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Louis Kahn 120 Celebration with Harriet Pattison, Nathaniel Kahn and William Whitaker
February 20, 2021—1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
SAT—February 20—1 PM ET
On February 20, join us for an online celebration of the American architect Louis Kahn, who was born 120 years ago on this day in Estonia. In this program, see a discussion with some of the people closest to Kahn: distinguished landscape architect Harriet Pattison; her son, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn; and William Whitaker, Curator, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania Stewart Weitzman School of Design.
The program will include a discussion of Pattison’s new book Our Days Are Like Full Years, (Yale University Press, 2020), in which she recounts her passionate and sometimes searing 15-year relationship with Kahn. Married and 27 years her senior, Kahn sent her scores of letters—many from far-flung places—until his untimely death. This book weaves together Pattison’s own story with letters, postcards, telegrams, drawings, and photographs that reveal Kahn’s inner life and his architectural thought process, including new insight into some of his greatest works, both built and unbuilt. What emerges is at once a poignant love story and a vivid portrait of a young woman striving to raise a family while forging an artistic path in the shadow of her famous partner.
The event will also include the premiere of an eight minute film by Maria Juur and Nick Malkin, Jersey Homesteads: Louis Kahn and Small Town Modernism (2021), commissioned for the Kahn 120 celebration. This film presents the story of Roosevelt, NJ, a utopian suburb designed by Kahn.
The event will take place as a Zoom webinar; please register at the link above. A Q&A will follow the discussion; please share questions in the chat or email them to info@amscan.org.
“Part memoir, part collection of letters, part architecture treatise, and part love story, Harriet Pattison’s Our Days Are Like Full Years takes you inside the architect Louis Kahn’s mind and, even more, inside his heart. This is the saga of a devil’s bargain with a saint, and it is at once poignant and triumphant. Pattison has written a magnificent book, filled with warmth, elegance, insight, and grace”— Paul Goldberger