked, and reconceived, he prepared typescripts that were usually the result of multiple drafts, and when he repeated a speech to a second or third audience, he rewrote it yet again. Louis Kahn: Essential Texts is a unique anthology of twenty pieces, some never before published, representing his essential thinking as it evolved. Robert Twombly's incisive introduction and headnotes reveal the dynamism of Kahn's language, elucidate his keen aphorisms and sometimes abstruse terminology, and offer a useful distillation of basic Kahnian tenets. 

A thoughtful selection of the celebrated architect's speeches and writings. This unique anthology draws from Louis Kahn's speeches, essays, and interviews, some never previously published, to capture the evolution and central tenets of the influential American architect's thinking from his early work of the 1940s to his death in 1974. Professor Twombly's introduction and headnotes offer incisive commentary on the texts.

Louis Kahn (1901-1974), arguably the last great modern American architect, lectured wrote essays, was interviewed and appeared at panel discussions, and issued countless statements to the press. Kahn published a handful of essays, but he preferred public speaking-whether formal lecture or more often, seemingly improvised remarks. All was not as casual as it may have appeared, however: as with his buildings, which he rethought, reworked, and reconceived, he prepared typescripts that were usually the result of multiple drafts, and when he repeated a speech to a second or third audience, he rewrote it yet again. Louis Kahn: Essential Texts is a unique anthology of twenty pieces, some never before published, representing his essential thinking as it evolved. Robert Twombly's incisive introduction and headnotes reveal the dynamism of Kahn's language, elucidate his keen aphorisms and sometimes abstruse terminology, and offer a useful distillation of basic Kahnian tenets.