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Cover of Louis I. Kahn in conversation
Book details

Louis I. Kahn in conversation

interviews with John W. Cook and Heinrich Klotz, 1969-70

by Louis I. Kahn

Published 2015ISBN 978-0-3002-0814-6

"In 1969 and 1970, Louis I. Kahn (1901--1974)--one of America's greatest 20th-century architects--participated in a series of interviews with a young German architectural historian, Heinrich Klotz, then a visiting professor at Yale University, and John W. Cook, who was teaching architecture at the Yale Divinity School. Louis I. Kahn in Conversation provides the first full edited transcript of these candid, illuminating interviews, which provide remarkable insights into Kahn's philosophy of architecture. The conversations touch on many of his iconic works, including the unbuilt City Tower Project for Philadelphia, the Yale University Art Gallery, the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, and major international projects then under construction, as well as the Yale Center for British Art, Kahn's final building, on which he was beginning work at the time. Illustrated with dozens of plans, drawings, and photographs, the book also features an introduction by Jules David Prown, the first director of the Yale Center for British Art, who recommended Kahn as its architect"--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.

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Themes to notice

Nonfiction

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Content notes

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Reading experience

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Who it may suit

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At a glance

This book's DNA

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ToneBalanced
LuminousDark

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Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc

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Louis I. Kahn in conversationLouis I. Kahn
Powerful4.3/5

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Before you choose

A quick reading snapshot

Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.

Reading lengthLength not listed
Publication eraContemporaryFirst published or edition dated 2015
Primary categoryNonfictionExplore similar books below
ISBN-13
978-0-3002-0814-6
Language
English
Edition record
OL26887904M
BookenDeX editorial lens

A more thoughtful way into this book

This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.

Good to know

Preview the edition to decide how it fits your available reading time.

Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.

Try this reading approach

Read for connection, not completion.

Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.

Three questions to carry with you

  1. Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
  2. Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
  3. How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?

Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.