The Synagogue is situated in the historic section of Philadelphia.
The plan is structured with a series of cylindrical "rooms" surrounding the sanctuary and chapel. Light penetrates through these cylinders and is diffused. Thus, light is given volumetric form.
In the school building these volumes of light are reversed.
The primary materials are brick and concrete.
Romaldo Giurgola and Jaimini Mehta, Louis I. Kahn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1975), p. 44.
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2004.07.22 16:26
Re: Virtual Synagogue in Berlin's Fasanenstrasse
very coincidental....
Just within the last half hour I upload pages which depict an analytical rendition of Kahn's Mikveh Israel Synagogue (Philadelphia, 1961-70, unexecuted) where the cylinders of light are replace with reduced versions of Venturi & Rauch's Tower for Princeton Memorial Park (New Jersey, 1966, unexecuted).
G. sees the PMP Tower design as Venturi & Rauch's consummate homage to Kahn, specifically to the Mikveh Israel Synagogue.
While G. studied architecture at Cornell (BA 1968), he well remembers Perspecta 9/10 where Mikveh Israel is featured, as well as the then forthcoming excerpt from Complexity and Contradiction--"Is it a building split in two or two buildings coming together."
And who could forget the "Avant-Garde Anachronist" article on Louis Kahn in Time June 1966--"Carving in Light" indeed.
And remember how everyone was eating up the Progressive Architecture Award Citations January 1967.
2007.04.03 14:20
AN ARCHITECTURE OF REMOVEMENT
All I did was look to see what was 'winning' in the architecture magazines while Matta-Clark was in architecture schools.
As to holes is walls, note the PMP to Mikveh Israel connection.
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2012.08.08 18:38
The Philadelphia School, deterritorialized
It's nice when coincidences spur a story.
Yesterday, I viewed the three latest entries to Archive of Affinities. The first image, Roche/Dinkeloo's Knights of Columbus Office building, 1969, immediately revealed a connection I've never noticed before.
...Louis Kahn's Mikveh Israel Synagogue complex, version eight, 1964-66, the chapel of which...
...is clearly the antecedent to Roche/Dinkeloo's Knights of Columbus Office building. Now's the time to start imagining a new twisted movie--Being Louis Kahn.
The Venturi and Rauch designs that come into play here are the three buildings for Princeton Memorial Park, 1966. The tower...
...is clearly derived from the light cylinders of Kahn's Mikvek Israel Synagogue, to the point of being almost an homage.
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2014.08.22 14:42
22 August
The Venturi building most inspired by Kahn put into the actual building by Kahn that inspired Venturi.
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