SUST Journal of Science and Technology, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2014; P:61-69

Of Boullée and Kahn, and the Spirit of the Sublime

(Submitted: February 2, 2012; Accepted for Publication: June 11, 2013)

K. Taufiq Elahi Department of Architecture, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh

E-mail: elahi-arc@sust.edu, ktaufiqelahi@yahoo.com

Abstract

If we look at the string of development-trend in architectural history and theory in a broader spectrum, it would have been seen that two diverse but distinctive ideals have waged war against one another throughout the centuries. The rationalists were the pioneers amongst the two – as far into the past as texts were found on building art and its relevant issues – they sought for absolute truth and beauty in every object of creation, believing in their hearts that a magical or grand theory is there. Whereas, the empirical mind-sets were biased on knowledge accumulated through experience and practice – the relativity of things in human familiarity and perception. From the earliest of civilizations to the Postmodern world, the debate of the rational and the empirical standpoints came across revolutionary advancements in architectural thought-process that readily fulfilled the demands of changes within the socio-economic and political boundaries. But there are instances in this long and battered string where some individuals strove for beauty beyond general impressions of human parameter – ‘the sublime’ – that could create its own existence defying time and space. In this narrative, the creative genius of Étienne-Louis Boullée and Louis I. Kahn has been compared against their contemporaries and against the theories in architecture that prevailed in their times. In doing so, ‘sublimity’ as a unifying factor – a common phenomenon that exists within their architectural creations were reviewed in the light of their own theoretical perspectives. Keywords: Sublime in architecture, Classical, Neoclassical, Modern, Étienne-Louis Boullée, Louis I. Kahn Category: Architecture – History, Theory and Criticism /Philosophy and Practice

1. Introduction

Architecture and its recurrent discourses have undergone a rapid and revolutionary transformation in the

Modern era. Through the works of Louis I. Kahn and his predecessors of the same brain-lengths, this essay attempts to chart the points of transition in architecture from the nineteenth-century Romanticism and Neoclassicism to High Modernism. Louis I. Kahn redefined the boundaries of cognitive perception in the realms of architecture – the metamorphosis that was emphasized in the beauty of his singular and monumental creations. His desire to elevate architecture from the design of utilitarian forms to meaningful and imperative spaces, coupled with his rigorous attention to the programmatic details, the corresponding systems in construction, and his interest in the inspirational and transcended quality of architectural spaces set him apart from the other architects of his time (Giurgola, 1998). Kahn himself was a reaction against the prevailing Modernist principles. He strongly believed that architecture should appeal not only to practical and aesthetic needs but also to the needs of more humanistic behavior of the people and the communities they serve – an aspect he felt was lacking in the building trends of his contemporaries (Tyng, 1984; Latour, 1991; and Fleming, 2002).

It is a quest for the individual identity that stirred the human consciousness throughout the ages, surfacing and resurfacing again at points in the course of time where he could no longer comply with the meanings of generalization and optimization. Louis I. Kahn and Étienne-Louis Boullée (as before him) are the visionaries in their own instances, who have shown the courage to defy the tide of their time.

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2. Construct and Methodology This study narrates, identifies and assimilates two different events in the timeline of architectural history around

a definitive central theme – ‘the Sublime’. The first section in the main discourse (section 3) defines ‘the Sublime’ in architecture, while the following section (section 4) establishes the background in which the two visionaries could address to this central theme. Subsequently, their stylistic and philosophical traits have been discussed with reference to sublimity and their local boundaries.

In reviewing Boullée and Kahn, relevant literature have been drawn from a range of secondary sources. This body of information has formed the basis of this particular discourse, and they have been quoted as and when used in the text.

3. The Commonsense of ‘the Beautiful’ and ‘the Sublime’ Any general theory of art (meaning, the aesthetic purpose) must begin with this supposition – that man responds

to the shape, surface and mass of things present to his senses, and that certain arrangements in the proportion of the shape, surface and the mass of things in a pleasurable sensation; whilst the lack of such arrangements lead to indifference or even to positive discomfort and revulsion. The sense of relations is the sense of ‘beauty’ and the opposite is the sense of ‘ugliness’. So ‘beauty’ is a unity of formal relations among our sense-perceptions. It is predominantly a fluctuating phenomenon with manifestations in the course of history that are very uncertain and often very baffling (Carroll, 2000; Read, 2003).

The meaning of ‘the beautiful’ and ‘the sublime’ as an aesthetic lingual duo is rooted in discourses of nature, languages, literature, visual art, and eventually, in architecture. ‘Beauty’ refers to the (obtained) keen pleasure to the senses in general – impressions of charm through inherent fitness or grace, or exact adaptation to a purpose that relate to ‘the beautiful’; while ‘the sublime’ is (obtained, and in terms of things in nature and art) the senses of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power – calculated to inspire awe, deep reverence, or lofty emotions by reasons of its ‘beauty’, vastness or majesty (OED, 1999). Gilbert-Rolfe’s (1999) perspective is his notion that ‘the sublime’ cannot exist in nature today – that it can only inhabit or be expressed by technology – as technology, in contemporary terms, is limitless and yet to be apprehended; whereas nature is limited and finite.

3.1 Ruskin; on ‘the Sublime’ in Architecture To John Ruskin, ‘the sublime’ is not a specific term descriptive of the effect of a particular class of ideas. Anything which elevates the mind is ‘the sublime’, and the elevation of the mind is produced by the contemplation of greatness of the ally kind. It is, therefore, only another word for the effect of greatness upon the feelings – greatness, whether of matter, space, power, or virtue or beauty (Figure 1). ‘The sublime’ is not distinct from ‘the beautiful’, nor from other sources of pleasure in nature of art, but is only a particular mode and manifestation of them. Ruskin also admitted that many things are sublime in the highest degree which is not in the highest degree beautiful, and vice versa (Landow, 1971).

Ruskin details the way in which the architect can draw upon the power of sublimity. He insists that the relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigor of their masses than any other attributes of their design. The stylistic principles that an architect must follow once he has determined to create a structure marked by sublimity can be stated in the following terms (Rosenberg, 1979; Wedderburn, 2008): • His building must have one visible bounding line from top to bottom and from end to end, and the observer must

be able to take it in all at once. • The sublime object must be vast, regular and uninterrupted; and the architect must employ breadth of surface in

his walls. • To create the effect of sublimity in smaller buildings, the architect must devise a bold masonry-like “the rude

and irregular piling of the rocks”. • The architect must use large masses of light and shadow in buildings since “after size and weight, the power of

architecture may be said to depend on the quantity of its shadow”. Ruskin’s emphasis upon broad masses of shadow leads him to praise deep-set windows, the Gothic modes of

decoration, and anything that creates a ‘broad, dark and simple’ effect (Wedderburn, 2008). In short, both Ruskin’s citation of these architectural details and his emphasis upon massing of light and shadow reveal that he believed this art of building must work with height, breadth and depth, and thus shaping spaces to create a sense of ‘the sublime’ (Landow, 1971).

Of Boullée and Kahn, and the Spirit of the Sublime 63

Ruskin often draws reference to the nature of psychological impression as he proceeds through his discourse on architecture (Rosenberg, 1979). He admits that human associations play an inevitable role in the perception of ‘the beautiful’, and he readily emphasizes the importance to ‘the sublime’ of what the human imagination confers upon the external world. Ruskin also puts stress on the successful employment of broad expanse of wall surface, correct siting, unbroken bounding lines, and a definitive shape that establishes the realization of ‘the sublime’. 3.2 Implications The twentieth-century architects have agreed with Ruskin, and although many of his statements are about ‘the beauty’ and ‘the sublime’ in architecture seem concerned with a kind of building quite foreign (even absurd) to our own century; his characterizations of ‘the sublimity’, on the other hand, anticipate much of the Modern movement. Both the works of Walter Gropius – who considered himself as a follower of Ruskin, and of Frank L. Wright – who was acquainted with all of Ruskin’s major works; often seem to embody his conceptions of architectural sublimity (Pevsner, 1968). Louis I. Kahn (as Étienne-Louis Boullée before him), though an individual with his own meaning for architecture, conforms to Ruskin’s principles of ‘the sublimity’ in the broader terms.

4. Of Theories and Debates During the later years of the middle ages, the rule of the feudal lords declined to give way to a rapidly

expanding mercantile economy. France was the first in line to achieve an impression of national unity. While elsewhere, provincial dukedoms and wealthy merchant families wielded control. The early Renaissance was commenced as the elite, in the wake of their intellectual pursuit, drew upon the Roman Classical in every sphere of their cultural activity (Hall and Gieben, 1992). Vitruvius was reincarnated in this process and his writings on architecture and town planning found its way into the Renaissance building art. Like the Romans, the ‘Renaissance men’ were rationalists, with pro-people values. Classical order and Platonic aesthetic principles formed the basis of formulating systems that guided and dictated the urge to satisfy their visual demand only, whereas, structural and /or functional capacities were less prioritized in almost all the instances. But it was during the late-Renaissance that the practitioners in building art gradually began to acknowledge the ethical aspects beside its aesthetic values that derived from the Classical world (Kruft, 1994; Mallgrave, 2006). The following subsections will involve a discussion of the scenarios in which Boullée and Kahn stood out as individual geniuses in the history of architecture: 4.1 The Neoclassical Debate: Boullée’s Locale Neoclassicism emerged into Europe during the mid-1700s with the rise of the bourgeoisie in the society and in the decline in the late-Renaissance aristocracy. This gradual shift in the social stratums was a direct and inevitable consequence of the advancements in the technical frontiers. Parallel to such developments, human consciousness took new forms as different branches of knowledge evolved, and a Historicist movement swept across the countries that aimed to answer for their individual identities. New technical institutions were established during the subsequent period of time in support of such ideals. It was during this turbulent era that the tree of trends in architecture – primarily seeded by Vitruvius in the days of the Antiquity, was destined to face the challenges of radical transformation in the socio-cultural spheres (Mallgrave, 2006). During the late-1800s, the realization has emerged through the debate of the Romantic Classicists that the Greco-Gothic ideals – had first been formulated over a century before by the likes of Jean-Louis de Cordemoy, found its own meaning as the architects began to seek for normative approach to the composition of structures from technically up-to-date and viable elements. By that time, Structural Classicism has been defined as the logical consequence of technical advancement which, in turn, provided what it required for a new generation of architectural ideals (Kruft, 1994; Frampton, 2007). The compositions became axial in traditions of ‘the picturesque’ notion of the later Neoclassicists.

The impact of technical advancement reached all the corners of the European community through the mid-1600s and the 1700s. It started off with a complete denial of the trends of the late-Baroque and the Rococo. The search for a true style in architecture became an all-out quest through the precise reappraisal of the Antiquity. Numerous attempts were seen to have been made where the search for an answer was sought not only in the boundaries of Europe, but also in the antiquities of the Egyptians, the Etruscans, and the Greeks (Kruft, 1994).

During the late-1600s, Claude Perrault was the first to question the long-standing Vitruvian systems of proportion and beauty, as they have been received and refined through the Classical theorists (and practitioners alike) of the Renaissance. Instead, Perrault suggested a normative boundary that involved awareness of cultural relativity – the Positive Beauty, and the requisite of a functional expression by circumstance and character of any particular behavior – Arbitrary Beauty. Subsequently, Jean-Louis de Cordemoy’s interest became evident towards Greek temples and the Gothic cathedrals, as he suggested that ornamentations had to be subject to propriety. Cordemy was

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inclined towards the basics and the purity within the geometric systems, which in fact, was against the Baroque ideals. In the mid-1700s, Julien-David Le Roy’s promotion of the Greek architecture took the debate head on as he demanded that it had the origins of the ‘true style’. And with Le Roy before him, Giovanni Battista Piranesi suggested that it was the consequent developments of the Etruscans, the Greeks and the Romans which raised architecture to a higher level of refinement (Kruft, 1994; Mallgrave, 2006). His evocative etchings that represent ‘the dark side of a sensation’ – ‘the sublime’, had contributed to the emergence of the ‘nostalgic Classical’ in a greater degree (Figure 1). Marc-Antoine Laugier, in his reinterpretation of Cordemoy, passionately favored the lightness, the proportions and the spaciousness of Gothic architecture deduced in Classical terms as he attempted to redefine the primordial hut – composed of four tree-trunks supporting a rustic pitch roof as the basis of Classicized Gothic architecture (Figure 2).

During the French Revolution and the periods that followed, the necessity grew in an abrupt manner to contain

new institutions of the bourgeoisie society and the new republican states. With the rise of the Napoleonic trends, the eclectic use of the Antique motifs (but with Gothic inclination) rapidly surfaced with a view to create its ‘instant heritage’. But shortly afterwards, Europe saw the return of the Classic for the triumph of the Prussian nationalism, and with it, a new political idealism emerged (Frampton, 2007).

In the late-1700s, Étienne-Louis Boullée’s abstraction of the geometric form, as suggested by the ancient works, gave light to a new concept of Monumentality that would possess the calm and ideal beauty of Classical architecture (Lemagny, 2002 and Frampton, 2007). His sole intention was to express the essence of power through the innate symbolic qualities of the basic geometric forms, where light and shadow explored the potential for mystery in architectural forms and spaces. On the other hand, Claud-Nicolas Ledoux intended to structure the devices of a new utopian society along strict architectural lines according to its activity in a monumental and highly visible way – a vision that knew no social barriers. While doing so, he denied the preset conceptions on order of columns and developed his new system that was based upon nature – in creating ‘the sublime’ in the new urban. Chaux, the industrial town in French Jura, is itself a visual a visual communicative devise expressive of its own identity and purpose (Figure 3).

Figure 1: Temple of Divus Claudius by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (late-1700s).

Figure 2: The Primitive Hut by Marc-Antoine Laugier (1753); as referred in: Kruft (1994).

Of Boullée and Kahn, and the Spirit of the Sublime 65

Figure 3: Pour la ville de Chaux by Claud-Nicolas Ledoux (1804); as referred in: Frampton (2007).

During the mid-1800s, Neoclassicism shaped two definitive streams (Frampton, 2007). They are: • The Structural Classicists; the likes of Cordemoy and Laugier who tended to emphasize structural capacity in

the discourse of architecture. • The Romantic Classicists; the likes of Ledoux and Boullée, who stressed on the physiognomic character of the

form itself. The contributions of Ledoux to the social tradition motivated spatial organizations in the twentieth-century.

Boullée, on the other hand, desired to create unique and original architecture apposite to an ideal new social order, anticipating similar concerns in the field of architecture in the near future. However, it was the academic trainings of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts that firmly established a rationalist interest in structure and its utilitarian values, which will be seen to have lasted well into the twentieth-century architectural practices. 4.2 Into Modernism: Kahn’s Locale The Beaux-Arts (or the French Academy) was the strongest and the single most influence on the theoretical and academic spheres at the turn of the century. Its attitude was based on principles of ‘plan-organization’ and ‘form-composition’ whose foundations went back to the eighteenth-century ideals of psychological response and to the recurrence of Neoplatonic doctrine, which has been established during its entire length. It was at this time that the revolutionary brain-currents of the ‘Ecole’ and its subsidiaries collided with new structural techniques, innovations and social consequences, eventually giving birth to the Modern in architecture. The immediate effect of the collision widened the deviation between practice and theory, producing an impact that was only to overcome by the international acceptance of the functional aesthetics in the late 1920s and the early 1930s (Sharp, 1972). This effect of dichotomy was pronounced in Germany. The basic concepts of the German theorists seemed, in such instances, to contradict the prevailing trends of ‘the creative’ in art and architecture. However, the creation of a ‘socio-functional’ theory on the basis of functional aesthetics was destined to collapse within the next few decades (Pevsner, 1968).

Except for the works of the pioneering Modern architects such as Adolf Loos, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and their direct interpreters and disciples; there have been little (or no) understanding of the purpose and the concepts of the ‘Modern’ in architecture itself. The others only followed their pioneers without properly understanding the true meaning of Functionalism (or Material Functionalism) and the likes of it. In Germany and Holland, during the formative years of Modernism, the expressionist argument was forced to yield to the Objectivists – the aesthetic contest that was of functionalism, form /space versus expression (Sharp, 1972;

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Mallgrave, 2005). Those who were Romantic in their cores, were too, essentially oriented towards the logic of the function.

By the early-1900s, both the theorists and practicing architects had already resolved their common enemy – the nineteenth-century revivalism and eclecticism. The aesthetic qualities of space, volume and form, and their visualization interested the theorists, but the preoccupation of the practitioners was with form, material, technique and function. The concerns with the problems of the aesthetic meaning of space and volume – their inner and outer relationship, as well as the symbolic and the cognitive character of architecture were in an ambiguous and preliminary state (Pevsner, 1968).

By the 1930s, the leaders of the Modern movement had also absorbed the painterly concept of inter-penetration, the De Stijl elementarist spatial organization, as well as the principles of ‘space’ as the innate essence of architecture. Such academic concepts of spatial and symbolical attribute played part in the new and rational attitude in the works and theories of Corbusier, Gropius and Mies; but the dominant aesthetic considerations were reinforced within the concepts of ‘plan-organization’ and a visual extension of the ‘machine aesthetics’. The architects were seen to draw their analogies in terms of format, shape and efficient use from the products of engineering. Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe vouched towards simplicity. Mies aimed at Classical purity which was later made explicit in his buildings and in such epigrams as ‘less is more’, while Wright strove for ‘organic simplicity’. During this turbulent period of time, elements of Cubism, puritanical Cubism and Futurism were also founded within the realms of architecture. After the 1930s, the utilitarian approach of the international Functionalist movement further underlined the universality of the right-angle synthesis (of rectangular organization) and its hard-edged system (Mallgrave, 2005). It appeared as if it was technologically correct for the age and the theory which backed it up, in support of the words of Bruno Taut – “necessity is by far the greatest incentive to the inventive activity” (Whyte, 2010).

Monumentality was rejected by the ideals of Modernism as it realized it as a glorification of a no longer relevant past and a stand against standardization that asserts a dangerous effect of nationalism – the conventions of Historicism was outdated in this process. Although the totalitarian regimes of the 1930s and 1940s welcomed this rejection in favor of the utilitarian approach of Modernism, architects in several instances favored for buildings with some extent of monumentality that would outlive the period and express the highest form of socio-cultural standings. Louis I. Kahn concurred with this idea, feeling that Monumentalism was right in rejecting the outdated effects of Beaux-Arts which did not prove to be the most securing communicative paradigm with the twentieth-century conditions (Sharp, 1972; Latour, 1991).

Kahn had experienced monumentality in the consequences of Beaux-Arts architecture and saw it lacking in the practice of Modernism. In the mid-1940s, Kahn wrote – “Monumentality in architecture maybe defined as a quality,

a spiritual quality inherent in structure which conveys the feeling of its eternity; that it cannot be added or changed” (Latour, 1991). By the mid-1950s, Kahn had stopped speaking of monumentality and started advocating matters that had deeper meaning in the realization of archetypal expression.

5. Of Boullée and Kahn It was Emil Kaufmann (1929) who discovered the ‘revolutionary’ in the likes of Ledoux, Boullée and Legueu.

He suggested – “The projects of the circle around Ledoux and Boullée have an astonishing similarity to the

architecture of today. This means that the historical break of 1789 points to the new era which has begun in the

realms both of social and artistic life, and that the hiatus of 1800 is as important as that of 1500 (a partial concordance between the Classic and the Neoclassic)”. Kaufmann proposed two distinctive generalizations that embody the nature of the era (Hall and Gieben, 1992): • Formalism; the demand of the architectural form to create a harmoniously pleasing response, and a clear and

easy reading – a notion that justifies the formal attributes. • Spirit of the Age (zeitgeist); the general culture, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and /or political climate within a

specific boundary that favors the pictorial fusion of elements. Classicism demanded of the architectural form a meaningful harmony; that the material should be handled

according to its nature and the form should be expressive of its purpose. Whereas, Neoclassicism values nothing of the material or the functional exponents in the desire of betters ideas – the mediator of moods – to arouse emotions which have distinctions that these physical properties do not contain; where the stone (material) is inhabited by genius (Hall and Gieben, 1992; Mallgrave, 2006).

But Kaufmann did not see as far as the realms of Kahn before he concluded his discussion within the boundaries of time. Otherwise he would have certainly identified yet another historical break in the traditions of twentieth-century architecture.

Of Boullée and Kahn, and the Spirit of the Sublime 67

5.1 Étienne-Louis Boullée: Of Sublime A prominent member of his professional generation and a gifted teacher to the first class of the French Academy, Boullée devoted his later years to painting and to the theories of architecture. But he is most credited for his ‘visionary’ and highly imaginative designs, of which over 100 drawings still survive to this date. Skeptical of Vitruvius, the famed Blondel-Perrault debate and the French culture itself he spoke of architecture as poetry – composed of symmetry, regularity, varied form, and vigor and character (Lemagny, 2002; Mallgrave, 2006). The most famous of his visionary designs is the cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton – a gigantic spherical monument; playing perfectly into his symbolism of forms and exploitation of the ‘mystics’ in light (Figure 4). He states (as in: Mallgrave, 2006):

“… Sublime mind! Prodigious and profound genius! Divine being! Newton! Design to accept the homage of my

feeble talents! Ah! If I dare to make it public, it is because I am persuaded that I have surpassed myself in the

project which I shall discuss.”

Figure 4: El Cenotafio de Newton by Boullée (1784). “… O Newton! With the range of your intelligent and sublime nature of your genius, you have defined the shape

of this earth; I have conceived the idea of enveloping you with your discovery. … How can I find outside you

anything worthy of you? It was these ideas that made me want to make a sepulcher in the shape of the earth. In the

imitation of the Ancients and to pay homage to you I have surrounded it with flowers and cypress trees (… and he continued with the discussion of the sphere).”

Boullée passionately elaborates on how the space inside the spherical volume would be lit-up during the night and the day. He also gives minute details of the making of the form within a vast eternal setting of the universe and the vault of the sky. He also speaks of the form in terms of its physical properties and the dialogue it creates with human experience.

Through his creations, both practical and hypothetical, Boullée sought to inspire lofty sentiments in the viewer by forms suggestive of sublimity and immensity of the natural world (Etlin, 1994). He was also strongly influenced by the ancient world (i.e. the Egyptian monuments, in particular) – a trend which became so evident at the advent of Neoclassicism. Boullée’s mature works depict delicate abstraction of the geometric forms within the concepts of monumentality that would possess the calm – the ideal of the Classic; while also having the vigor of innate symbolic qualities in the basic geometric forms (i.e. cube, sphere, cylinder and pyramid).

Boullée devised the striking and original effects of light and shadow in his geometries, emphasizing the potential of mystery in the realms of architecture. His genuinely poetic approach to architecture, in some way (or the other), acted as the backdrop for the nineteenth-century Romantics in the pursuit for the psychological response from the viewer. Often criticized for his ‘megalomaniac’ tendencies, Boullée is regarded simply because his visionary scheme rather than their practical implications. 5.2 Louis I. Kahn: Of Sublime Louis I. Kahn drew his inspiration from the Bauhaus principles and the International style. Simultaneously, his ideas of employing simple forms to create monumental dimensions are reflective of his latent inclination towards the Ancient and the medieval building trends. His ability to unite the Modern with those of the Historical had a profound impact in the course of architectural development-trend and its discourse in the years to come (Giurgola, 1998; Twombly, 2003). As a teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, Kahn took an exploratory and questioning attitude towards teaching – probing in its poetic depths, in search of the inner meaning of architecture that gave food for his thoughts in the most crucial instances.

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The Yale University Art Gallery (1953) in New Haven was Kahn’s first major design. His utilitarian affinity was revealed in this particular case as he allowed the open lofts of the galleries to be ‘served’ by an inner ‘service’ core. In the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1965) in La Jolla, Kahn devised his forms with Classical formality around a central unifying space-mass – the west of which opens up to the Pacific Ocean. In the world of glass boxes and steel frames (meaning – Modernism in practice) Kahn took the first step onto his beginning of architecture through the search of a meaningful monumentality. The National Assembly Complex, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka (1983 – completed years after his death) is considered to be Kahn’s masterwork and an embodiment of his theories through which he perceived architecture (Gast, 2001). Sublime in its form and spatial manifestation, it becomes a reality within the unreal (Figure 5).

Klaus-Peter Gast claims that there are hidden geometrical patterns in almost all of Kahn’s creations. Gast’s

analysis appears to confirm claims by various scholars that Kahn was an innate Platonist. Jencks, Burton, Scully, and a list of others have compared Kahn’s tendency to conceive architecture as rigorous instances of ‘forms’ to Plato’s doctrine that particular things participate in what Plato calls – ‘forms or ideas’. According to Gast, Kahn goes a step beyond by secretly inscribing his buildings with geometrical kinds of Platonic forms – the square, in particular (Fleming, 2002).

Some common interpretations of Kahn’s philosophical stance towards architecture could be defined in these normative values (Tyng, 1984): • Order; ‘the order-design thesis’ – a representation of the design process involving a linear progression from the

abstract to the concrete, which Kahn perceived as the seed that when planted, grows into a living actuality – the built-form; then again, in the later years, Kahn implies that ‘the order’ was the given, as he finally stopped defining it by saying – “Order is”.

• The Nature of Man; the measurable and the unmeasurable – his search for ‘the beginnings’ and the want to discover what a particular building ‘wants to be’ – in his creation, Kahn first sought to understand its form or the inner essence (the desire – the unmeasurable), and once the form was conceived, it was realized through the measurable parameters of the design process – the collective whole usable by the human instrument.

• Silence and Light; which examines the origin of creative expression within the human psyche – the urge to express, acting with the laws of nature that inspire, where nature is material – the objective reality – the infinite in variations, eternal and unyielding; acting in a harmonic interplay (the Order) without the awareness of its own harmony that exists in total disregard for the human subjectivity, where light becomes complementary to silence. Kahn explains (as in: Twombly, 2003):

Figure 5: Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1965) and Sher-e-Bangla Nagar

Complex (1983) by Kahn.

Of Boullée and Kahn, and the Spirit of the Sublime 69

“… Let us go back in time to the building of the Pyramids. Here the dean of industry in a cloud of dust marking

their place. Now we see the Pyramids in full presence. There prevails the feeling of silence, from which is felt Man’s

desire to express. This before the first stone was laid.” Louis I. Kahn emphasized his natural preference for ‘feeling’. By ‘feeling’, he meant for the instinctual and

intangible being of the innate comprehension. The distinction between the past, present and the future were not important to him, because he considered any point in time as part of a greater and timeless continuum (Tyng, 1984; Giurgola, 1998). Unlike Ruskin, Kahn stops short from defining ‘the sublime’ in architecture in concrete terms (as in: Twombly, 2003):

“… Monumentality is enigmatic. It cannot be intentionally created. Neither the finest material nor the most

advanced technology need enter a work of monumental character for the same reason that the finest ink was not

required to draw up the Magna Carta.”

6. Epilogue

Boullée and Kahn stands many years apart and into two different scenarios, but both struggling to grasp the

eternity and the spirit of the sublime with one sole objective – to reach within the souls of those who perceive them. The instruments are not alike, and it is apparent in terms of time and technology. Boullée sees it in his mind – of sublime spiritual, but Kahn takes the full advantage and pursues his intention with confirmed reality. They both see light as a giver of being, through which the monument speaks, and we listen to what it has to say to us in (its) silence. It is an urge to go beyond the realm of form and space, taking the nature within the souls.

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