- Title
- Building in Wright's penumbra: Kahn's Unitarian Church
- Creator
- Fleming, Steven
- Relation
- Progress / SAHANZ 03: 20th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand. Progress: the Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (Sydney 3-5 October, 2003) p. 109 - 113
- Relation
- http://www.sahanz.net/conferences/progress/progress.html
- Publisher
- Society of Architectural Historians Australia New Zealand
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2003
- Description
- The paper offers a critique of Louis Kahn's First Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York, informed by evidence contained in an archive held at that church. Prior to a recent trip by the author, this rich archive had not been accessed for the purposes of architectural scholarship. The archive reveals a previously unknown connection between the clients and each of the architects Wright and Kahn, and suggests that Kahn may have been under some pressure to imitate Wright's Unity Temple in Oak Park Illinois. The paper argues that Kahn's reluctance to copy Wright's church caused him to become fixated on an antithetical but fundamentally flawed planning strategy, which was concentric rather than binuclear. Kahn designed this building while he was actively pursuing fame. Kahn's recollection of this project's conception can be seen in this context, as a demonstration that he is a fountainhead in his own right. lt is especially telling that shortly after this project, Kahn articulated a theoretical position that reacts specifically against Wright's theory of organic architecture. Evidence in the Rochester archive suggests that Kahn and the committee of clients, may also have conspired to fabricate what has become an orthodox but misleading history. Other members of the congregation strongly opposed Kahn's concentric design and they objected to the fact that the client committee had not represented their interests but acted as apologists for Kahn. An analysis of the building as it used today gives credence to these dissenters' concerns and calls for a new history, according to which Kahn ignored functional concerns for the sake of asserting his autonomy from Wright. While Kahn's Unitarian Church is praised for its manipulation of light and shadow in a metaphorical sense, it is built entirely in Wright's penumbra.
- Subject
- Louis Kahn; First Unitarian Church (Rochester, NY); Frank Lloyd Wright; Unity Temple (Oak Park, IL); organic architecture; concentric
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/35423
- Identifier
- uon:3921
- Identifier
- ISBN:1864875747
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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