Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out – The Dominican Motherhouse and the Patient Search for Architecture by Michael Merrill (Lars Müller Publishers, 2010) documents Louis Kahn’s working methods in the project for the Dominican Motherhouse (1965–69).
Like few others, Louis Kahn cultivated the craft of drawing as a means to architecture. His personal design drawings – seen either as a method of discovery or for themselves – are unique in the twentieth century. Over two hundred – mostly unpublished – drawings by Kahn and his associates are woven together with a lively and informed commentary into an intimate biography of an architectural idea. Unfolding around the iconic project for the Dominican Motherhouse (1965–1969) the drawings form a narrative which not only reveals the richness and hidden dimensions of this unbuilt masterpiece, but provides compelling insights into Louis Kahn’s mature culture of designing.
Kahn – long considered an “architects’ architect” – emerges as a vivid and instructive guide, provoking reflection on questions which continue to remain relevant: on how works are conceived, on how they might be perceived, on how they become part of human experience. Fascinating not only in their beauty, the drawings open a new and stimulating perspective on one of the past century’s great architects.
– Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out – The Dominican Motherhouse and the Patient Search for Architecture by Michael Merrill (Lars Müller Publishers, 2010), text from the back cover.
Please also see Louis Kahn: On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces – The Dominican Motherhouse and a Modern Culture of Space and Louis Kahn: The Importance of Drawing also by Michael Merrill.
