Kahn Introduction

Louis I. Kahn introduction to the 1973 edition of Notebooks and Drawings:

Dear Rick and Gene:

In the ten years since the printing of this book I have been given the opportunity to study design and build new building and reshape land. I was privileged also to enjoy the experience of designing a number of building at the same time. This is good, for one building tells the other if its nature, leading to new realizations of spaces.

The principal of comparing of distinguishing the servant areas from the spaces served which I thought about when designing the Trenton Bath House has been a constant guide in the structure and character of spaces.

In the text file Notebook I touched on Thoughts about the affect of the intimate room and the big room on student and teacher. I feel that the Room is the beginning of Architecture and the Plan is the Society of the Rooms. In German, French, and Italian I realized that “Room” is not understood as it is in English. Beauty, a total harmony, is in the realizations of this word “Room.” If I were to speak in the Baptistery of Florence I would be led by the walls around me to say what I never said before. A room can be generative. This could happen in a small room with just another person. A third person could disturb the vectors, changing what could be an event to a mere performance. So sensitive is a room.

The Pyramids seem to want to tell us of its motivations and its meeting with Nature in order to be 

I sense Silence as the aura of the “desire to be to express” 
Light as the aura “to be to be”
Material as “Special Light.”
(The mountains the streams the atmosphere and we are of spent light.)
Silence to Light
Light to Silence
The Threshold of their crossing
Is the Singularity
Is inspiration
(where the desire to express meets the possible)
is the Sanctuary of Art
is the Treasury of the Shadows
(Material casts shadows belongs to light)

The longest trace from Silence, sustaining the unmeasureable before the measurable of Light is permitted to cross in the Threshold ‘Poetry.’

Parting form Silence restraining the desire to express to grasp the Laws of Nature, the measures of Light, and to extend its offerings in the longest path toward Silence.

Crossing its reluctant trace is the Threshold ‘Science.’

Yet a Newton, like the poet, needs but a hint from Nature to reuse the Universe. He allows the desire to express, the yet not expressed to lead him, disapproving of his knowing of law seeking only the total harmony of Order.

I wanted to illustrate Silence and Light

Silence I felt – this way about.

Light? – how could I do better than accept the whiteness of the paper itself? Looking an at illustration of the Waverly Tales by Gruikshank I noticed his lines followed the direction of the source of light. I realized that the stroke of the pen was where the light was not.

This was the clue to the illusion. My remark that structure is the giver of light is here by recalled. The column in the Greek Temple is where the light is not.

LIK June 15 ‘73