Louis Kahn's Indian Institute of Management: Initial Notes

I am taking an architecture theory seminar course taught by Liam O'Brien entitled "Contemporary Formalisms". Every couple weeks are so, we are asked to analyze a piece of art, music, and architecture. For our final analysis, I picked Louis Kahn's Indian Institute of management. I had analyzed the building earlier in the semester as a case study precedent for the housing facility for foster care graduates that we were designing in studio. In that quick analysis, I found potential for further investigation, even in simply looking at the plan that has been reproduced with reverence by the likes of Francis Ching in his catalog of all architecture truth. As I have started to investigate the building further, I find more points of departure for both diagrammatic and textual analysis:

1. How does the plan translate into the actual experience of being in the building?
2. How does it translate in section and elevation?
3. How is material employed to further the idea?
4. How generative was Kahn's approach? Is it more akin to the wholeness of classicism or the contemporary formalisms we engaged in class?

I need not have looked further than the Wikipedia article on the Indian Institute of Management to find out that an annex has been built. I quickly found a book on the subject of the annex through Google Books, which thankfully is available in our library for check-out. Here is the plan of both the annex and the original building found in the Google Books preview:


Among the several claims that the books makes about Kahn's buildings that stood out to me was the notion that Kahn's building was not intended to be generative of itself, that is, that Kahn designed the building as a complete whole. (We shall see about that.) It also makes mention of sectional variation that was not apparent to me in looking at the plan in a cursory manner, as a contrast to the deliberate flatness of the annex. The material treatment is another point discussed in the book that adds another layer to my analytical undertaking, as a connection is made between the decision of the new architect to employ smooth concrete and Kahn's use of brick as a homogenizing material. The book points out the fact that Kahn employed smooth concrete in his seminal building, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

I was hoping to continue working here at Progress Coffee in East Austin across I-35 from Downtown until it is time for me to go to compline choir practice at 7 PM. I will now attempt to finish all my section drawings for studio before I head back to campus to pick up the book at the Architecture Library. The soy white chocolate mocha I have just consumed in tandem with a green-apple-and-brie sandwich was surprisingly nourishing, giving me the impetus to crank out a lot of work this afternoon.