stefan a. schumer architects

round table

"kult um kahn"

hans hollein

carl pruscha

roland hagmüller

stefan a. schumer

moderated by

günther feuerstein

curated by

helmut weihsmann

filmcasino vienna - 2008 02 13

louis i. kahn about silence and light

i'm going to put on the blackboard here what may seem at first to be very esoteric. but i believe that i must do it in order to prime myself. don't forget that i'm also listening and i have really no prepared talk except that i put a few notes down just to get the scaredness out of me because—like, you know, this is like a blank piece of paper on which i've got to make a drawing. and so, the drawing is a talk this time, you see. it is wonderful to consider, you know, that you must see so well that you hear, too. and sometimes it is well to hear so well that you see, too. the senses really can be considered one thing. it all comes together. it is the reason why i constantly refer to music in refering to architecture, because to me there is no great difference as far [as]—when you dig deep enough in the realm of not doing things but simply thinking what you want to do—that all the various ways of expression come to fore. to me—when i see a plan i must see the plan as though it were a symphony, of the realm of spaces in the construction and light. i sort of care less, you see, for the moment, whether it works or not. just so i know that the principles are respected, which somehow are eternal, about the plan. as soon as i see a plan which tries to sell me spaces without light, i simply reject it with such ease, as though it were not even thoughtfully rejected, because i know that it is wrong. and so, false prophets, like schools that have no natural light, are definitely un-architectural. those are what i like to call—belong to the marketplace of architecture but not to architecture itself. so i must put on the board something which i thought of only recently what could be a key to my point of view in regard to all works of art including architecture. there is no attachment? it just works. doesn't it? isn't that marvelous! it's swiss, really it's swiss!—[the audience laughs—kahn points to the wireless microphone.] and so, i put this on the board: silence—and—light. silence is not very, very quiet. it is something which you may say is lightless— darkless. these are all invented words. darkless—there is no such a word. but why not? lightless; darkless. desire to be; to express. some can say this is the ambient soul—if you go back beyond and think of something in which light and silence were together and maybe are still together, and separated only for the convenience of argument. balkrishna doshi