To start with, I am not a fan of Mies or his acolytes (notice I didn't say "less talented" acolytes because in my opinion, none of them are talented).
So it was not any happy revelation to find out that one of those acolytes, architect Louis Kahn, is responsible for starting the 1960's and '70's fad of using pockmarked reinforced concrete walls (often windowless) as an interior and exterior finish material. (His Salk Institute would not look out of place as a location for a movie about the apocalypse.)
Anyone trying to talk to me about his prodigious "talent" justifying his having two children by two different women while he was married to yet another woman and then denying paternity may as well be talking to a wall. There is no excuse for what he did, no matter what his profession or his fame. None. He didn't care about his wife, his mistresses or his children while he was alive, and he certainly didn't care what happened to them after he died.
The words in the title of my summary belong to his out-of-wedlock son Nathaniel, who directed this documentary. The last segment of "My Architect" is subtitled "The Truth about the Bastard". And that is exactly what Louis Kahn was.
There's enough blame to go around. I don't feel sorry for the women who knew he was married and had unprotected sex with him anyway, or for the wife who must have suspected what was going on and didn't put her foot down because she enjoyed the status of being Mrs. Louis Kahn.
Nathaniel Kahn's mother comes off as the world's biggest dimwit. Somehow, she has managed to delude herself into thinking that when her baby's daddy dropped dead in Penn Station in 1974, he was leaving his wife and on his way to be with her and Nathaniel for good. Yeah, right.
The true victims in all of this were his children, who had their father's love and attention doled out to them with an eyedropper, and will never be able to confront him about his reprehensible behavior. Not that they would get a straight answer; people like Louis Kahn have a way of justifying everything they do, no matter how vile. The scene where they meet and share their separate memories of their father and of the tension between their mothers at his funeral should be an education for those who think that children are "resilient".
As Nathaniel interviews those who knew his father professionally, the crocodile tears flow fast and furious. "I knew about you. But your father was always very private." Please. With colleagues like this, who needs friends?
The funniest lines belong to patrician Edmund Bacon, who presided over the 1960's bulldozing of a good portion of Philadelphia's downtown in the name of "urban renewal". No gushy posthumous testimonials for him. He fired Kahn in a dispute over the direction that renewal should take, and his fiery convictions about the inappropriateness of Daddy Kahn's ideas are still evident forty years later as the son interviews him. I won't spoil it; see the movie.
So it was not any happy revelation to find out that one of those acolytes, architect Louis Kahn, is responsible for starting the 1960's and '70's fad of using pockmarked reinforced concrete walls (often windowless) as an interior and exterior finish material. (His Salk Institute would not look out of place as a location for a movie about the apocalypse.)
Anyone trying to talk to me about his prodigious "talent" justifying his having two children by two different women while he was married to yet another woman and then denying paternity may as well be talking to a wall. There is no excuse for what he did, no matter what his profession or his fame. None. He didn't care about his wife, his mistresses or his children while he was alive, and he certainly didn't care what happened to them after he died.
The words in the title of my summary belong to his out-of-wedlock son Nathaniel, who directed this documentary. The last segment of "My Architect" is subtitled "The Truth about the Bastard". And that is exactly what Louis Kahn was.
There's enough blame to go around. I don't feel sorry for the women who knew he was married and had unprotected sex with him anyway, or for the wife who must have suspected what was going on and didn't put her foot down because she enjoyed the status of being Mrs. Louis Kahn.
Nathaniel Kahn's mother comes off as the world's biggest dimwit. Somehow, she has managed to delude herself into thinking that when her baby's daddy dropped dead in Penn Station in 1974, he was leaving his wife and on his way to be with her and Nathaniel for good. Yeah, right.
The true victims in all of this were his children, who had their father's love and attention doled out to them with an eyedropper, and will never be able to confront him about his reprehensible behavior. Not that they would get a straight answer; people like Louis Kahn have a way of justifying everything they do, no matter how vile. The scene where they meet and share their separate memories of their father and of the tension between their mothers at his funeral should be an education for those who think that children are "resilient".
As Nathaniel interviews those who knew his father professionally, the crocodile tears flow fast and furious. "I knew about you. But your father was always very private." Please. With colleagues like this, who needs friends?
The funniest lines belong to patrician Edmund Bacon, who presided over the 1960's bulldozing of a good portion of Philadelphia's downtown in the name of "urban renewal". No gushy posthumous testimonials for him. He fired Kahn in a dispute over the direction that renewal should take, and his fiery convictions about the inappropriateness of Daddy Kahn's ideas are still evident forty years later as the son interviews him. I won't spoil it; see the movie.
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