Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style: A Life in Architecture

Carter Wiseman

Read Carter Wiseman's interview in the California Literary Review

Praise for Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style:

“[N]ot merely a collection of Kahn’s architectural works….[W]iseman draws on a wealth of information….this investigation of Kahn’s personal life gives Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style a richness and layering not usually associated with architecture books. It is indeed, a biography of an interesting and complex man.”
—Urban Land

"Louis I. Kahn is lavishly illustrated...and contributes the most comprehensive analysis of the architect’s life and works to date."
—DocoMomo

“[A]n authoritative and beautifully illustrated book.”
—Yale Alumni Magazine

“[A]n accessible and handsome biography. . . . [D]oes an exceptional job of explaining the life of an enigmatic figure whose importance in architecture is, over thirty years after his death, increasingly well appreciated. . . .[A] welcome tribute to a twentieth-century master.”
—The Commercial Dispatch

“Wiseman's biography is beautifully written, balanced, and informative.”
—The New Criterion, Anthony Alofsin

“[An] excellent new biography”
—Metropolis Magazine

“Carter Wiseman, who teaches at the Yale School of Architecture, has done us all a service by producing Louis I. Kahn, a balanced and penetrating study of Kahn both as an architect and as a man.”
—New York Sun

“[A] highly accessible study that is the first to integrate Kahn's work into the larger context of his life. ... If beauty matters here, it can be found in Carter Wiseman's writing. ... Wiseman knows architecture and how to write about it with crystalline clarity...”
—The Buffalo News

“A haunting, compelling portrait of a consummate artist….[N]umerous photos of Kahn’s life and work, most of them previously unpublished, adding an amazing visual aspect to this most visual and visionary of architects.”
—ENR (Engineering News-Record)

Overview

The first in-depth biographical study of the brilliant but elusive architect who fundamentally redefined twentieth-century architecture.

Now ranked with Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, Louis I. Kahn brought a reverence for history back into modern architecture while translating it into a uniquely contemporary idiom.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with colleagues, coworkers, clients, and family membersóand illustrated with many previously unpublished photographsóthis book documents the uniquely American rise of a poor immigrant to the pinnacle of the international architectural world.

It illuminates the richly diverse personal relationships Kahn had with such clients as Jonas Salk and Paul Mellon, and the romantic entanglements that mystified even those closest to him. While celebrating the genius of Kahnís art, the book provides an invaluable portrait of the man who created it.

About the Author

Carter Wiseman teaches a seminar on Louis Kahn at Yale University. He lives in Weston, Connecticut. He is also the author of Twentieth-Century American Architecture.

ISBN 10: 0-393-73165-0
ISBN 13: 978-0-393-73165-1
2007 / 288 pages / hardcover