{"id":8079,"date":"2017-08-08T13:00:20","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T17:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/?p=8079"},"modified":"2017-08-08T01:12:56","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T05:12:56","slug":"book-review-say-brick-life-louis-kahn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/2017\/08\/08\/book-review-say-brick-life-louis-kahn\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review &#8211; You Say To Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Author: Wendy Lesser (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When I was completing the\u00a0final project of my Interior Design degree, I started the project off by buying a monograph of well-known modern architect\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Louis_Kahn\">Louis Kahn<\/a>. Fascinated by the symmetry and the use of hard materials that somehow read as soft and delicate, I\u00a0used a lot of his ideas in said project. The one thing the book didn&#8217;t do well was\u00a0explain <em>who<\/em> Louis Kahn was, or what his story was. One had to believe that, based on his work, it must be an interesting tale. As such, it was with great enthusiasm that I read <em>You Say To Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn<\/em>, a magnificent book on the life of a magnificent architect. I typically don\u2019t go out of my way to read biographies unless it is someone I am truly interested in, but <em>You Say To Brick<\/em> didn\u2019t read like a typical biography. It had more flair, as if you were reading about a fictional character, and it was through that style of writing that the book hooked me instantly and pulled me along.<\/p>\n<p>The book begins at the end and ends at the beginning, which I won\u2019t lie, was stressful. Before you\u2019d even grown to love or hate the things that Kahn did, he was gone, and his death was respectfully laid out bare in front of you: the portrait of a man who did what he had to do to keep designing, no matter the personal cost. Beginning a book like this is a risk, but I believe it paid off. We are immediately shown Kahn\u2019s best and worst qualities, seeing a snapshot of who he truly was. Knowing that you\u2019ve gotten the hardest part out of the way, allowed Lesser to explore his life in greater detail as the book goes on, without the looming and impending dread of his death coming at you at some point in the next couple hundred pages.<\/p>\n<p>Between each chapter is a section called <em>In Situ<\/em> where Lesser explores a piece of Kahn\u2019s work. These sections look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Salk_Institute_for_Biological_Studies\">Salk Institute<\/a> for Biological Studies, the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kimbell_Art_Museum\">Kimbell Art Museum<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phillips_Exeter_Academy_Library\">Phillips Exeter Library<\/a> (a project that I personally gleaned a lot of information from for my project those years ago), the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jatiya_Sangsad_Bhaban\">National Assembly Building<\/a>\u00a0(Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban) of Bangladesh, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Indian_Institute_of_Management_Ahmedabad\">Indian Institute of Management<\/a> Ahmedabad. These brief pauses are a perfect way to punctuate the fact that the man and the work were to be viewed as one entity.<\/p>\n<p>As Lesser walks through the halls of the Salk Institute, she meets and interviews people who not only reflect on the building, but reflect on Kahn as well, which says a lot about his character and the impression he left. Tim Ball, the maintenance director at the Institute, believes that \u201ceverything about the design that you thought was done for aesthetic reasons turn out\u2026to have its practical side.\u201d What these <em>In Situ<\/em> moments do is cast a light on a certain project, to bolster Lesser\u2019s travels through Kahn\u2019s life in the other sections of the book.<\/p>\n<p>The book is filled with the drama of Kahn\u2019s every day life; family outbursts at his funeral over his mistresses children and where everyone was allowed to sit, the fact that he married and remarried and had children with three different women, his initial trials and tribulations with his business partners, and a rocky start to a career that never fully saw him receive the fame and glamour that other architects have risen to.<\/p>\n<p>While the book argues that Kahn\u2019s name is now well-known, it makes clear that it was not always this way. And reading how he persevered right up until it literally killed him, makes for a heart wrenching and exciting read. Even if you are not interested in architecture or design, Kahn\u2019s life was fascinating enough to keep you turning the page to learn more, and <em>You Say To Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn<\/em>, is a perfect and stunning homage to one of the greatest thinkers of our time.<\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p><em>For more information on the\u00a0<strong>You Say To Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn<\/strong>, visit the Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/us.macmillan.com\/books\/9780374279974\">website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Jeremy Senko<\/em><\/strong><em> is happily lost in the world of theoretical architecture and design. He is forever a student at heart, consistently reading, experiencing and learning about the world he inhabits. More specifically, he works as an Interior Designer in Vancouver and plays an active part in bettering the environments we live in.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Author: Wendy Lesser (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017) When I was completing the\u00a0final project of my Interior Design degree, I started the project off by buying a monograph of well-known modern architect\u00a0Louis Kahn. Fascinated by the symmetry and the use of hard materials that somehow read as soft and delicate, I\u00a0used a lot of his<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/2017\/08\/08\/book-review-say-brick-life-louis-kahn\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Book Review &#8211; You Say To Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8146,"featured_media":8091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,417],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-architecture","category-history"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Book Review - You Say To Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn - Spacing National<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/2017\/08\/08\/book-review-say-brick-life-louis-kahn\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Review - You Say To Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn - Spacing National\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Author: Wendy Lesser (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017) When I was completing the\u00a0final project of my Interior Design degree, I started the project off by buying a monograph of well-known modern architect\u00a0Louis Kahn. 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