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Toward Modernist Urban Design: Louis Kahn's Plan for Central PhiladelphiaNON ARKARAPRASERTKUL aa Department of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Online Publication Date: 01 June 2008

To cite this Article ARKARAPRASERTKUL, NON(2008)'Toward Modernist Urban Design: Louis Kahn's Plan for CentralPhiladelphia',Journal of Urban Design,13:2,177 194

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Toward Modernist Urban Design: Louis Kahns Plan for

Central Philadelphia

NON ARKARAPRASERTKUL

Department of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

ABSTRACT By re-visiting Louis Kahns urban design plan for Central Philadelphia inthe 1950s, this paper explores the history and controversy of one of the most provocativemodernist urban design ideas through the debate between architect Kahn and plannerEdmund Bacon. While Bacon was a trained planner who represented the economic needs ofthe public realm, Kahn was an architect who advocated for the powerful form and thesystem of movement at large. This paper presents a methodological search for thedistinctive characteristics of Kahns plan that might have made it practical forPhiladelphiathe idea of the city of flow and the monumental civic centre.

We started work and I wanted to communicate to the public in the mostacerbic fashion I possibly could: the essence of the idea. But Lou wouldsay, wouldnt it be nice to put a curval stair way here, or wouldnt it be

nice to put a little tower here. Suddenly I realized that the purity ofmy communication was being encrusted by Lous fantasies . . . Its anabsolutely pure ignorance on Lous part that you have no responsibility toprepare a system of a large order and you only do a little thing that comesalong. (Edmund N. Bacon, cited in Kahn, 2003)

The classic dispute between the planner, Edmund Bacon, Executive Director of thePhiladelphia City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1970, and Louis Kahn onKahns unbuilt monumental plan for midtown Philadelphia (1956 62), opened upa critical debate on Modernist urbanism. Challenging Kahns conception of thesocial needs of the people in Philadelphia, Bacon criticized Kahns negligence ofthe overall concerns of city development, as well as his indulgence of the use ofincongruous massive forms. Kahns architectural vocabulary of pure monumental

forms was developed from those of early Modernists such as Le Corbusier. Theseforms conflicted with the utopian idiom of the new civic design ethic, giving animpression that they were impractical and difficult to implement.1 Kahns bird-eye view perspective of midtown Philadelphia, which showed a gathering ofgigantic pure geometrical forms along the east and west sides of Market Street,seemed to epitomize his disregard of reality, his romanticism for an urbanrenaissance (Reed, 1989, p. 278) and his obsession with pure Platonic forms.

Correspondence Address: Non Arkaraprasertkul, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,77 Massachusetts Avenue, M.I.T., Rooms 7-337/9-213, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Email:[email protected]; [email protected]

Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 13. No. 2, 177194, June 2008

1357-4809 Print/1469-9664 Online/08/020177-18q 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13574800801965676


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At the time, since urban design education had not yet been formalized,Kahns imaginative, dynamic and unprecedented interpretations about thefuture of the city were controversial because of his architecturally unorthodoxapproach to modern urbanism. Kahn proposed that architects could transformtheir conception of design from a building to a city scale while preserving itsfundamental elements (Stonorov & Kahn, 1944). To Kahn, urbanism was thedesign of an urban space through architectural elements. Bacons main quarrelwith this idea was that he felt that Kahn did not understand that city planninginvolved the organization of a system that focused on the public realm, ratherthan merely the design of buildings (Bacon, cited in Kahn, 2003). Bacons disputewith Kahns urbanism, which led to an unsuccessful collaboration betweenthe city planning commission of Philadelphia and Kahn, led to the demise ofKahns idea.

Despite Bacons views, this paper argues that Kahns plan for CentralPhiladelphia was realistic and that it could be an ideal implementation of theModernist city form. Initiated by Alison and Peter Smithson, critiques of Kahnsidea have principally focused on his break with the orthodox school of Modernism

but, in general, acknowledge that his radical proposals for changes to the waypeople live would be insensitive (Smithson & Smithson, 1967, p. 44). This paperalso presents the background of Kahns design of the plan for Philadelphia,starting with his early works on housing projects through to his detailed concernabout the workability of his Central Philadelphia master plan. This plan derivesfrom his established architectural principles of order and monumentality. Threeimportant questions emerge from some exhaustive accounts of this importantwork: what are the distinctive characteristics of Kahns plan which mighthave made it practical for Philadelphia? That is, how did Kahns idea differfrom those of the other Modernists that had been widely condemned for theirimpractical urban forms? Further, is there a distinctive form that is widelyaccepted, or is it largely a matter of satisfying the appearance, form and concept ofcity as a machine of modern architecture? Third, how does the structure of theplan give an essential characteristic, or realized form in Kahns own words, tothe centre of Philadelphia? This papers core hypothesis is that the urban designplan for Central Philadelphia represents a maturation of Kahns theory onurbanism.

Toward a Modernist Transformation of Central Philadelphia: A CriticalBackground

Lou has a very important function as a producer of ideasand theequally important function of challenging other ideas. (Edmund Bacon,cited in Architectural Forum, 1958, p. 118)

Kahn started working on The Plan for the Center City of Philadelphia in 1946 (Reed,1989). During the 1950s, a half-a-century of inactive planning and the citys criticalstate of decay dictated its need for a redevelopment.2 Philadelphia desired tohave the same commercial features as New York, to which it was often compared.These included office space, stores, squares, municipal centres and parking.Bacons research concluded that the city needed its own Rockefeller Center(Architecture Forum , 1952, p. 119). At the time, Kahn had just started his tenure as aconsultant to the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, working directly with

178 N. Arkaraprasertkul


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Robert Mitchell and, subsequently, Edmund Bacon. According to Kahn scholarIrene Erika Ayad (1995), Kahns inborn sense of a city was articulated by ethnicdiversity, which he himself had experienced through his immigrant background.Nevertheless, Kahn first attempted to articulate his understanding of cities in1939, when he publicly exhibited a large-scale visionary city planning, HousingDesign in the Rational City Plan as part of the exhibition Houses and Housing,organized by the United States Housing Authority and the Museum of ModernArt. Kahn based this imaginative design in Philadelphia on Le Corbusiersprinciple, Urbanisme, and used the Plan voisin pour Paris as the main precedent(Tyng, 1984, p. 84) (Figure 1). Kahns Rational City Plan demonstrated hisimpression of the functionality of Modernism, especially the Modernism of LeCorbusier. Peter Reed (1989, p. 4) explains: [Kahn] presented a decentralized city

dominated by a crisp, clear hierarchical street system that occasionally deviatedfrom the rectilinear grid to accommodate the terrain. Thus, until the early 1950s,Beaux-Art trained architect Louis Kahn merely stood in the shadow of theModernist Le Corbusiers Urbanisme theory.

Almost a decade later, Kahn and his associates established their collectivereputation through several debates about the quality of a good neighbourhood,including Kahns Housing in the Rational City Plan (1939), Oscar Stonorov & LouisKahns Why City Planning is Your Responsibility (1943), You and Your Neighborhood:

A Primer for Neighborhood Planning (1944), as well as his first major large-scaleneighbourhood planning and housing design in Philadelphia, the Mill CreekRedevelopment Area Plan (1951 56). Apart from Kahns reputation for his designof the Yale Art Gallery (Reed, 1989, p. 4), it was the Mill Creek plan that essentially

Figure 1. Le Corbusier, Paris: Plan Voisin 1925, Photographie FLCL2 (14) 46q FLC/DACS 2008. Source:Le Corbusier Foundation, Paris.

Toward Modernist Urban Design 179


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brought him to the attention of the Philadelphia City Commission. Hisextraordinarily intimate study of Mill Creek demonstrated his sensibility of urbandesign, taking account of the impact of automobiles and their relationship topedestrians, history, existing typography and terrain, social involvement, housing,and, most famously, the relationship of this small neighbourhood to an overallurban context (Ayad, 1995, p. 333). Analysis and a critical understanding of the sitesphysical and social context gave him a point of departure. To Kahn, communityinvolvement and a pattern of streets were a mechanism that created a pedestrianrealm that would serve as a guide for efficient land use and zoning patterns. Kahnalso planned for a revitalization of the neighbourhoods institutional buildingsthat were under-acknowledged, which marked his first step using function andsymbolism in public buildings to reinforce the communitys awareness or sense ofthe city. Moreover, Kahns first study of pedestrian and vehicular traffic patterns,which later influenced his study on a city scale, was realized in the Mill Creek plan(Figures 2 and 3).

After completing the Mill Creek project, despite a popular misunderstandingthat he was asked to design every part of the project, Kahn was commissioned tostudy and design only an initial phrase of the redevelopment plan for centralPhiladelphia: The Triangle Plan (1946 50), a revitalization of the 200-acre parcel ofland bordered by Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Schuylkill River and MarketStreet, with the apex at City Hall (Figure 4). Kahn and his associates also worked

by themselves on several non-commissioned projects (Tyng, 1984, p. 91), whichwere known as the Plan for Midtown Philadelphia. These included the famousmovement study, the Traffic Study of Philadelphia (195154); The Penn Center(195158), a design of a civic centre on the Schuylkill River; the City Tower Project

(195758), a high-rise tower built with concrete (collaborated with Ann G. Tyngand sponsored by the Concrete Institute of America); Market Street East Studies(196063), and Viaduct Architecture (195962), a protective multi-level transpor-tation path around the city. These were all promulgated by his article written forYale School of Architecturespublication, Perspecta, in 1953 (Kahn, 1953, pp. 1027).

The Bakery Shop: Louis Kahn and his Break from Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier was and still is my teacher though he has never been awareof it. (Louis I. Kahn, cited in Reed, 1989, p. 13)

The origins of Kahns idea of urbanism begin no later than his early education(Frampton, 1980, pp. 2053, 1995, pp. 209213; Kieffer, 2001, p. 53). His connectionto the French School of Art at the University of Pennsylvania gave him anunderstanding that the arrival of form must be the result of the construction systemand the structural elements inherent in them (Frampton, 1980, pp. 20 53). This later

brought him to the consolidation of his main design principle: order (Kahn, 1955,p. 60). Structure for Kahn was not just a building structure; it could be an abstractform of organization that holds fundamental elements together. At the time, he wasalso attracted to Le Corbusiers Modernist vocabulary. He was fascinated with LeCorbusiers idea of designing an open space embraced by towers in the Le VilleContemporaine (Contemporary City); and Kahn, like several young architects, wasengrossed by the principles of Modernism: purity of form, geometrical aesthetics,and no less important, formalist ideal of the urban Utopia (Reed, 1989, p. 279).



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However, after his matured work (Ayad, 1995, p. 327), the Mill Creek plan,Kahn began to question Le Corbusiers conception of tactility in his urban design.Kahn had concerns with the universality and monotony of Le CorbusiersContemporary City. That is, Kahn condemned the monotonous homogeneity of allthe components of a large system, but praised a hierarchy that based its systemupon its microcosmic needs. Kahn also questioned Le Corbusiers ambiguity ofstructural expression, a conceptual part of Le Corbusiers principle that led to a

physical aspect of his design. For example, in Le Corbusiers structural diagram ofMaison Dom-Ino (Figure 5), Kahn criticized its concealment of a structure that doesnot communicate its essence: I would think that if you are dealing with a column,you mustgive ita beam. You cannot havea column without a beam (Kahn,cited inAnderson, 1975, p. 302). Le Corbusiers model served as a model for Kahn in hisearly years, until he returned from an exhilarating trip to Europe, where heexperienced a variety of street spaces in a picturesque plan of medieval towns forderiving his own vocabulary of critical reminiscences of ancient cities andmonuments, and his interest in a neighbourhood plan. He started to realize thatthere was something missing in Le Corbusiers model, an underlying essenceasensitive expressionof expressive possibility of structure, which was often lostin a process of selection(McCarter, 2003, p. 44). Kahn not only referred to a building,

Figure 2. Mill Creek Development Area Plan, Preliminary Master Plan. Source: Louis I. KahnCollection,University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.



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Figure 4. Triangle Plan, bird-eye perspective sketch. Source: Louis I. Kahn Collection, University ofPennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Figure 3. Mill Creek Development Area Plan, Perspective View of Housing Development. Source: LouisI. KahnCollection,University of Pennsylvaniaand the PennsylvaniaHistoricaland MuseumCommission.



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but also to a city. He recognized that theideal grid andthe colossus streets in both LeCorbusiers Le Ville Contemporaine and Le Ville Radieuse plans, were, by analogy to

Maison Domino, a slab that conceals a beamthe only true and valid structure.Kahn also criticized Le Corbusier for his anonymous functional planning:

At one time I thought the idea of towers with big open space aroundthem was a wonderful thing, until I realized, where is the bakery shop?And the park was not good enough. (cited in Wurman, 1986, p. 230)

Kahn found a niche for himself: an architect planner3 must be concerned withthesenseofurbanityineveryscale.LeCorbusiersplanconferrednosenseofplaceinthe city. The missing bakery shop was an absence of the sense of place. Furthermore,Kahn did not agree with Le Corbusiers decentralized city. Decentralization was,for Kahn, a cause of the citys decay. Kahn was inspired by the planning ofCarcassonne in southern France (Architectural Forum, 1958, p. 116); the idea of acity that contains working, inner partsbusiness district and public gatheringspaceand defence organisms, walls. This became Kahns comprehension of theordering of a city: the relationship between nature and organism is a true orderthat together fosters life (Architectural Forum, 1958, p. 115116). What he meantwas that a renewal of the city could only be obtained from the compactness of aplace that consists of fundamental living and civic componentsthe consolida-tion of all centres: cultural, academic, commercial and residential (ArchitecturalForum, 1958, pp. 116 118) and places for people to meet. The city is a place wherea little boy walking through its streets and can sense what he someday would liketo be, he romanticized (Kahn, cited in Reed, 1989). Although arguably Kahnalways found Le Corbusier every time he looked back, the development ofhis principles on urbanism in the 1960s show his essential departure fromLe Corbusier.

Foundation of City Form: Movement Study and Civic Centre

The plan of a city is like the plan of a house [and] Architecture is also thestreet (Louis I. Kahn, 1953, p. 11) (Figure 6).

Figure 5. Le Corbusier, Maison Dom-Ino 1914, Plan FLC 19209q FLC/DACS, 2008. Source: Le CorbusierFoundation, Paris.



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Kahn recognized from the first that Philadelphia was a historical city that dealtwith problems of not only community collapse due to the departure of industriesand original occupants, but also an inefficient traffic system and inadequate parkingspaces for the modern era of motor cars. To Kahn, movement was fundamental foran ideal city form. From his established principle, order he believed that the re-structuring of the city was to use the organism as the basis of form: design is form-making in order (Kahn, 1955, p. 60). Hence, integrating his forceful idea of served-servant space previously established in his design of Richards Center for MedicalResearch (1957 61), Kahn based his urban design for Philadelphia on his

investigation of the existing problematic automobile traffic. Ordering movement inthe city must present a logical construct that protects against the destruction of thecity by the motorcar. Like Le Corbusier, Kahn regarded streets as a mechanism ofthe city; unlike Le Corbusier, the street for Kahn was not for maximizing theautomobile speed, but for order and convenience (McCarter, 2005, p. 127) madepossible by stopping in reserved locations, the relationship between the served(buildings and open space) and the servant (streets) space was clearly articulatedthrough his diagram of proposed movement patterns.

Kahn proposed a re-definition of a hyper-chaotic street system in the citycentre with a movement pattern separated by types. It was believed that heconceived the romanticism of a pleasant canal city from his visit to Venice duringhis residency at the American Academy in Rome (1950 51). Kahn re-systematized

Figure 6. City Diagram, Louis Kahn and Oscar Stonorov. Source: Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of

Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.



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the movement in the city by moving elevated high-speed road waysriversoutfrom the centre of the city, consolidating Go streetscanalsin the centre city,and connecting them with parking facilitiesharboursalong the perimeter ofthe area he defined as centre city (Frampton, 1995, p. 224). Cars would enter thecity from the high-speed roadway and park at the ramped parking garage, thenthey would take public transportation provided along the low-vehicularcongestion block system to the inner part of the city, creating a modern mode oftransportation and allocating the back streets to pedestrians. Kahns belief inmovement as a true structure was unsurpassed: he said a modern city willrenew itself from its order concept of movement (Kahn, cited in ArchitecturalForum, 1958, p. 118). From this system, Kahn structured the order of the city

by reorganizing the movement pattern accommodating a vehicular traffic-freeenvironment in the centre city.4

Kahns most controversial proposition, the civic centre, emerged organicallyfrom the system of movement order. Components of the civic centre came out ofthe citys organic structure. They were circular parking towersan order of stopand gofrom the order of movement, commercial centres from the order ofthe business city core, city hall from the order of institutions. The forms of the

buildings he carefully chose were results of his passionate historicism andPlatonic formal expression that he felt could enhance a social and political life(Goldhagen, 2001, pp. 116117). Kahn anticipated the ultimate idealistic goal:the manifestation of the essence of human civilization through the evocation oftimelessness in monumental building (Reed, 1989, p. 280). Again, as a nativePhiladelphian, Kahn passionately felt the need for monumentalitymonumentalsymbolismthat would anchor a social presence in the same way as in ancientcities he visited.5 The form of Central Philadelphia in his aerial sketch was the newmonumental axis along the east-west side of Market Street, and provocatively, anintense double-sided linear assembly of cylindrical (silos) structures, a truncatedpyramid, tubular towers and a space frame city tower along Market Street. All ofthem were gigantic in scale and some of them were unnecessarily taller thanWilliam Penns statue on top of the city hall.6 In addition, Kahns reminiscence ofCamillo Sittes theory of urban design was expressed through his diverse spatialcomposition of open spaces and large-scale buildings. Open spaces were plazasfor Sitte, but were forums for Kahn.

Furthermore, Kahn accentuated the form of the city by the final formalvocabulary he developed for Philadelphia, Viaduct Architecture (Figures 7and 8). Functioning as protective wall in analogy to Carcassone (Tyng, 1984, p. 92),and as servant space in Kahns central architectural precept, the viaduct was a

multi-level, symbolic and porous arcade wall accommodating different modesof transportation and the citys infrastructure. Attempting to be the centre ofcommunication (Reed, 1989, p. 221) in the periphery, the viaduct was Kahnsattempt to systematize walled-service bordering facilities to define, form, outlineand edge the city at the same time. In addition, the viaduct created a future urbanpatterna pattern of metropolitan growth inside the walldistinguishingmovement from mans other activities by the order of the citys progression andcivilization (Reed, 1989, p. 236).

Therefore, Kahn presented the construction of an alternative of an idealmodern city form by two dominant designs derived from his finding ofhistoricism and understanding of the need for modern life: efficient traffic systemand iconographical civic centres.



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Louis Kahn, Edmund Bacon and the Design of the City

Louis Kahn has made the distinction between form that belongs toeverybody and design that is architects own (Edmund Bacon, 1967,p. 249)

In spite of Kahns endeavour to present his idea in a specific detailed way, hisplans were seen as abstract concepts because of their disassociation from thereality of Philadelphias economic circumstances. In other words, Kahns proposalrequired massive investment in new infrastructures and buildings, which was notpossible given the slow growth rate of business in Philadelphia. Bacon, of course,

Figure 7. Louis I. Kahns sketch of Viaduct Architecture over the existing plan of central Philadelphia.Source: Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and

Museum Commission.

Figure 8. Louis I. Kahns sketch of section through the Viaducts Bus Terminal. Source: Louis I. KahnCollection, University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.



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claimed that Kahns idea was no more than a dream of someone who did notunderstand the reality of the working of the city. Setting this claim as a backdropfor the argument, there are two factors of departure between two urban ideas.

The first is the understanding of systems that form the city. The two men, bothnative Philadelphians, saw the needs of the city in different ways. Following theguidelines given by the Planning Commission, Kahn came up with criteria thatBacon saw as totally nave.7 Kahn felt that the city needed the order of movementand the presence of institutions as monumental architecture, which would thencooperate and create an organism that would allow the city to operate by itself in asustainable fashion. Kahn highly valued architectural quality for its constructivepotential of rejuvenating the city. Bacon felt that Philly needed a concrete policy-level proposal to mend its collective injuries (Bacon, cited in Architecture Forum,1952, p. 122). Therefore, while Kahn felt that development was largely the

restructuring of an abstract system, Bacon believed that buildings were physicalfactors for the city solvency: a commercial office centre and a new municipalcentre. These different understandings of the factors that make a city set theirideologies even further apart. Whereas Kahn attempted to use his symbolic

buildings to form an equal society and reinforce the idea of affordable housingand outdoor markets, just as he had seen in Rome, Bacon planned for a richneighborhood (Stephens, 2005, p. 36) on the south side of the Independence Malland a gigantic Rockefeller Center-style public mall, which would later become oneof the citys attractions. Moreover, the distinction between Kahn and Bacon wasevident in their initial approaches. Kahn perceived the city from its structuralfoundationorderthus re-structuring the city from its fundamentals in orderto solve its problems (Tyng, 1984, p. 77). Bacon perceived the city as a completeorganism already established through a diversity of social and economic factors.His solution for the citys crisis was to be solved through its dynamics and changeof urban solvency. Therefore, Bacon (1967, p. 280) criticized Kahns idea asfragmented, one-sided and impractical.

The second factor was an understanding of the city as total organism on alarge order. Bacon considered that Kahns proposal lacked understanding of awhole, that his architectural expression was an over-romanticized idea thatwas only concerned with buildings (Bacon, 1967, p. 280). Bacon greatly admiredI. M. Peis residential towers on Society Hill for their precise placement, whichwell related themselves to urban context without destroying the unity of designand the larger system, Bacon stated:

The position of three Pei towers was determined by design forcesimpinging on the site from the outside, rather than being arbitrary

placement related only to the site itself. As built, these three towersresolve the design structure and serve as visual linkages between thepedestrian and automobile systems. In this case, Pei towers would fail torelate themselves to historical contexts, nineteenth to the twentieth-century cities, if Pei had not detailed his towers with supreme sensitivity.(Bacon, 1967, pp. 248249) (Figure 9)

Bacon considered Kahns building designs on the monumental axis of MarketStreet as irrationally alienating to his planner sensibility; creating a newanchoring identity requires more than a careful study of the city. To Kahns credit,the underlying reason for his proposal was his understanding his city so wellthat he came up with the idea of gigantic civic structures. For Kahn, the decaying



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neighbourhood and lack of identity could only be remedied by the architectureof overwhelming monumentality, which would serve as a bastion protectingagainst the moneyed interests that were destroying the places dignity(Goldhagen, 2001, pp. 116 117). Bacon might be right in this sense; Kahnsbeyond big buildings do not seem to fit the grid system and, moreover, do notseem to be able to promote the equality of people in the way he wanted.8

In addition, due to the monumental scale and formal constraints of the civiccentre, connection to the street might also be diminished. Hence, the deficientnatural lighting caused by the cylindrical massing would eliminate street life,making the space on the first floor ripe for crime. Assuming these adverse effectsof Kahns shocking expression of the pure geometrical form, the form of civic

centre would deeply impact the social structure, starting with the awkwardreaction to the unprecedented overpowering buildings, to the devastation ofactivities on the ground level due to the inaccessibility and uncomfortable groundspace left over by the monumental figures. Although Bacons design of the PennCenter was largely a series of vertical skyscraper slabs that were smaller thanKahns, its slenderness, being parallel to the block, repetition and connection tothe street from sidewalks, made the centre contextualized by civic components(Figure 10). In addition, its porosity and transparencyconnectivity to a carefullylinked sunken plaza and Schuylkill River promenadeallowed the perception ofthe outside to the interior of the building and structured a dynamic dialogue

between public and commercial realms. Therefore, Kahns idea ofThe Plan of aCity is Like the Plan of a House (Stonorov & Kahn, 1944) was totally illegitimate.

Figure 9. Bacons Plan for Central Philadelphia, Three Pei Buildings are on the right next to the river.Source: The Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania and

the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and Edmund N. Bacon.



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Central to the fundamental concern of urban planners, the complexity of thesystem of a large order or the city was more complicated than the nature ofarchitecture of a house.

Although Edmund Bacon valued Kahns abstract solutions to problems, suchas the existing disorganized movement of automobiles, he disagreed with thetraffic-free centre city. While Kahn saw a hierarchical arrangement of cars outsidethe centre city and a pedestrian environment as a possible solution for physicaldevelopment, Bacon believed that the automobile could incubate the cityseconomy. Bacon (cited in Time, 1964) asserted, The automobile must be treated asan honored guest. It is arguable whether or not Kahns portrayal of the city as awalking city was too dramatic for reality. The core of his idea was that manneeded to be able to perceive values of the city by a slower mode of transportation

Figure 10. Perspective drawing of the Bacons proposed five slabs, Penn Center on Market Street.

Source: The Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania andthe Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and Edmund N. Bacon.



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with a sense of security. In Bacons Design of Cities (1967) he portrayed his visionfor Philadelphia as collaborative and democratic. He discerned planning as ashared thing, in which the public could take part. This can be thought of as anattack on Kahns uncompromising design of the civic centre.9

Conclusion: Kahns True Form of Implementation

Based on Kahns collective insights into the city and his indulgence in romanticismand historicism, the lineage of his ideas on urbanism demonstrates hisdevelopment of ideas about the city, from the rational city plan in the completeoeuvre of the Modernist (1939), the plan of the city as analogous to the plan of a

building (1944), neighbourhood and housing as an important part of the urbandomain (195154), traffic as a foundational structureorderof modern cities

(1951 54), to the consolidation of the order and monumentality principles(1951 62). While some of his proposals are strong in a functional sense, forexample, the traffic study, many of his ideas are apparently poetic and easilycriticized through the lenses of reality, which are the main reasons that his plan ofcentral Philadelphia remains on paper. It is also evident that commercial forcesshaped Philadelphia from the time of its revival in the 1950s until today. Like manycities, which formed Kahns romantic idea derived from his inspiring medievalcities, it seemed even more impractical. Kahns belief in architecture as afoundational device to rejuvenate mans spirita truly remarkable principle in aconceptual and tectonic sensewas seen by leading planners at the time as anidealistic scheme. Although none of Kahns plans were realized and implemented,the city of Philadelphia has gained significant knowledge and cultivation fromthe history and controversies in which Kahn was involved for more than twodecades. Edmund Bacon, a renowned planner, while totally refusing to use Kahnsdesign, complimented Kahn for his motivation and creative idea that incalculablyinfluenced the perpetual dialogues of the citys development. Picking up PeterReeds (1989, p. 12) dissertations precis on Kahns urban design for centralPhiladelphia, Philadelphia was [Kahns] canvas; his palette, ideas that, if theywere of any value, were applicable in theory to any democratic city, theconclusion of this paper lies in answers to three seminal questions posted at the

beginning of this paper.First, the distinctive features of Kahns plan are conceptual ideas that come

out of his studies rather than the design itself. For Kahn, the movement pattern andthe idea of monumental civic centres have potential to sustain civic identity.The hierarchical organization of movement, separating patterns of movement by

rate of speed, is a concrete idea for the re-engineering of modes of transportation inthe city in order to operate a city in the most efficient way. The idea of centralPhiladelphia as a complete pedestrian environment might not be practical whenvisualizing todays need for mobility and connectibility. But the core idea to makea city liveable in the sense of pedestrian security, while at the same time promotingsacredness of the civic centre as a setting of cultural activities and human reaction(Goldhagen, 2001) is legitimate, especially with this modern dilemma ofoverwhelming automobile traffic. Moreover, the iconographic characteristics ofthe civic centre and recognized pattern of the viaduct could essentially construct asense of place essential to good city form. These arecharacteristics that could havemade his plan an appropriate implementation for the Modern city form. If, forKahn (1957, pp. 23), architecture is a thoughtful making of space, urbanism



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is a thoughtful making of urban space ordered by systems of movement andanchoring civic structures that resonate the need to invoke mankinds highestvalues.

Second, the form of Kahns plan derives from his realization of order and the

need for monumentality in the city. Movement is the structure of the city to Kahn.

The derivation of buildings came from the order of movement: the locations of

civic buildings were established on the basis of movement in the city. Therefore,monumental and symbolic needs for those buildings came from the need for

institutional order in the centre city: a new civic anchoring resonated with the

power and memory of ancient monuments. Furthermore, completely opposite to

those of the Modernists, the plan for central Philadelphia was integrated into the

fabric of the existing city. In spite of the fact that Kahns monumental forms were

alienating, the positioning and effect of those abstract geometrical forms representnot only the identity but the sensibility of place, which essentially makes Kahns

plan different from the repetitive and monotonous Le Ville Contemporaine and

Le Ville Radieuse plans. Returning to the comparison with Le Corbusiers Maison

Domino, if the movement is the structure of the city, monumental buildings are

necessary human institutions that emerge from order to maintain the civilization.

This is the mission rational beam for the Maison Domino. Bacons design for Penn

Center might achieve its objective of being a centre for commercial activities, but

due to its commercial looks it does not radiate cultural identity of a place the waythe Rockefeller Center does.

Third, corresponding to the answer of the second question, it was the

movementa form of interactivityand the group of monumental buildingsa

form of civic symbolismthat created the realized form of Kahns plan for centralPhiladelphia.

To conclude, the idea of an ideal implementation of Kahns urban design for

Philadelphia lies deeply in his two abstract principlestraffic and civic centre.

Taken into account he was a radical idealist, his proposal was not meant to be

looked at for its actual formal proposals, but for its core ideas. The essence of his

plan was not the total pedestrian free environment, monumental civic centres

and viaduct wall, but the ideas of the rational hierarchical movement pattern,

the cultural and civic place, and the system of complete service facilities. Kahn

presented one of the key definitions for Modernist urbanism, which gives us asignificant chapter in our inquiry to the relationship between urban form and

society. As Bacon said, Kahn might not have understood urban planning because

he was not aware of the fact that the plan of the city is way more complicated thana plan of a house, and maybe Bacon was right about the idea of city solvent, but

Kahns serious attempt to redesign Philadelphia should also be acknowledged.Whether Kahn saw opportunities in the progressive development of the city and

designed accordingly to accommodate the realities of tomorrows city, or whether

it was just his romantic reminiscing that guided his path to the monumental urban

renaissance, the option might remain eternally unanswered in the same way as the

question of whether his civic centre had been built to endure for ages if it was built

at all. But for the generations that followed Louis Kahn, the quarrel between

architects formality and planners practicality shall be considered less a debate to

be won than a relationship to be made.



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Acknowledgements

This paper owes great debt to Bill Whittaker, a curator at the University ofPennsylvanias Architecture Archives, in his immense assistance on providinglists of important primary and secondary sources on Kahn, without whom thispaper would never have been started. The author also owes a particular debtto Julian Beinart and Stanford Anderson at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology (MIT) for their constant enthusiasm about the project, their generoussupport, and most importantly their knowledge guidance toward unfamiliarexamples of Modern architecture and urban forms. Finally, the author remainsgrateful to the wonderful editing of Victor Alexander Wong, Marylin Levine,Robert Doherty, Dr Robert Irwin, Thalia Rubio, Susan Carlisle, Elizabeth Fox, andMelissa Ming-Hwei Lo.

Notes

1. Although Bacon admired Le Corbusier for his ingenious and artistic vision of the Modern city, hehighly criticized Le Corbusier for his ignorance of the particular citys context: [for the city ofChandigarh], Le Corbusier was blind to the design requirements of relating his buildings to the city,and, indeed, of relating his building to one another (Bacon, 1967, p. 219). From that experience ofModernism, it is reasonable to assume that Bacon felt the same way with Kahns design of CentralPhiladelphia. Later, Jane Jacobs, who may be counted as one of the severest and most famous criticsand grassroots opponents of Le Corbusian city planning, rejected Le Corbusiers architecture ownprinciple on urbanism, opting instead for lively streets, participatory planning and the integrationof old buildings into the new urban fabric.

2. Architecture Forum (June, 1952), pp. 118119. Also see quotation in Time magazine, 6 November1964: By the 1950s, the citys businessmen recognized that Philadelphia was a city in a state ofcollapse, to use Bacons phrase. Industries were beginning to move out, sales in the centre city were

declining, and stores were moving to the suburbs, or talking about it. Quoted in Time, Under theknife, or all for their own good, Time Electronics Archive. Available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876419-3,00.html (accessed 24 September 2006). In addition, witha city commission to destroy the Chinese Wall, a massive, stone structure that supported therailroad tracks and ran right through Philadelphias downtown blighting the entire area, there wereabundant opportunities for the city to grow. The decision to submerge railroad tracks, replacing animmense, elevated railroad connectors located north of Market and West of Broad, were Baconsvision of the new Philadelphia.

3. Kahn made no distinction between architecture and urban design; thus he often used the phrasearchitect planner in the 1950s to describe a role of an architect who worked in a city planningscale.

4. The author finds no way to explain Kahns conception of the motor car better than his own words:

the circumstantial demands of the car, of parking and so forth, will eat away all the spacesthat exist now and pretty soon you have no identifying traces for what I call loyaltiesthe

landmarks. Remember, when you think of your city, you think immediately of certain places,which identify the city, as you enter it. If theyre gone, your feeling for the city is lost togone . . . If because of the demands of the motorcar, we stiffen and garden the cityomittingwater, omitting the green worldthe city will be destroyed. Therefore the car, because of itsdestructive value, must start us rethinking the city in terms of the green world, in terms ofthe world of water, and of air, and of locomotion. (Louis Kahn (1962) The animal world,Canadian Art 19(1), pp. 29, 31, quoted in Frampton, 1995).

5. Kahn had already established his major architectural principle Monumentality in the contributionto Paul Zucker (1944). There are some similarities between Kahns principle Monumentality and

J. L. Sert et al. (1984). The main ideas of both are the same: to use a symbolical realm ofmonumentality to express mans highest cultural needs. See J. L. Sert et al. (1984).

6. Critics say that this was one of the main disputes, not only to Kahn but, to everyone who tries topropose a building that is taller than 491-feet high by the top of the William Penns statue on top



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of the City Hall. Bacon was very concerned with symbolic historicism of the city as he onceproposed the redevelopment plan that only reached to the base of the city hall, but not the semiotic

tower of Penns statue This may explain why Bacon was very upset at Kahns proposal for civic

centres where almost every building was taller, larger and seemed to capture more monumental

power, than the city hall.

7. Bacons work involving planning for the city had been in motion since his undergraduate senior

thesis at Cornell entitled Plans for a Philadelphia Center City, one of the important sources that

will lead to the understanding of Bacons formation of urban design ideology, which the authoranticipated to investigate in a more detail. This contains detailed and comprehensive theses on

Bacons ideological development. In addition, Bacon was a planning student of Eliel Saarinen at the

Cranbrook Academy of Art after he graduated from Cornell University. Bacon said: Eliel Saarinen

was my great master and teacher. He emphasized design as the relationship of form and space; so

the real design problem is the city. Saarinen taught us that harmony of form and mass doesnt stop

at property lines but continues (Time, 6 November 1964) (accessed 24 September 2006).8. As context and scale were always important design criteria, the two-sided linear arrangement of

his buildings, which work well for the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, might turn out to becompletely brutal for peoples perception of the new Philadelphia. In addition, the form of the

city might not be perceivable and recognizable in a perceptive way because of the overwhelming

images of the civic centres on the Market Street as well as the parking garage on Vine Street. The

other elements, which Lynch proposed as ideas to define the psychological image of the city, might

be dominated by the scale of monumental buildings, thus diminishing the sense of a good city(see Lynch, 1960).

9. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the fact that Kahn had attempted to compromise with the publicand Bacon, Kahns proposalalready the most expressive and the most useful, he claimedfor

Philadelphia would not, by any means, be significantly changed as he had already pinpointed

fundamental problems from the start, and had developed it through his sensibility conceived from

direct experience of the city and his romanticized historicism established as his mature principle

of his design. The reason that Kahns could not compromise more on the idea of civic centre is

described by Giedion:

Everybody is susceptible to symbols. . .

Nothaphazard worlds fairs,whichin their presentform have lost their old significance, but newly created civic centres should be the rise for

collective emotional events, where the people play as important a role as the spectacle itself,

andwhere a unity of thearchitectural background,the people and thesymbols conveyed by

the spectacles will arise. (Giedion, 1984, p. 60)

References

Anderson, S. (1967) Louis Kahn in 1960s, Boston Society of Architects Journal, 1, pp. 2130.

Architectural Forum (1952) Philadelphia replanned: Philadelphias hour of decision, Architecture Forum,

June, pp. 118119.

Architectural Forum (1958) Louis Kahn and the living city, Architectural Forum, 108(6), p. 118.Ayad, I. E. (1995) Louis I. Kahn and neighborhood design: the Mill Creek Redevelopment Plan,

19511954, PhD Thesis, Cornell University.

Frampton, K. (1980) Louis Kahn and the French connection, Oppositions, 22, pp. 2053.Frampton, K. (1995) Studies in Tectonic Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

Giedion, S. (1984) The need for a new monumentality, Harvard Architecture Review IV: Monumentalityand the City, p. 60.

Goldhagen, S. W. (2001) Louis Kahns Situated Modernism: Monumentality, Community, and the Evolution of

Architectural Form (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).

Kahn, L. I. (1953) Toward a plan for midtown Philadelphia, Perspecta, 2, pp. 1027.Kahn, L. I. (1955) Order and form, Perspecta, 3, pp. 4663.

Kahn, L. I. (1957) Architecture is a thoughtful making of space, Perspecta, 4, pp. 23.

Kahn, N. (2003) My Architect, DVD. Directed by Nathanial Kahn. A New Yorker Film Release in

Association with HBO, New York.Kieffer, J. (2001) Readings from the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn (Philadelphia: Xlibris).

Lynch, K. (1960) The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).McCarter, R. (2005) Louis I. Kahn (London and New York: Phaidon).



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Reed, P. (1989) Toward form: Louis I. Kahn urban designs for Philadelphia, 193962. PhD Thesis,University of Pennsylvania.

Sert, J. L., Leger, F. & Giedion, S. (1984) Nine points of monumentality, Harvard Architecture Review IV:Monumentality and the City, pp. 6263.

Smithson, A. & Smithson, P. (1967) Urban Structuring: Studies of Alison & Peter Smithson (London andNew York: Studio Vista, Reinhold).

Stephens, S. (2005) Planner Edmund Bacon, who shaped modern Philadelphia, dies, ArchitecturalRecord, 193(12), p. 36.

Stonorov, O. & Kahn, L. I. K. (1944) You and Your Neigbourhood: A Primer for Neighborhood Planning(New York: Revere Copper and Brass).

Time (1964) Under the knife, or all for their owngood. Time Electronics Archive. Available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876419-3,00.html (accessed 24 September 2006) Articleoriginally published 6 November 1964.

Tyng, A. (1984) Beginnings: Louis I. Kahns Philosophy of Architecture (New York: John Wiley & Son).Wurman, R. S. (1986) What will be has always been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn (New York: Rizzoli).Zucker, P. (Ed.)(1944) New Architecture and CityPlanning: A Symposium (Freeport,NY: Book for Libraries

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