Louis Kahn

Louis Isadore Kahn was born on 20 February 1901 in Pärnu, Estonia, as Leiser-Itze Schmuilowsky. His father left for Philadelphia in 1904 and the rest of the family joined him there in 1906; the name Kahn was adopted in 1912. He studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1924 with Paul Cret as his studio critic. His early projects included collaborations with George Howe and then with Oscar Stonorov, mostly on housing developments in Pennsylvania.

He began teaching at Yale in 1947. In 1950 he became resident architect at the American Academy in Rome, spent nine months travelling in Italy, Greece and Egypt, and drew from ancient buildings and sites lessons in monumentality, light and form. On his return he received the commission for the Yale Art Gallery, completed in 1953. He then returned to the University of Pennsylvania to teach, and designed the Richards laboratories there (1957-1965); contemporaries soon saw in them a modern landmark that broke with the International Style's universal space and prismatic steel-and-glass volumes.

The Salk Institute in La Jolla (1959-1965), the Unitarian church in Rochester (1959-1969), the National Assembly in Dhaka, the Phillips Exeter Academy library (1965-1972), the Kimbell Art Museum and the Yale Center for British Art followed. His architecture is known for simple geometric forms and a complex interplay of natural light and materials. At the Salk, the poured-in-place concrete is both the structure and the visible surface. At Exeter, the specifications state that the quality of the concrete will largely decide the quality of the architecture. At the Kimbell, split vaults let in a thin line of daylight, diffused by an aluminium reflector. In Dhaka, a man-made lake separates the office blocks from the Assembly building. For the memorial on Roosevelt Island he wanted a room and a garden.

Kahn died on 17 March 1974. Two firms, David Wisdom & Associates and Pellecchia & Meyers, finished his unfinished buildings: the Yale Center for British Art opened in 1977 and the National Assembly in Dhaka was finished in 1983. Four Freedoms Park, the Roosevelt Island memorial, was not built until 2010-2012, to his design.