ME ARCHITECT?

I saw MY ARCHITECT yesterday, and a neat part of the film
was when Nathaniel was speaking with a couple of taxi-cab
drivers (who supposedly drove Kahn around Philadelphia over
30 years ago)--in the immediate background of this scene is
the Ritz Theater (within which I was actually watching MY
ARCHITECT). Seeing the scene, I said to Tony, "Look, it's
3D," but watching a movie in a movie theater that you see
the movie theater in is probably much more like 4D. Hence,
I'll tell you what it's like being in MY ARCHITECT, albeit
from the fourth dimension.

Countless times between January 1982 and May 1985 I walked
by and into 1501 Walnut Street (where Kahn's office used to
be, where you see him walking outside of several times in
the film). I worked at 1611 Walnut Street (for Cooper and
Pratt Architects, later Cooper Pratt Vallhonrat). I used to
buy my "Dunhill Green" cigarettes in the tiny tobacco store
on the ground floor of 1501 Walnut Street. Cooper is the
older brother of NY's Alex Cooper, Pratt is from
Pratt-Lambert Paint money, and Vallhonrat was the project
architect of Salk Institute--three bosses and a staff of
four in the drafting room; we all knew each other fairly
closely. Nathaniel speaks with the project manager of Salk
Institute in the film. If you ever visit the new US
Constitution Center in Philadelphia, look at the Federal
Reserve Bank building across 6th Street, a design by
Vallhonrat that tries hard to emulate Kahn's Mellon Art
Gallery at Yale.

In 1979-80 there was a lecture series at the Art Institute
on "The Philadelphia School." One night the lecturer was
Anne Tyng, and I was one of the five or so people that
attended. At the end, someone said to Anne that the
attendance was so low because it was Yom Kippur as well.
Cold comfort, I'm sure, for the "other woman." Hey Ron, Tony
couldn't remember if you were also with him and Franco at
Tyng's house picking up her article for STANZA in 1975.

STANZA was the student journal of Temple University's
Architecture Program. Temple's Architecture Program began in
1973, the year Kahn died, and was the 'brain-child' of John
Knowles, a quondam Kahn student. When Tony, Ron, and I
started at Temple in 1975, Brigitte Knowles, John's wife,
taught first year--you see Brigitte in the film a couple of
times as the only female in one of Kahn's classes at Penn.
(I worked for BJCKnowles Architects 1979-80.) Esther Kahn
gave the first guest lecture I attended at Temple.

By the mid-1980s, I was working at/for the University of
Pennsylvania Graduate School of Art--you see Kahn kind-of
prancing around the Fine Arts campus in the film. The Kahn
Collection was recently installed within the GSFA's
Architectural Archives, and, since I was the resident 3D CAD
expert at the time, I asked for access to the drawings of
Kahn's design of the Dominican Sister's (who you also see in
the film) Convent so I could then construct a 3D computer
model of the unexecuted design. Julia Converse didn't allow
me free access to any of the drawings done in Kahn's own
hand, but I certainly spent several hours over several days
going through all the office drawings relative to the
project--this all predates Kent Larson's computer model
construction of Hurva Synagogue; in fact, the computer model
of Hurva Synagogue in Quondam's collection even predates
Larson's.

You know, Nathaniel's whole premise of the film is his
search for a father that he never really knew, while the
reality is that Nathaniel knew Kahn in a very real way that
no one else did. Searching for Kahn, for me, really was
trying to find an unknown. Unlike Nathaniel, I would never
bother speaking with Johnson or Pei or Gehry or Stern to
find Kahn, rather I went to Piranesi because Kahn, during
his mature years, had the Ichnographia Campi Martii hanging
on the wall above his office desk. Yes, were it not for
that, I would never have found/discovered (in 1999, in the
same building where Kahn taught at Penn) the heretofore
unknown first version of Piranesi's great Campo Marzio plan.

I enjoyed MY ARCHITECT, especially seeing Kahn resembled in
all three of his offspring--the daughter of Esther first
published Kahn's writings, then the daughter of Anne
published Kahn and Anne's love letters, and then the son of
Harriet filmed MY ARCHITECT. My only regret is that I didn't
have the opportunity to coach Nathaniel before he talked
with Edmond Bacon. After having several (business related)
conversations with Bacon myself in the late 1980s/early
1990s, I finally learned how to best put Bacon in his place
(although he still owes me $200).