Wright Chat

Trenton Bath House by Louis Kahn - (4:37)


David

Finally I get it: the corners of the roofs rest on little reinforced concrete rooflets.

We are told that the oculi are unglazed "except for the basket [?] room." What did I miss ?

S

The room where the baskets of clothing were kept?

The “basket room”, a term that is new to me, is designed to hold the bathers’ checked items. The room has built-in cypress millwork including cubbies for the checked items and an attendant’s counter, that were renewed during the major restoration/reconstruction project in 2010.

This is a link to a virtual tour, made just before the restoration, at a comprehensive website on the Bath House:
https://kahntrentonbathhouse.org/bathhouse/tour/

Have to say I see nothing Wrightian about Kahn's work. IMHO he makes graceless buildings that are hard to love.

Stylistically, I would agree Kahn is not overtly Wrightian, but I believe Kahn's incorporation of order, geometry, and honest use of material to his work has a strong kinship with Wright's work.

Graciousness is in the eyes of the beholder I suppose...

Admittedly, the Trenton Bath House was a utilitarian structure, built on a relatively small budget, serving a simple function: the gateway and transition for the users from the street to the pool. Kahn saw the building and its use as a procession and treated it as such with his building. By its nature, a seasonal-use bath house can be elemental; it is not required to be saddled with all of the complexities of HVAC systems, lighting, and weather tightness. Because of these circumstances, Kahn (and Anne Tyng) were freed to see and design the building as a minimalist exercise in structure, shade and shadow, openness and closure, gradations of public and private, and the transition from one experiential environment to another. This truly was an architectural exercise study model built at full scale. Kahn then used the "lessons" learned from the means by which he achieved the very basic functions of this building to inform similar and more complex requirements in his later, larger work.

I would suggest that Kahn not be judged solely on this building. Other good work by Kahn includes:

the Weis house (sadly being demolished by neglect by a developer)
http://architecture-history.org/archite ... 20USA.html
...the square windows have vertically sliding wood panels to modulate light.

Kahn's houses
https://usmodernist.org/lkahn.htm

The Kimbell Art museum:
https://archeyes.com/kimbell-art-museum-louis-kahn/

The Exeter Library
http://architecture-history.org/archite ... 20USA.html