Also this issue: Raising the Bar Seemingly small improvements will go a long way toward making Philly great. -Alan Greenberger

April 10-16, 2003

cityspace

Kahn Do

by Daniel Brook

A crowd of local film and architecture buffs packed the Prince Music Theater Fri., April 4, to watch My Architect: A Son’s Journey. The documentary, part of the Philadelphia Film Festival, is the work of Nathaniel Kahn, the illegitimate son of world-famous architect Louis Kahn, who died in 1974.

In My Architect, Nathaniel, who was 11 when his father died and is now a filmmaker, learns about Louis by interviewing those who knew him and visiting his buildings -- some as near as West Philadelphia and Trenton, N.J., others as far as India and Bangladesh.

By interviewing Philadelphia cabbies who drove his father to and from his office, Louis' other children -- from his wife and mistresses -- and architects like I.M. Pei and Philip Johnson, Nathaniel paints a picture of his father as an otherworldly man, reaching for transcendence in his work but unable to cope with the mundane challenges of life. In addition to his family troubles, Louis' unwillingness to bend to his clients' wishes and poor fiscal management left his firm half a million dollars in debt when he died.

The film's best moments are its humorous interviews with the likes of Ed Bacon and serious ones with Louis' secret lovers. Nathaniel Kahn is a gifted interviewer, but his post-interview commentary is unnecessary and often irksome. After a Bangladeshi architect named Doshi, who hosted Louis Kahn during his work on Bangladesh's parliament buildings, explains that Louis was what South Asians would call a "guru," a man who can still be heard even beyond the silence of death, Nathaniel adds, "Doshi was right."

Occasionally Nathaniel's commentary is helpful. His theory that the visible seams and joints in his father's building may be related to his father's physical scars (his face and hands were burned as a child) is intriguing and potentially on the mark. The film's cinematography, particularly of Louis' architecture, is beautiful.

After the film, Nathaniel was cheered and chatted with at a reception held in a former bank branch on the ground floor of the Packard Building at 15th and Chestnut, recently renamed The Grande. The building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, will be re-opened in June with retail space, offices and 153 luxury apartments. The project is the cornerstone of efforts by developer David Grasso to revitalize Chestnut Street just west of Broad.

An extra screening of My Architect has been added for April 16.