Nearly half of the Hacker team caravanned north to attend the final day of the Bellevue Arts Museum’s retrospective Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture on April 30th. Although the exhibit includes video interviews of notable architects enthusing Kahn’s work, we had a more interactive guide. Our firm founder Thom Hacker gave us a personalized tour of the exhibit, which includes several projects on which Thom collaborated with his mentor “Lou.” The exhibit features many models and drawings prepared by Kahn’s office spanning projects from the Esherick House to more well know works like The Salk Institute, The Kimbell Art Museum, and the National Assembly Building in Dhaka. The exhibit even includes a full scale reproduction of the famous window seat designed for the Fisher house. Much of this material has not seen the light of day since Kahn’s death and it is remarkable that the large yet delicate cardboard, clay, and wood models survived.
It is a pleasure to be reacquainted with these powerful buildings from architecture history, but the anecdotes Thom shared about knowing Kahn, working in the office, even about building some of those very models, made the trip particularly interesting, touching, and memorable. Thanks, Thom!
Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture, now moves to the San Diego Museum of Art in November and then to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth in March, 2017. Check it out if you can.
