The Louis Kahn’s inhabited column. The search for space inside the structure

Abstract

Canonical Modernism imposed a fluid, extensive and impersonal conception of space, indepedent of the inhabitant and with the final objective of creating an aesthetically and functionally self-absorbed object. Needed neither external references nor user validations. Starting in the 1950s, Louis Kahn will explore a new type of space in which matter, structure and light are closely related and are the elements to create a humanized space, with the user at the center of his work. Kahn’s project process follows a sequence in which matter creates the wall, which dissolves into columns between which light is introduced to make interior space a inhabitable, and therefore human, world. This same process will also apply to the interior of the structural elements, which in themselves will end up being containers of spaces, in a modern re-reading of classic poché. Structure and space are thus inextricably associated, overcoming the canonical premise of modern orthodoxy whereby structure, enclosure, and space were independent categories.