Resurrecting the great architect’s final notebook.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of architect Louis Kahn Ar1924 Hon’71. In commemoration, his oldest daughter, Sue Ann Kahn CW’61, has proffered a gift to architecture historians and enthusiasts with Louis I. Kahn: The Last Notebook.
It’s actually a two-part offering. First, there’s a facsimile of the original hardcover Winsor and Newton notebook—right down to its ink-splotched dark red buckram cover and the perforations on its thin, translucent pages—in which Kahn wrote and sketched during a particularly fertile period of his practice. In addition, his daughter has edited and annotated an accompanying softcover volume that provides context and captions for her father’s illustrations and jottings. Those begin with pencil studies for his Roosevelt Memorial from February/March 1973 [“Constructing a New Kahn,” Mar|Apr 2013] and end on February 17, 1974 (exactly a month before he died) with a doodle of a starry burst of light that resembles a comic book’s Pow! symbol. This companion piece also includes an editor’s introduction, a lengthy appreciation from architecture critic Michael J. Lewis G’85 Gr’89, additional photos and presentation drawings, and a note from publisher Lars Müller that illuminates how complicated this labor of love was. Frequent Gazette contributor JoAnn Greco talked with Sue Ann Kahn in June about her father and his last notebook.
Why did you think it was worth publishing this particular notebook?
I inherited this notebook, along with many others, in 1996 when my mother [Esther Kahn Ed’27 G’33] died. I always felt that this one was very special and I wanted to share it so readers could delight in it as I have. For the last 15 years, I’ve tried intermittently to publish it and everyone, including Lars, turned it down. About two years ago I was having lunch with Michael Lewis and he mentioned that 2024 would be the 50th anniversary of my father’s death. I was absolutely stunned at the realization and started thinking that we should plan something. I thought again of the book. Lars happened to be in New York City, where I live, and I mentioned the anniversary and invited him to come and see the book in person—and he said, Let’s do it! But he made it clear that I would have to raise the money for what was going to be a very expensive process. Tying it into a commemoration helped give it impetus.
What were some of the difficulties in replicating the book?
Lars made several trips to meet with a lithographer in Germany, because it was going to be very difficult to isolate the varied textures and colors presented by the use of charcoal and pencil and red ink in the book; you also have these shadows and bleed-through. Since I’m a professional musician, I’ve also been fortunate during the years to view many original scores. I once held a sketchbook of Beethoven’s in my hand! That really gave me a feeling of his presence and his creative process, and that’s the feeling I wanted readers to get from this book. So we wound up making more and more expensive decisions to make an exact replica.
Do you have memories of watching your dad sketch?
He was always drawing. He would go on a trip and would have a notebook or sheets of paper. The ideas were always flowing: when he wasn’t drawing, he was talking, and sometimes doing both together. At various phases of his life, he thought he would be an artist or musician. He was offered scholarships for both but wound up studying architecture at Penn.
How do the sketches elucidate the way Lou approached a project?
I think the flight of eight charcoal perspective drawings near the end of the book is a great example. He must have made them in the space of, I don’t know, 20 minutes. It’s just boom boom boom, these quick ideas of what the memorial at Roosevelt Island is going to feel like, but still filled with detail. We’re pretty sure they were made to be transferred to large scale for a presentation.
Can you discuss your research? Did any new discoveries or stories emerge?
I have every serious book written about my father, so I have my own archives. I did make a few trips to Philadelphia, though, and without Penn’s Architectural Archives I don’t think I could have produced research at this level. Michael and I went out to Penn to learn a bit more about the Tehran project [a new city center called Abbasabad], which was the last my father took on. We asked Bill [Whitaker, Architectural Archives collections manager] if we could look at the original drawings. Out comes a huge folder of yellow trace drawings and in it was a missing page from this notebook. That was quite amazing. It’s a drawing of the site that basically looks like a profile of a human head. My father had torn it from the notebook to make a photocopy. I also reached out to Farshid Emami, an Iranian architect and assistant professor at Rice University, who put me in touch with Nader Ardalan, an architect who went to Iran with my father. Nader told me that he was in Egypt, visiting the Valley of the Kings with his family—because my father had suggested he needed to see it in order to understand the Tehran project—when he got the news that my father died.
The way that this notebook just abruptly ends is moving, since it can’t help but remind us of Lou’s sudden death. Your invitation to readers to fill in the remaining blank pages with their own thoughts or drawings is generous.
I still believe in the immediacy and intimacy of the drawing process. People should take this book and go to Roosevelt Island and sketch, or go sit in a park and write a poem. Whatever you feel like doing—the book is not meant to be a precious or rare thing. There’s 3,500 of them! I may be naive in thinking that people will use it this way, though. One of my architect friends said, No way would I ever draw in this. I said, Why not? The paper is fantastic. Try it!
Sue Ann Kahn will appear at the Weitzman School of Design on September 18 at 6:30 p.m. to discuss her new book and the work of Louis I. Kahn. For more information, visit design.upenn.edu.
