Light Extracts

Introduction: Kahn’s Search

“He visited the Pantheon he detected basic, irreducible principles of architecture serving basic, irreducible verities of human existence – a sense of wonder, the love of beauty, of perfection, the search for the divine – that he believed had always been and would always be. His compulsive discussion of his own work was less an indication of self-absorption than of his relentless search for timeless principles.”

“Subtleties of natural light and colour were not much appreciated by modernist architects at mid-twentieth century; nor were architects of that era apt to ruminate about the spiritual qualities of historical design.”

Page 9

“By and large, what Kahn thought to be of primary importance – the past and the innate characteristics of materials, colour, water, light and nature itself – were of secondary importance for his contemporaries, who would probably have demurred at his contention that monumentality in architecture derived from its “spiritual quality,” meaning that all architecture was potentially monumental.”

Page 10

“He nevertheless shared Kahn’s belief that enclosed space (to both of them a building’s reason for being), not the enclosure itself, was architecture’s essence.

“But ultimately his search was more metaphysical more psychological or existential, than it was architectural. Architecture was his means of reaching for greater profundity.”

Page 11

“Ty’s awareness of it, the universe was a coherent, self-regulating entity awaiting discovery. Humankind’s additions to and modifications of that pre-existing order often damaged it, so that the architect’s charge is a kind of restoration effort requiring him to incorporate his understanding of the eternal in every design, as did the pantheon’s makers, hence its everlasting appeal.”

“In sum, Kahn set himself the task of finding and designing “ideal types” – structures to the same time accommodate the requirements of the particular and unique congregation or library at hand. In that sense he was a kind of modern-day Platonist. Kahn’s search as a designer and thinker involved determining what a particular building ‘wanted to be’ in light of what the nature of that kind of building ‘had always been.’”

Page 13

“This is how he put it: Because architecture is ‘completely insatiable’ and ‘can never be satisfied’” every one of his buildings was merely ‘an offering’ to it (see selection 13).”

Page 16

“At the root of the problem was the fact that far from being a systematic or analytical thinker, Kahn was in reality an instinctive and intuitive sensor of things he could not completely fathom and thus not clearly convey to others.”

Page 18

“Kahn was, for example, an acknowledged master at bringing natural light deep into buildings and, conversely, at keeping the sun at bay when conditions required it.”

“When all was said and done the architect’s job was to make an ‘offering of man to the next man.’ That, to him, was ‘joy,’ ‘If you don’t feel joy in what you’re doing,’ he told assembled students, ‘then you’re not really operating.’ You will probably experience great frustration as architects, ‘but really,’ he concluded, surely referring to himself, ‘joy will prevail.’”

Page 19

Monumentality (1944)

“Defining monumentality as ‘the spiritual quality of architecture’”

“So that the architecture might return to those ‘basic principles’ that in the past had been the ‘common characteristics of its greatness.”

Page 21

“Monumentality is enigmatic. 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.”

Page 22

An Approach to Architectural Education (1956)

“’As a designer of exteriors and selector of tasteful finish materials’ but ‘as a master coordinator-builder’”

Page 32

“The efficiency of the plan is measured by the amount of usable space both near and away from natural light in proportion to the amount of space given over to services corridors.”

Page 33

“As the face to the sun, to the wind and the rain it can well be conceived as the beginning of the structure able to break up or receive the rays of the sun or become a buttress against the force of wind and thus becoming an integral part of the conception contributing in the development of a higher order of construction.”

Page 34

Talk at the Otterlo Congress

CIAM

“Khan’s informal talk at the group’s last meeting – touched on key concepts that had begun to characterize his thinking ‘existence-will.’ Or what anything, especially a building, ‘wants to be’; the ancient ‘beginnings’ of the social ‘institutions’ (education and religion, for example) for which architects designed and that when clustered form a city; the relationship between space and light; and the ‘hierarchy’ of ‘servant’ and ‘served’ spaces.

Page 37

“If one was to ask, ‘What is feeling?’ I think you could say that it is the residue of our mental evolution, and that in this residue was an ingredient which is thought. And this ingredient somehow was a spirit in itself, and one time it said to feeling, ‘look, I have served you well, I have helped you to become man, and now I want to go out for myself. I want to be a satellite, I want you to consider me as something independent of you. I will come back to you, I must,’ Thought goes independently and deals with other thoughts of other men, and from it comes a postulate. But still a postulate must say to feeling, ‘How am I doing?’ It must! Now realization, I think, is thought and feeling together. Because feeling itself is completely unable to act, and thought also is unable to act, but thought and feeling combined create a kind of realization. This realization can be said to be a sense of order; a sense of the nature of sense.”

Page 38

“It is for the architect to derive from the very nature of things – from his realizations – what a thing wants to be.”

Page 39

“Nature is not concerned with form, only man is concerned with form. It makes it according to circumstances.”

“Because there is a certain existence-will in this kind of thing which produces itself into this kind of animal and nature is not concerned about form – but we are.”

Page 40

“If you try to think of points from which we can reach points of departure in architecture, we can very easily state that a space in architecture is one in which it is evident how it is made, and that the introduction of a column or any device for making a roof is already thought of from the standpoint of light, and no space is really an architectural space unless it has natural light. Artificial light does not light a space in architecture, because it must have the feeling in it of the time of day and season of the year – the nuances of this is incomparable with the single moment of an electric bulb. It is ridiculous to think that an electric bulb can do what the sun can do or the seasons can do. And this is what gives you a real sense of space architecturally - it is natural light.”

Page 47

An Album of Building

“I have seen theories about putting lights where the daylight comes in but how ridiculous it is really to follow this when you think in terms of spaces being served by the sun – by the light of the day – it’s so marvellous. The making of spaces is the making of light at the same time when the light is destroyed, the rhythm is destroyed, and the music is destroyed, and music is terribly important to architecture.

“If you think of music, it is very, very close to architecture, and I think personally, that every architect should learn to write music. It is wonderful to realize that when a man writes music he is not enthralled by the beauty of what he sees as a kind of writing – he is enthralled by what he hears. The musician hears what he writes – he doesn’t see it. The architect comes over and looks at his drawings and says ‘Oh, isn’t it wonderful! I think I’ll make a blow-up of it and put it in my living room!’ To the musician his writing means something beyond itself – it means sound, it means organization of sound. An architect must be able to read the life that comes into his works through his plans. His realm of spaces is analogous to a sheet of music. His columns and his beams and his walls should be almost assumed.  You must say that in this interior space I must have light. Because I have made a space therefore I must have light. I must assume that it must be some kind of order. I am looking for something. I am looking for the space-making of this in my plan. I think a sheet of music and an architectural plan are the same thing.”

Page 48

“In the very fabric of making it must already be the servants that serve the very things I’ve talked about – timber, its light, and its temperature- control; the fabric of the construction light, and its temperature-control; the fabric of the construction must already be the container of these servants.”

Page 50

“I would say that dark spaces are also very essential. But to be true to the argument that an architectural space must have natural light, I would say that it must be dark, but that there must be an opening big enough, so that light can come in and tell you how dark it really is – that’s how important it is to have natural light in an architectural space.”

Page 53

“I never really got to architecture by simply taking convenient things; it was through the unfamiliar that I learned and realized what architecture really was.”

“Therefore, your first concern is: What do you realize about an auditorium? If you must make it out of ice cubes, that is the next thing because you are building it in Iceland. But that is incidental that is circumstantial; the design is circumstantial. What material you use is circumstantial; it is as design problem; it is a practical absolute problem. The design is the making of your composition, so that you can play the music. That is all very important. It is the imagery. It is the first thing you see. It is the tangible thing.”

Page 55

“If this building expressed the force of wind, I am sure that when an ordinary man passed by he would look at it, more than he does now, even if it were done brutally. He would stop to think of it, of how it was done, and how it works, whereas he gives the present building far less thought. What we have here is another example of the short necked giraffe approach. It is forcing a thing into a preconceived notion as to what it might look like. With the other approach you simply allow it to look like what it wants to be; as nature does with the porcupine – you let it tell you something about it; about the forces of truth from which you can derive a way of life. So it is important that these forms do come out.”

Page 57

“I feel that the beginning of ornament comes with the joint. The way things are made, the way they are put together, the way one thing comes to the other, is the place where ornament begins. It is the glory of the joint which is the beginning of ornament.”

Page 60

Form and Design

“Form is ‘what,’ design is ‘how.’ Form is impersonal.”

“Form has nothing to do with circumstantial conditions. In architecture, it characterizes a harmony of spaces good for a certain activity of man.”

“In my opinion the greatness of the architect depends on his powers of realization of that which is House, rather than his design of a house which is a circumstantial act. Home is the house and the occupants. Home becomes different with each occupant. The client for whom a house is designed states the areas he needs. The architect creates spaces out of those required areas he needs. It may also be said that this house created for the particular family must have the character of being good for another. The design in this way reflects its trueness to Form.”

Page 64

“A great building, in my opinion, must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.”

Page 69

“I am doing a building in Africa, which is very close to the equator. The glare is killing, everybody looks black against the sunlight. Light is a needed thing, but still an enemy. The relentless sun above, the siesta comes over you like thunder. I saw many huts that the natives made. There were no architects there. I came back with multiple impressions of how clever was the man who solved the problems of sun, rain and wind. I came back to the realization that every window should have a free wall to face. This wall receiving the light of day would have bold opening to the sky. The glare is modified by the lighted wall and the view is not shut off. In this way the contrast made by separated patterns of glare which skylight grilles close to the window make it avoided. Another realization came from the effectiveness of the use of breeze for insulation by the making of a loose sun roof independently supported and separated from the rain roof by a head room of six feet. These designs of the window and wall and of the sun and rain roofs would tell the man on the street the way of life in Angola.”

Page 70

The New Art of Urban Design: Are We Equipped? (1960)

“IT also explains why a man is always greater than his works – because it includes his aspirations which he cannot express. The expression must resort to measurable means; it must resort to nature of nature which deals with completely measureable things.”

Page 76

Discussion in Kahn’s Office (1961)

“Kahn spoke of wrapping the consulate in ‘ruins,’ Literally he meant fenestrated walls that would stand a few feet outside of the building’s actual walls and were intended to minimize sun glare and deflect wind, a device he used in subsequent commissions for especially hot climates. Figuratively, ruins were what remained of ‘beginnings,’ reminders (for those caring to look) of the origins of those platonic-like ‘forms’ – traces of ‘basic principles’ – that had characterized architecture from its inception.”

Page 97

“The marked glare in the atmosphere… when you were on the interior of any building, looking at a window was unbearable because of the glare. The dark walls framing the brilliant light outside made you very uncomfortable. The tendency was to look away from the window.”

“And I thought wouldn’t it be good if one could express... Find an architectural expression for the problems of glare without adding devices to a window... But rather by developing a warm architecture... Which somehow tells the story of the problems of glare. Some of the buildings used place work, grillwork… wood or masonry grillwork in front of windows. This was unsatisfactory because of what it did… because the wall itself was dark against the light; it gave you just a multiple pattern of glare… little pin points… little diamond-points of glare against the dark ribs of the grillwork. And that tended to be unsatisfactory. I noticed that buildings which were very close to windows were very pleasant to look at from the windows. I also noticed that when people worked in the sun – and many of them did – the native population people – when they worked, they usually face the wall and not the open country or the open street. Indoors, they would turn their chair toward the wall and do whatever they were doing by getting the light indirectly from the wall to their work. That gave me the thought of a wall a small distance in front of every window as a kind of indigenous architectural sense. Now, placing a wall in front of a window would cut the view and that is not pleasant. One doesn’t feel like having the view cut away, so I thought of placing openings in the wall, the wall then becomes a part of the window. When that wall got the light – even the direct sunlight – it would modify the glare. So therefore I thought of the beauty of ruins… the absence of frames… of things which nothing lives behind… and so I thought of wrapping ruins around buildings you might say encasing a building in a ruin so that you look through the wall which had its apertures by accident. But, in this case you’d want to formalize these openings and I felt this would be an answer to the glare problem. I wanted to incorporate this into the architecture instead of it being a device placed next to a window to correct the window desires… I don’t want to say window desire... window desires is not the way to put it. I should say: desire for light. But still an active fighting of the glare.”

Page 98

“The sun roof naturally wanted to be made as light as possible… because it should be in a way a gossamer… something which is just there as an interceptor… and I thought of the insulation… that the actually sun roof might become the insulation so I would eliminate insulation on the rain roof entirely… have no air spaces except for what you get form the separation between the two roofs, the rain roof and the sun roof.

“I wanted very much – as has always been my desire – to demonstrate to the man on the street a way of life… so when he sees a building as he passes it he feels as though… ‘Yes, this building represents or presents a civic story to me of my relation to this building. I expect a dignified building for a dignified activity of man.’”

Page 99

“They are aesthetic considerations and aesthetics are, of course, the laws of art. You learn them by seeing a lot and by being told a lot and by sensing a lot, but the other things come out of the very characteristics of the air, and of light… very simple everlasting presences that should constantly talk to you in a architecture. You cannot forget that light of a certain character has to do with that which distinguishes the architecture of one region from that of another. Even if you took the demands of a company for their identification in one country or another, you couldn’t build a prototype as a kind of business principle, rather than as a building principle. You would have to give not so much a building but a vision, an image, but the image must change from one region to another because the requirements of an area are different in one place or another. The integrity of a building could be one stamp of identity with a company, the excellence of performance could be one… Certainly their sign could be… but when you take the very same building, a prototype, an actual duplication, and place it anywhere regardless of the area… this would be a ridiculous building.”

Page 100

“I feel that in bringing the rain roof and the sun roof away from each other I was telling the man on the street his way of life. I was explaining the atmospheric conditions of wind, the conditions of light, the conditions of sun and glare to him. If I used a device – a clever kind of design device – would only seem like a design to him – something pretty. I didn’t want anything pretty; I wanted to have a clear statement of a way of life.”

Page 102

“I would say all spaces need natural light… all spaces worthy of being called a space need natural light. Artificial light is only a single little moment in light… and natural light is the full of the moon and it just makes a difference.”

Page 107-108

“Yes, I can’t define a space really as a space unless I have natural light. And that because the moods which are created by the time of day and seasons of the year are constantly helping you in evoking that which a space can be if it has natural light and can’t be if it doesn’t.

“And interestingly enough I think that the way a space is made is almost made with the consciousness of possibilities of light because when you have a column you see, you are saying a column is there because light is possible. A wall does not say it’s possible… but when you have a column or a vault or an arch you’re saying that light is possible. So therefore the means of making a space already implies that light is coming in… and the very choice that you make of the element of structure should be also the choice of the character of light that you may want… and that I think is truly an architectural demand.”

Page 108

“There’s great feeling that a window seat should be present because there is no telling how the room will be used… It adds a friendliness, a hate of comfort and kind of getting away from someone and being alone even in a room where many are present… a room which is – its purpose is not settled – but is constantly full of human relationships and nothing starkly in the way of purpose… one that has a flexible purpose. I felt this window seat had a lot of meaning and it struck me as a demand of several people in the committee… this window seat had a lot of meaning and it became greater and greater in my mind as meaning associated with windows.”
Page 114

“It avoids the development of a continuous roof line… it takes the boxed in windows which reach all the way up to the corners of the rooms – and frees them as elements.”

“The idea is to develop really quite frankly a silhouette.”

Page 116

The Nature of Nature (1961)

“According to Kahn, the architect’s responsibility is to make the nature of things evident by analysing what they truly are and expressing them as such.”

“I and Thou”

“Built into us is a reverence for the elements, for water, for light, for air – a deep reverence for the animal world and the green world.”

Page 119

“Form is not design, not a shape, not a dimension, it is not a material thing. In other words, form is really what and design is how.”

“We must look back into the nature of man and the laws of nature,”

“Empathy, for instance, is a realization of in-common-ness – that which is true of all men. It is where you and I become ‘thou,’ instead of just I.”

Page 120

“One of the great problems in our cities today is the values people have and our children will have, and we are often told these are materialistic ones. I wonder if we can identify what, in terms of our environment, has contributed to this and what we might do to change these for our children? Your question should be the subject of a new conference. It is the only question that makes, to me, any sense. All the others are devices answerable to this question.”

Page 122

Law and Rule in Architecture (1961-62)

“I believe wonder is the motivator of knowledge.”

Page 124

“I had thought to be more of an architect at that point, not a monk, too.”

“Man makes rules. Nature is of law. Without a knowledge of the law, without a feeling for the law, nothing can be made. Nature is the maker of all things.”

Page 125

“If you want to know how relentless and completely nonconscious nature is, you get in front of a truck… you’re soft, it’s hard, and you’re a dead duck.”

Page 127

“Because I think the first thing that an architect must do, and I really mean this, is to sense that every building you build is a world of its own, and that this world of its own serves an institution, something which has been instituted by man as being important to the way of life of man. It has nothing to do with life, understand. Life is one thing. It’s a way of life and it has nothing to do with living except, of course, indirectly. But that’s a personal matter.”

Page 130

“And that is the beginning of light in architecture, and I believe it is also the beginning of architecture. And a vault and dome are all light-giving elements of construction. The search for light, the light which makes it possible to read, the space which is framed by the construction, and the nuances of the time of the day and the season of the year, enter the space. It’s constantly a world borrowing its light from another world.”

Page 131

“You’re crazy to think that anything is unmeasurable. Everything is measureable.’ I think they’re dead wrong.’

Page 132

“And the Oculus is also an expression of a world within a world.”

Page 135

“A sculptor has to answer to gravity. He can make square wheels on a cannon to express the futility of war but the architect must use round wheels. His rules are different. He is equally as cognizant of the law, but his rules are different. The walls of his limits are different.”

“By law, I mean physical law; I do not mean legal law. I mean that law is unchangeable. The laws of nature are in a kind of harmony with each other and are not isolated from one another. Whereas rule is made by man knowing law, and it is changeable.”

Page 137

“The structure is really the beginning of light. The vault is a light-making structure.”

Page 145

Lecture at International Design Conference Aspen, Colorado (1962)

“I am sure that this very psyche hammers at the door of the sun and says, ‘Give me an instrument here upon which I can express love, hate, nobility’ – all the qualities which are, in my opinion, completely immeasurable.”

“Nature makes the instruments which make life possible. It will not make the instrument unless the desire for life is there. Wonder in us is – you might say – a record of the way we were made.”

Page 152-153

Lecture at Yale University (1963)

“The logic of this argument is that if a tangible building (the ‘means’) is called upon to house an intangible or inexpressible ‘belief’ (the psychology of creating art), then a successful work of architecture will be both functionally appropriate and spiritually enriching.”

Page 162

“That which is universal is really just what deals with the physical. But that which is eternal is a kind of completely new essence that nonconscious nature does not understand or know about, whereas man is the conscious desire that exists in nature.”

“Architecture is what nature cannot make.”

Page 167

Space and the Inspirations (1967)

DACCA

“The desire to be, to express a prevalence of spirit enveloping the universe.”

“Inspiration is the feeling of beginning at the threshold where silence and light meet: Silence, with its desire to be, and Light, the giver of all presences.”

Page 220

“The record of the rock is in the rock. Each grain of sand is in its exact place, is of the exact size and colour. Conscious rule invites constant change to new comprehensive levels of Rule. The laws of nature are in the making of all things. Man’s Indefinable desire to make a house or to shape a stone or to compose a sonata still must obey the laws of nature in their making.”

“Form, when realized, does not belong to its realizer. Only its interpretation belongs to the artist. Form is like order. Oxygen does not belong to its discoverer. It is my feeling that living things and non-living thins are dichotomous. Yet Nature, the giver of all presences, without questions or choice, can anticipate desire by the fathomless marvel of tits laws. It has given us the instruments to play the song of the soul. But I feel that if all living plants and creatures were to disappear, the sun would still shine and rain still fall. We need nature, but nature doesn’t need us.”

Page 221

“What does exist is a work of architecture or a work of music which the artist offers to his art in the sanctuary of all expression, which I like to call the Treasury of the shadows, lying in that ambiance, Light to Silence, Silence to Light, Light, the giver of presence, casts its shadow which belongs to light. Light. The giver of presence, casts its shadow which belongs to Light. What is made belongs to Light and to desire.”

Page 222

“You in music, as we in architecture, are interested in structure. To me the structure is the maker of the light.”

“Architecture creates a feeling of a world within a world, which it gives to the room. Try to think of the outside world when you’re in a good room with a good person. All your senses of outside leave you. I’m reminded of a beautiful poem by Rumi, the great Persian who lived in the early 13th century. He tells of a priestess walking through her garden. It is spring. She stops at the threshold of her house and stands transfixed at the entrance chamber. Her maid-in-waiting comes to her excitedly, saying ‘Look without, look without, priestess, and see the wonders God has made.’ The priestess answered ‘Look within and see God.’ It’s marvellous to realize that a room was ever made. What man makes, nature cannot make, though man uses all the laws of nature to make it. What guides it to be made, the desire to make it, is not in universal nature. Dare I say that it is of silence, of lightless, darkless desire to be, to express a prevalence of spirit enveloping the Universe.”

Page 224 – 225

“I see it as the structure of the spaces in their light.”

“The spaces of architecture in their light make me want to compose a kind of music, imagining a truth from the sense of a fusion of the disciplines and their orders. No space, architecturally, is a space unless it has natural light. Natural light has varied mood of the time of the day and the season of the year. A room in architecture, a space in architecture, needs that life-giving light – Light from which we were made. So the silver light and the gold light and the green light and the yellow light are qualities of changeable scale or rule. This quality must inspire music. I am designing an art museum in Texas. Here I felt that the light in the rooms structured in concrete will have the luminosity of silver. I know that rooms for the paintings and objects that fade should only most modestly be given natural light. The scheme of enclosure of the museum is a succession of cycloid vaults each of a single span 150 feet long and 20 feet wide, each forming the rooms with a narrow slit to the sky, with a mirrored glass shaped to spread natural light on the side of the vault. This light will give a glow of silver to the room without touching the objects directly, yet give the comforting feeling of knowing the time of day. Added to the skylight from the slit over the exhibit rooms. I cut across the vaults, at a right angle, a counterpoint of courts, open to the sky, of calculated dimensions and character, making them Green Court, Yellow Court, Blue Court, named for the kind of light that I anticipate their proportions, their foliation. Or their sky reflections on surfaces, or on water will give. A student of mine came to my room, which is, by the way, everybody’s room, and asked me a question: ‘How would you describe this era?’ I was terribly interested. Reflecting, I said to him, ‘What is the shadow of white light?’ Repeating and reflecting on what I said, ‘White light, white light, the shadow of white light’ (he whispered), ‘I don’t know.’ I answered, ‘it’s black. But really there is no such thing as white light, black shadow. I was brought up, of course, when light was ‘yellow’ and shadow was ‘blue’.’ White light is a way of saying that even the sun is on trial, and certainly all our institutions are on trial.’ I feel that in the present revolt against our institutions and ways, that there is no Wonder. Without Wonder the revolt looks only to equality. Wonder motivates Desire toward Need. Demands for equality of means can rise only to the trade of old lamps for new without the genii. I feel when Wonder is, the light will become a brighter yellow and the shadow a brighter blue.”

Page 225-226

Silence and Light (1968-69)

“I sense Light as the giver of all presences, and material as spent light. What Light makes casts a shadow and the shadow belongs to Light. The mountain is of Light, its shadow belongs to Light. I sense Threshold, Light to Silence, Silence to Light, the ambiance – inspiration, wherein the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible.”

“So it is in Nature that diversity of forms evolve from universal order.”

Page 229

“Nature does not make a house. It cannot make a room. How marvellous that when in a room with another soon the mountains, trees, wind and the rain leave us for the mind and the room becomes a world in itself.”

“In the aura Silence to Light.”

Closed Cosmos

Page 230

I look at the glancing light, which is such a meaningful light on the side of the mountain bringing every tiny natural detail to the eye and teaches about the material and choice in making a building. But do I get less delight out of seeing a brick wall with all its attempts at regularity, disclosing its delightful imperfections in natural light? A wall is built in hope that a light once observed may strike it even for but a rare moment in time.”

“The most wonderful aspects of the indoors are the moods that light gives to space. The electric bulb fights the sun. Think of it. I am reminded of Tolstoy who deviated from faithlessness to Faith without question. In his latter state he deplored the miracles saying that Christ has radiance without them. They were like holding a candle to the Sun to see the Sun better.”

Page 231

“Walls were thick. They protected man. He felt the desire for freedom and the promises of the outside. He made at first a rude opening. He explained to the unhappy wall his realizations that a wall in accepting an opening must follow a greater order bringing arches and piers to it as a new and worthy elements. These are realizations in the nature Architecture of Light and Structure. The choice of a square room is also the choice of its light as distinguished from other shapes and their light. I should like to say that even a room which must be dark must have at least a crack of light to know how dark it is.”

“Silence is not very, very quiet. It is something which you may say is lightless, darkless. These are all invented words. Darkless – there is no such a word. But why not? Lightless, darkless.”

Page 236

“I only wish that the first really worthwhile discovery of science would be that it recognizes that the unmeasurable, you see, is what they’re really fighting to understand, and the measurable is only a servant of the unmeasurable, that everything that man makes must be fundamentally unmeasurable.”

Page 237

“It has the same quality as all religious places, which also just by simple quality of knowing that a stone stands free, that it has something more than just simply singing at random or going through a forest and trying to jump. What is the feeling? It is something in the way of a mysterious decision to make Stonehenge. It’s terrific, it’s the beginning of architecture. It isn’t made out of a handbook, you see. It doesn’t start from practical issues. It starts from a kind of feeling that there must be a world within a world. The world where man’s mind, you see, somehow becomes sharp.”

Page 243

“So they discovered that this was a place of meeting of everyone, a necessary thing. From this you recognize also that a school of architecture probably starts with a court, surrounded by shops, in which you build and tear down at will. It’s a closed court because nobody really likes to show how badly he does things, so it becomes something which amongst your confrères is okay. Outside, not. It’s not an exhibition place. There is no admissions set for this thing – it’s not this: It’s closed. From this grows other things, spaces high and low, but it is a kind of area undetermined, spaces undetermined, in their light, in various light, in various heights, and that you move around with a sense of discovering the spaces rather than being named for certain reasons. Actually they’re just there and you feel it is a school of architecture because of how much concentration you put into the primitiveness, the fundamentalness with which you made these spaces. These are all, I think, indication of the tremendous opportunities that exist today in architecture. The discovery of the elements of our institutions with which you made these spaces. These are all, I think, indication of the tremendous opportunities that exist today in architecture. The discovery of the elements of our institutions which need revival, which need to be bolstered up, which need to be redefined.”

Page 244

“When you decide on the structure you’re deciding on light.”

Page 249

“There is no such thing as a beam on a wall.”

Page 250

“I just remind you in closing, the story of Rumi,”

“There was a priestess who was going through her garden in spring, and of course it was a glorious day. As she went through her garden, observing everything, and came to the threshold of her house, and there she stopped in admiration standing at the threshold, looking within. And her servant-in-waiting, came over to her, saying ‘Mistress, Mistress. Look without, and see the wonders that god has created’. And the mistress said, ‘Yes, Yes, but look within and see god.’ In other words, what man has made is very, very manifestation of god.”

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The Room, the Street, and Human Agreement (1971)

“The room is the beginning of architecture. It is the place of the mind. You in the room with its dimensions, its structure, and its light respond to its character, its spiritual aura, recognizing that whatever the human proposes and makes becomes a life. The structure of the room must be evident in the room itself. Structure, I believe is the giver of light. A square room asks for its own light to read the square. It would expect the light either from above or from its four sides as windows or entrances.”

“The great American poet Wallace Stevens prodded the architect, asking, ‘What slice of the sun does your building have?’ To paraphrase: What slice of the sun enters your room? What range of mood does the light offer from morning to night, from day to day, from season to season and all through the year?”

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“The plan is a society of rooms. The rooms relate to each other to strengthen their own unique nature.”

“Open before us is the architect’s plan. Next to it is a sheet of music. The architect fleetingly reads his composition as a structure of elements and spaces in their light.”

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“The street is a room of agreement. The street is dedicated by each house owner to the city in exchange for common services.”

“The street is a community room.”

Page 255

Address to Naturalized Citizens (1971)

Where is Outside?

“We can say that in the Parthenon”

Page 258

Outside ourselves

“Light is the space between the columns – a rhythm of light, no-light, light, no-light which tells the tremendous story of light in architecture that came from the opening in a wall.”

“Light is material life. The mountains, the streams, the atmosphere are spent light. Material, nonconscious, moving to desire; desire to express, conscious, moving to light meet at an aura threshold where the will senses the possible. The first feeling was of beauty, the first sense was of harmony, of man undefinable, unmeasurable and measurable material, the maker of all things. At the threshold, the crossing of silence and light, lies the sanctuary of art, the only language of man. It is the treasury of the shadows. Whatever is made of light casts a shadow. Our work is of shadow; it belongs to light. When the astronauts went through space, the earth presented itself as a marvellous ball, blue and rose, in space. Since I followed it and saw it that way, all knowledge left me as being unimportant. Truly, knowledge is an incomplete book outside of us. You take from it to know something, but knowing cannot be imparted to the next man. Knowing is private. It gives singularity the means for self-expression.”

“Architects must not accept the commercial divisions of their professions into urban design, city planning and architecture as though they were three different professions. The architect can turn from the smallest house to the greatest complex, or the city. Specializing ruins the essence of the revelation of the form with its inseparable parts realized only as an entity. A word about beauty. Beauty is an all-prevailing sense of harmony, giving rise to wonder; from it, revelation. Poetry. Is it in beauty? Is it in wonder? Is it revelation? It is in the beginning, in first thought, in the first sense of the means of expression. A poet is in thought of beauty and existence. Yet a poem is only an offering. Which to the poet is less. A work of architecture is but an offering to the spirit architecture and its poetic beginning.”

Page 263

“If you stop to think, the real reason for living is to express, and it is just like death if you are unable to express.”

Page 263

Lecture at Pratt Institute (1973)

“The architect’s job, Kahn says in the last paragraph, ‘is to find those spaces’ in which the possibilities of form might be realized, an impossibility that is nevertheless an ‘ offering of man to the next man,’ which he defined as joy. ‘ if you don’t feel joy in what you’re doing, then you’re not really operating.’ You will live through miserable moments, ‘but really’ he concluded, ‘joy will prevail.’”

Page 266

“I believe that a man’s greatest worth is in the area where he can claim no ownership. The way I do things is private really, and when you copy you really die twenty deaths because you know that you wouldn’t even go so far as to copy yourself, you see, because anything you do is quite incomplete. But the part that you do which doesn’t belong to you is the most precious for you and it’s the kind of thing that you really can offer, because it is a better part of you, actually. The premises anyone can use. Though you may be someone who thinks about them, you only think about them because they are part of a general commonality which really belongs to everybody.”

Page 267

“I had this sense, you see, and the room wasn’t just architecture, but was an extension of self.”

“Architecture really has nothing to do with practice. That’s the operational aspect of it. But there is something about the emergence of architecture as an expression of man which is tremendously important because we actually live to express. It is the reason for living.”

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“It is the total harmony that you feel without knowing, without choice – just simply beauty itself, the feeling of total harmony, it is like meeting your maker, in a way, because nature, the maker, is the maker of all that is made. You cannot design anything without nature helping you. And there is a great difference between design and form and shape.”

“This sight then came about, and sight immediately felt the total harmony – beauty – without reservation, without criticism, without choice. And art, which was immediately felt, was the first word. One can say the first line, but I think it was the first word. The first utterance could have been ‘Ah’ – just that. What a powerful word that is; it expresses so much, you see, with just a few letters. Now from beauty came wonder. Wonder has nothing to do with knowledge. It’s just a kind of first response to the intuitive, the intuitive being the odyssey or the record of the odyssey of our making through the billions, the untold billions, of years in making. I don’t believe one thing started at one time, another thing at another time. Everything was started in one way at the same time. It was at no time, either: It just simply was there. Then came wonder. This is the same feeling that the astronauts must have felt when they saw the earth at a great distance. Of course I followed them, and I felt what they felt: this great ball in space, pink or rose and blue and white. Somehow all the things on it – even the great achievements like, let us say, Paris, a great achievement, or London – they sort of disappeared and became circumstantial works. Yet, somehow the toccata and fugue did not disappear, because they are the most unmeasurable and therefore the closest to that which cannot disappear. The more deeply a thing is engaged in the unmeasurable, the more deeply lasting is its value.”

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“Intuition is your most exacting sense. It is the most reliable sense. It is the most personal sense that a singularity has, and it, not knowledge, must be considered your greatest gift. If it isn’t in wonder you needn’t bother about it.”

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“Also, what’s marvellous about a room is that the light that comes through the windows of that room belongs to the room. And the sun somehow man’s creation, the making of a room, is nothing short of the making of a miracle.”

Page 272

“How many things must happen and where does the architect sit? He sits right there. He is the man who conveys the beauty of space, which is the very meaning of spaces, of meaningful spaces. They’re all meaningful. You invent an environment, and it can be your own invention.”

“Now then, the society of rooms is plan. You can say it is the structure of the spaces in light. And you can relate it also to t an assignment that I gave myself to draw, a picture that demonstrated light. Now if you assign yourself a theme like that, the first thing you do is escape somewhere, because it is impossible to do this, you say. The white piece of paper is the illustration. If I illustrate light, I have a white paper, and that is light. What else can I do? I thought that was the only thing to do. But I realized that I wasn’t right at all. When I put a stroke on the paper, a couple of strokes in ink, I realized that the black was were the light was not. And then I really could make a drawing. I would only be discerning as to where I put the black, where the light is not, and this made the picture come out.”

Page 274

Cruikshank

“He made a drawing of a man sitting by a fire with a swaying female sort of next to him. Through a doorway in the night was a horse. The walls were receiving the light from the fire. A fireplace, out of the picture, radiated light, which caught on the folds of the undulating female and on the man sitting on his char; the horse behind did not receive the light, but just little sparks of it. Every pen was subservient to the sense that where the stroke was, the light was not. And the thing became absolutely luminous. Closer to the fire it was practically white paper, and then it shaded away. It was a beautiful illustration of the realizations of the expresser to find the means of making evident this fact. Now this came from the realizations I had about light and I said that all material in nature – it being. As I said before, the mountains and the streams and the air and we – are made of light which has been spent. And all material is light which has become exhausted. And this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow. And the shadow belongs to light. So light is really the source of all being. And I said to myself, the existence will be to express in this ooze, which you might say was just completely infiltrated with joy. To be, from touch to sight to hearing that one becomes manifest and the experience of this has become ingrained. And the will, the desire, was somehow a solid front to make sight possible.”

Page 275

“So where’s the scientist and where’s the poet? The poet is one who goes from the seat of the unmeasurable and travels toward the measurable but keeps the force of the unmeasurable with him all the time, disdaining almost to write a word, which is the means. Art, the first word. And he goes toward the measurable but holds the unmeasurable and at the last moment he must write a word because, although he desires not to say anything, words propel his poetry. He has to succumb to the word after all. But he’s travelled a great distance before he used any of the means. Just a smidgeon, if you will, you see. And it was enough. The scientist, who has the unmeasurable qualities, which after all he has a man, holds his line, does not go away or travel with the unmeasurable because he’s interested in knowing. He’s interested in the laws of nature. He allows nature to come to him. Which means he has so many degrees, you know. And it comes to him. And he at that point must grab it because it’s as long as he can stand the difficulty of holding back. And so he receives knowledge in full. And he works with this and you call that being objective. But Einstein travelled with the poet. He holds the unmeasurable because he’s a fiddle player. And so he holds the unmeasurable for a long, long time. And he also reaches nature or light at the very, very doorstep, because he only needs a smidgeon of knowledge, because from that smidgeon he can reconstruct the universe, because he deals with order and not knowing. No piece of knowing, you see, which is always fragmentary, is enough for a man who is truly visionary like Einstein. And he would not accept knowledge unless it belonged to all knowledge. Therefore he can so easily write his beautiful formula of relativity. It was just the way in which he just simply gave you that which can lead you to a greater sense of awe of order which all knowledge is really answerable to. One does not consider knowledge as belonging to anything human. Knowledge belongs only to that which has to do with nature. It belongs to the universe, but doesn’t it belong to eternity? And there’s a big difference.”

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“The architect’s job, in my opinion, and I must close on this, is to find those spaces, those areas of study, where the availabilities, not yet here, and those that already here, can have better environments for their maturing into those which talk and say things to you and really make evident that the spaces that you make that are the seat of a certain offering of man to next man. It is not an operational thing. You can leave that to the builders and to the operators. They already build eighty-five percent of the architecture, so give them another five percent if they’re so stingy, so very selfish about it, and take only ten percent or five percent and be really an architect and not just a professional. A professional will bury you. You’ll become so comfortable. You’ll become so praised, equally to someone else, that you’ll never recognize yourself after a while. You get yourself a good business character, but you can really play golf all day and your buildings will be built anyway. But what the devil is that? What joy is there if joy is buried? I think joy is the key word in our work. It must be felt. If you don’t feel joy in what you’re doing, then you’re not really operating. And there are miserable moments which you’ve got to live through. But really, joy will prevail.”

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