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
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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
*******************
Salk
Institute:
Bangladesh:
http://www.freakepedia.com/moat-incredible-castles-and-palaces-built-on-water/
(scroll down for aerial view).
Selection of others of National
Assembly:
Reichstag—two of these: the whole
building and inside the dome alone:
safari&rls=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=c38YT62sM-XX0QG25a2mCw&ved=0CCkQsAQ&biw=1100&bih=610
Paris, National Assembly
Building:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardandgill/501856859/
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