Louis Kahn: Drawing to Find Out

The Domincan Motherhouse and the Patient Search for Architecture

Merrill Michael

Like few others, Louis Kahn cultivated the craft of drawing as a means to architecture. His personal design drawings – seen either as a method of discovery or for themselves – are unique in the twentieth century. Over two hundred – mostly unpublished – drawings by Kahn and his associates are woven together with a lively and informed commentary into an intimate biography of an architectural idea. Unfolding around the iconic project for the Dominican Motherhouse (1965-1969) the drawings form a narrative which not only reveals the richness and hidden dimensions of this unbuilt masterpiece, but provides compelling insights into Louis Kahn's mature culture of designing.

Kahn – long considered an "architects' architect" – emerges as a vivid and instructive guide, provoking reflection on questions which continue to remain relevant: on how works are conceived, on how they might be perceived, on how they become part of human experience. Fascinating not only in their beauty, the drawings open a new and stimulating perspective on one of the past century's great architects.

About the Author

Michael Merrill, Dr.-Ing., is a practicing architect in the USA and Germany and assistant professor for Architectural Design at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Reviews

"While drawing, I'm always waiting for something to happen. I don't want it to happen too quickliy, though" – Louis Kahn

"Magnificent... an important contribution to the understanding of my father's work and his way of thinking. Beautiful and inspiring both intellectually and aesthetically, 'Drawing to Find Out' is the first book to really capture the unique and fragile beauty of yellow trace and charcoal, elements so essential to Lou's alchemy. I´m sure he would have appreciated this celebration" – Nathaniel Kahn, filmmaker, director of the Academy Award nominated documentaries "My Architect" and "Two Hands"

"I was deeply moved by both 'Drawing to Find Out' and 'On the Thoughtful Making of Spaces'. Without question, at this point in our profession's history where so much of Kahn's thinking has been absent, reintroducing it in this way to a new generation is a noble effort. An important contribution to the Kahn legacy" – Moshe Safdie, architect, urban planner and educator, recipient of the Gold Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada

"'Drawing to Find Out' offers an exhaustive account of the project's development and the drawings are beautifully reproduced in a large, landscape format" – The Architectural Review

"A luscious visual documentation in large format hardcover with Kahn's drawings lovingly and richly reproduced on thick coated paper" – Arcade

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