Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Louis Kahn and His Bangladesh Creation

I submitted this piece to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. They didn't print it, because there was no 'hook" (my term), such as a Louis Kahn birthday. Daily papers may need such a hook. My blog doesn't. Follow up on the suggested illustrations. As I say here, Louis Kahn was a great architect.

Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Building in Bangladesh in Context
File:National Assembly 2.jpg

            My topic is the Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban in Dhaka; for those of us who are not one of 300 million speakers of Bangla, this is the National Assembly Building of Bangladesh. I want to look at this monumental complex in relation to its creator, note some of its salient features, and see it in the context of a few other capital buildings around the world.
            I write about this Assembly Building because it is incomparably beautiful; a good picture alone can take your breath away. D Its creator is Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky, who, with his parents, came to the U.S. in 1906 as a five-year-old from an island in the Baltic, then part of Russia.  Once here, his father changed their names, so that the youngster became the architect we know as Louis I. Kahn.
              Based in Philadelphia, Kahn developed slowly, arriving at a distinctive style only after the second World War.  Yes, modern—no ornamental curlicues—but not in the pared down international manner, that features glass walls with ribs of steel.  Concrete and brick are Kahn’s chief materials, giving his buildings a massive presence that evoke but don’t resemble monumental structures of ancient Rome.
            Natural light was a ruling passion of his, making it unsurprising that he was commissioned to design museums—early on the Yale University Art Center D and somewhat later, the beautiful Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth D.  Kahn’s largest American project was the Salk Institute in La Jolla, D noted for the serviceability of its laboratories flooded with daylight and for its stunning vistas.
            Then there is the Bangladesh National Assembly!  Paradoxically, our American architect’s greatest achievement stands far away from home, on the other side of the planet. The commission itself—it came when the region was still Pakistan, just before Bangladesh emerged out of turmoil and war—led to the creation of a great capitol complex for a country that was, by all odds, one of the very poorest in the world.  The cost of design and construction came to 32 million dollars; and while today that seems like an implausible bargain, that was real money half a century ago and was indeed criticized as exorbitant.  Construction began in 1961 and was interrupted by war. The building was finally ready to be inaugurated in 1982, almost eight years after Kahn’s death.
            The Assembly complex is immense: well over six million square feet; and just to give you a flavor, there are 50 staircases, 340 bathrooms, 1635 doors, 335 windows—but not a single column to be found holding up a ceiling.  Pictorially an aerial view conveys some of that immensity; it is said by some to be the largest capitol building anywhere. D
            But even if it is only one of the biggest, such seats of government are meant to be grand.  Look at our Capitol in Washington D or the Assembly Building in Paris: D both strut rows of immense columns and our own is topped by an impressive cupola—a model for many of the states.  And because the dome of the Reichstag D in Berlin was destroyed in the war, the British architect Sir Norman Foster was commissioned to add a new dome. In deference to modernity, however, that dome is made of glass, with an inside walk curling upward, affording views of the city. D The German capital can once again compete with its brethren. 
            These capitol structures are all of them grand, for sure;  some of them grandiose, one is tempted to add.  So is the Dhaka complex grand, though that grandeur is conveyed neither with columns evoking the Parthenon nor by means of a commanding dome that brings to mind the Vatican.  Instead, different weighty solid shapes are juxtaposed with shapely cut-outs, so to speak, that together perform a kind of geometric dance.  Enormous, yes, but light-footed, like an elephant showing off in the circus.  There is true thereness there that is both stressed and attenuated by the white marble stripes that are set into the concrete. D D
            Beyond grand, the Dhaka complex is beautiful, as I said at the outset.  It may also be pleasant, attractive, handsome or pleasing, but that is not what I have in mind.  I mean it is beautiful, that is, endowed with beauty in the sense that the Mona Lisa is beautiful or a Matisse Dance.  It is not surprising that the Globe and Mail includes this Assembly Building among its seven—just seven!—architectural wonders of the world, together with the Great Pyramid at Giza and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
            For me, this achievement hammers in the view that Louis Kahn was the greatest American architect of the second half of the last century—and perhaps, pace Frank Lloyd Wright, of all of it.
             I cannot resist reporting a rather strange occurrence, by way of a personal coda. As I looked again and again at numerous photographs of this last and greatest work of Louis Kahn, what kept popping into my head, strangely, was Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D-minor.  To be sure, I have always been quite dubious about analogies across different art forms, but this insistent experience made me question my skepticism, in spite of the fact (or because of it?) that from the work of architecture back to that work for organ there is a leap of more than two centuries.  Look at the Dhaka pictures, listen to the Bach ( http://www.weewewweyoutube.com/watch?v=bkUUjUJ4wHg) and see and hear for yourself.

D = a picture
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 The following are preliminary suggestions for illustrations. 

Salk Institute:

Bangladesh:
Selection of others of National Assembly:

Reichstag—two of these: the whole building and inside the dome alone:
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 Capital buildings.  Use Washington.
Paris, National Assembly Building:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardandgill/501856859/

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