My Architect: A Son's Journey

The life of the great architect Louis I. Kahn was in one word, as Umma would say, restless. This is a film made by Kahn's illegitimate son about his quest to find out who his father, internationally renown starchitect, hero to Bangladesh, the head of three different families, "ugly, short, and Jewish", ever enigmatic, ever elusive, truly was.

Lou Kahn's work is characterized by an unearthly heaviness and monumentality (explored in Alex Roman's must-see video: The Third & The Seventh, http://vimeo.com/7809605. full screen it!). With the little I know about the design process at this point of my career, I admire the simplicity and integrity of the servant-served concept carried out in his buildings. There is so much to be said about and to be learned from his work and philosophies.
That said, learning about the way he lives his life brings up the whole question of balancing architecture and life for me once again. Lou blatantly prioritized work over all else, his families, his health, people in general...he wouldn't even let people in his firm go home early to see their wives give birth if there was a rapidly approaching deadline.
As beautiful as the legacy he left through his buildings is, there is something terribly tragic about how he left behind little else for the people in his life. In my eyes, Lou was a human being who was always running away from one place to another, having an idea of what he valued but never resolutely committing to anything other than drawing and building and being incredibly hard-headed about his ideas.

I wonder where I will find myself in the next twenty years. If I have trouble balancing studio and life during the next five years, how will I balance work and life in the real world? Is it going to narrow down to either success in architecture or commitment to family/other relationships?
But I try not to worry too much about how tomorrow Hannah Lee will find a way to love God and care for people through work that I love but not treasure as much as the former two. We'll see. In the mean time, I'll concentrate on soaking up as much knowledge as possible. I'm stoked for interning and the watercolor class and for my summer reading list.

For the record, I think the film deserved the Academy Award nomination and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Louis I. Kahn, or architecture, or life.