The Role of Geometry in the Architecture of Louis Kahn and Anne Tyng

Abstract

Among the salient features of the architecture of Louis I. Kahn, one recognizes the ability to reconcile the aesthetics of Modernism with monumentality and one of the elements used to implement this programmatic attitude is Geometry. In this regard, we cite the projects for the Trenton Bath House (1955–1956) and the unrealized Philadelphia City Tower (1952–1957), which are today attributed in the geometric conception to Kahn’s collaborator, Anne Griswold Tyng. Her production of concepts of unrealized projects is less known, among which the one for the General Motors Exhibit 1964 (1960–1961), which adopted particular geometric figures, showing not only her knowledge, but also her ability to manipulate regular and semi-regular polyhedra. Tyng was also interested in women role in the culture and she expressed in her most appropriate form—the geometrical schemes in her texts written in 1989 and 1997—her own theory about the evolution of the woman’s role towards an autonomous creative expression.