Phillip Exeter library in New Hampshire, USA, by Louis Kahn
- 21 June 1974
- London EMAP Publishing Limited 1974
A museum? A school library? To Louis Kahn our institutions were ‘on trial. When we think of the simple beginnings which inspired our present institutions, it is evident that some drastic changes must be made which will inspire the re-creation of (their) meaning …’. What distinguishes this statement from similar assertions that any architect might make is Kahn’s emphasis on the need to search out the ’simple beginnings’ of institutions, and the ‘re-creation of meaning’ with reference to these beginnings. Hence for him the essential programme was not centred, at any rate initially, in meeting the functional needs of particular circumstances. It required instead the reconstitution of the programme in the light of what the institution primarily is with respect to the cumulative human experience of using it. With this archetypal Form in mind (to use Kahn’s enigmatic terminology for what inherently prefigures and informs that which most architects would in fact call ‘form’), then Design of particulars (Kahn again) is legitimately possible.