Kahn At Penn

Louis I. Kahn is widely known as an architect of powerful buildings. But although much has been said about his buildings, almost nothing has been written about Kahn as an unconventional teacher and philosopher whose influence on his students was far-reaching. Teaching was vitally important for Kahn, and through his Master’s Class at the University of Pennsylvania, he exerted a significant effect on the future course of architectural practice and education. This book is a critical, in-depth study of Kahn’s philosophy of education and his unique pedagogy. It is the first extensive and comprehensive investigation of the Kahn Master’s Class as seen through the eyes of his graduate students at Penn.

Louis I. Kahn is widely known as an architect of powerful buildings. But although much has been said about his buildings, almost nothing has been written about Kahn as an unconventional teacher and philosopher whose influence on his students was far-reaching. Teaching was vitally important for Kahn, and through his Master's Class at the University of Pennsylvania, he exerted a significant effect on the future course of architectural practice and education.This book is a critical, in-depth study of Kahn's philosophy of education and his unique pedagogy. It is the first extensive and comprehensi.

Louis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes is a new and personal reading of the architecture, teachings, and legacy of Louis I. Kahn from Per Olaf Fjeld’s perspective as a former student. The book explores Kahn’s life and work, offering a unique take on one of the twentieth century’s most important architects. Kahn’s Nordic and European ties are emphasized in this study that also covers his early childhood in Estonia, his travels, and his relationships with other architects, including the Norwegian architect Arne Korsmo. The authors have gathered personal reflections, archival material, and other student work to offer insight into the wisdom that Kahn imparted to his students in his famous masterclass. Louis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes addresses Kahn’s legacy both personally and in terms of the profession, documents a research trip the University of Pennsylvania’s Louis I. Kahn Collection, and confronts the affiliation of Kahn’s work with postmodernism.

A stunning celebration of the architect's residential masterpieces Louis Kahn (1901-1974), one of the most important architects of the postwar period, is widely admired for his great monumental works, including the Kimbell Art Museum, the Salk Institute, and the National Assembly Complex in Bangladesh. However, the importance of his houses has been largely overlooked. This beautiful book is the first to look at Kahn's nine major private houses. Beginning with his earliest encounters with Modernism in the late 1920s and continuing through his iconic work of the 1960s and 1970s, the authors trace the evolution of the architect's thinking, which began and matured through his design of houses and their interiors, a process inspired by his interactions with clients and his admiration for vernacular building traditions. Richly illustrated with new and period photographs and original drawings, as well as previously unpublished materials from personal interviews, archives, and Kahn's own writings, The Houses of Louis Kahn shows how his ideas about domestic spaces challenged conventions, much like his major public commissions, and were developed into one of the most remarkable expressions of the American house.

Born in Estonia 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia. By the time of his mysterious death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last fifteen years of his life. Wendy Lesser’s You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn is a major exploration of the architect’s life and work. Kahn, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century American architect, was a “public” architect. Rather than focusing on corporate commissions, he devoted himself to designing research facilities, government centers, museums, libraries, and other structures that would serve the public good. But this warm, captivating person, beloved by students and admired by colleagues, was also a secretive man hiding under a series of masks. Kahn himself, however, is not the only complex subject that comes vividly to life in these pages. His signature achievements—like the Salk Institute in La Jolla, the National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, and the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad—can at first seem as enigmatic and beguiling as the man who designed them. In attempts to describe these structures, we are often forced to speak in contradictions and paradoxes: structures that seem at once unmistakably modern and ancient; enormous built spaces that offer a sense of intimate containment; designs in which light itself seems tangible, a raw material as tactile as travertine or Kahn’s beloved concrete. This is where Lesser’s talents as one of our most original and gifted cultural critics come into play. Interspersed throughout her account of Kahn’s life and career are exhilarating “in situ” descriptions of what it feels like to move through his built structures. Drawing on extensive original research, lengthy interviews with his children, his colleagues, and his students, and travel to the far-flung sites of his career-defining buildings, Lesser has written a landmark biography of this elusive genius, revealing the mind behind some of the twentieth century’s most celebrated architecture.

Amazon disrupts everything it touches and upends any market it enters. In the era of its game-changing dominance, how can any company compete? We are just witnessing the start of the radical changes in retail that will revolutionize shopping in every way. As Amazon and other disruptors continue to offer ever-greater value, customers' expectations will continue to ratchet up, making winning (and keeping) those customers all the more challenging. For some retailers, the changes will push customers permanently out of their reach--and their companies out of business. In The Shopping Revolution, Barbara E. Kahn, a foremost retail expert and professor at The Wharton School, examines the companies that have been most successful during this wave of change, and offers fresh insights into what we can learn from their ascendance. How did Amazon become the retailer of choice for a large portion of the US population, and how can other companies work with them or compete with them? How did Walmart beat out other grocers in the late 1990s to become the leader in food retailing, and how must they pivot to hold their leadership position today? How did Warby Parker make a dent in the once-untouchable Luxottica's lucrative eyewear business, and what can that tell start-ups about how to unseat a Goliath? How did Sephora draw customers away from once-dominant department stores to become the go-to retailers for beauty products, and what can retailers learn from their success? How are luxury and fast-fashion retailers competing in the ever-changing, fickle world of fashion? Building on these insights, Kahn offers a framework that any company can use to create a competitive strategy to survive and thrive in today's--and tomorrow's--retail environment. The Shopping Revolution is a must-read for those in the retailing business who want to develop an effective strategy, entrepreneurs looking at starting their own business, and anyone interested in understanding the changing landscape in which they are shopping. Barbara E. Kahn is Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She served two terms as the Director of the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center. Prior to rejoining Wharton in 2011, Barbara served as the Dean and Schein Professor of Marketing at the School of Business Administration, University of Miami (from 2007 to 2011). Before becoming Dean at UM, she spent 17 years at Wharton as Silberberg Professor of Marketing. She was also Vice Dean of the Wharton Undergraduate program. She is the author of Global Brand Power: Leveraging Branding for Long-Term Growth and co-author of The Grocery Revolution: The New Focus on the Consumer, which documented the changes in the grocery business in the mid-1990s when Walmart became a force in the industry.

The retail industry was in the midst of unparalleled disruption. Then came COVID-19. In an updated and expanded edition of The Shopping Revolution, Wharton professor Barbara Kahn examines the companies that have been most successful during a tsunami of change in the industry. She offers fresh insights into what we can learn from them.

The American architect Louis Kahn (1901 - 1974) is regarded as one of the great master builders of the twentieth century. With complex spatial compositions, an elemental formal vocabulary and a choreographic mastery of light, Kahn created buildings of archaic beauty. As the first comprehensive publication on this architect in 20 years, the book �Louis Kahn - The Power of Architecture� presents all of his important projects. It includes essays by prominent Kahn experts and an expansive illustrated biography with many new facts and insights about Kahn's life and work. In a number of interviews, leading architects such as Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Peter Zumthor and Sou Fujimoto underline Kahn's significance in today's architectural discourse. An extensive catalogue of works features original drawings and architectural models from the Kahn archive. The compendium is further augmented by a portfolio of Kahn's travel drawings as well as photographs by Thomas Florschuetz, which offer completely new views of the Salk Institute and the Indian Institute of Management.

Few people in the history of art and architecture have planted a seed of inspiration that grew to become a towering oak of lasting influence. There are those, particularly colleagues and students of Louis I. Kahn, who would say that he was one of these people. Certainly Kahn was one of the foremost architects of the twentieth century, designing such famous landmarks as the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh; the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California; and the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. In this commemorative volume, Charles E. Dagit, Jr. shows the power and influence that Kahn displayed at the University of Pennsylvania department of architecture in the 1960s. Since Dagit knew Kahn personally, this is a factual history as well as a glimpse into Kahn's personal wisdom and humanity. Beginning with a prelude that starts with the author's undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, Dagit launches readers on an intellectual journey of how he first met Kahn. From there he details his experiences with Kahn and explores Kahn's interactions with Penn faculty members, including Mario Romanach, Robert Le Ricolet and Aldo Giurgola. This first-hand account sheds fascinating new light on one of the most prominent architects of the twentieth century.