"Louis I. Kahn, whose strong forms of brick and concrete influenced a generation of architects and made him, in the opinion of most architectural scholars," "America's foremost living architect, died Sunday evening apparently of a heart attack in Pennsylvania Station." "He was 73 years old." "Besides his wife, Mr. Kahn leaves a daughter, Sue Ann." "When I first read that obituary," "I have to admit I was looking for my own name." "I was his child too, his only son." "I didn't know my father very well." "He never married my mother, and he never lived with us." "But I can still remember every detail of the few times we spent a whole day together." "On this afternoon, we had a picnic." "He painted with watercolors, and my mother snapped these pictures." "He died when I was 11." "The circumstances of his death have always fascinated me." "He was bankrupt and alone on his way back home from India." "He collapsed in the downstairs men's room in Penn Station, New York." "The police couldn't identify him, because, for some unknown reason, he crossed out the address on his passport." "They took him to the city morgue, where he lay unclaimed for three days." "What was he thinking at the end?" "Had he seen anyone?" "Had he talked to anyone?" "Had he really decided to leave his wife and come and live with us like my mother said?" "For years, I struggled to be satisfied with the little piece of my father's life" "I'd been allowed to see." "But it wasn't enough." "I needed to know him." "I needed to find out who he really was, so I set out on a journey to see his buildings and to find whatever was left of him out there." "It would take me to the other side of the world looking for the man who left me with so many questions." "My father had been dead 25 years, so there wasn't much time left if I wanted to meet any of his colleagues." "I figured I'd start at the top:" "the guy with the glasses." " Mr. Johnson." " Good to meet you." " Oh, it's a pleasure to meet you." " You're Lou's son?" "Yes." "Generations go by quickly, don't they?" "I've just decided Lou was the most beloved architect of our time." " Really?" " Yeah..." "Well, think of anybody else." "Frank Lloyd Wright was too cantankerous to love." "Mies van der Rohe wasn't..." "you couldn't talk to him at all." "Corbusier was mean." "But Lou, now, there was a man." "All my buildings don't add up to what his three or four buildings, because he, when he did get a client... however he ever got any clients is a mystery, because artists don't get jobs." "Every time I've tried to do art," "I've ended up with a..." "I've made much less." "Nothing to be ashamed of, naturally." "I do it the other way." "I do it by numbers and..." "and public fame and all that." "But Lou did it by being an artist." "He'd sit and work on art, see?" "And I always wished..." "I think he did too... wished he knew me better, and I always wished I knew him better." " Why?" " Well, you know, there's some things that don't go into words." "It's animal attraction... his mind, really, because his person... to look at him wasn't much a pleasure." " It wasn't?" " It couldn't be." "See, he was so scarred." "Funny, he never talked to me as directly as he should have." " Who?" " Lou." "He never came here, though." " Didn't he ever come here?" " To the glass house?" "That's strange, 'cause I built it in '49." "Possible." "Possible." "Do you think Lou would have liked this house?" " No." " Why?" "Oh, rigid boxes, you know." "He..." "He was his own artist." "He was free compared to me." "The first time I'd gotten a real sense of Lou's legacy was when I was a student up the road at Yale University." "My father was only 5'6"" "but he cast a long shadow in New Haven." "He built his first and last major buildings here:" "the Yale Art Gallery in 1953;" "and right across the street, the British Art Center, finished after his death." "I used to wander around in those buildings on weekends." "They were silent and mysterious, and I half expected Lou to just appear from around the next corner." "There were rows of books about his work in the library." "He hadn't built very many buildings, but apparently they had changed the course of architecture:" "the Salk Institute, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Exeter Library, the Capital of Bangladesh." "My art history professor, Vincent Scully, had been a friend of Lou's, but he always talked about him like some long-dead ancient hero." "It was unsettling." "From the very beginning he was after symmetry, order, geometric clarity, primitive power, enormous weight... as much as he could get, like this great monster that stands in the middle of this space." "You know as I said too, I think, before:" "enduring monuments." "He wants his materials to kind of last, which is a permanent work in the world." "That's what he's after." "You know, it was such a wonderful thing to be close to somebody who really was changing everything." "You said at one point that he wanted to make everything right." " He wanted to make it perfect." " Perfect." "You know, in Jewish mysticism, which I know almost nothing about, but..." "God can only be known through His works, right?" "And since the messiah hasn't come yet, hmm, the works of any Jewish architect might be the works of God." "And you take those pictures of Louie when he's looking into the light and when he's enjoying silence like this, it's... it makes the hair stand up, because it really is like that, as if" "he's in some way communicating with this fundamental thing, that" "God is in the work." "So it has to be perfect, you see." "It has to be perfect." "It can't be impatient." "It's timeless." "I wanted to ask you." "Do you think..." "did anybody know that Lou had three families all at once?" "No, I didn't." "As a matter of fact, for years I didn't know Lou was married." " Really?" " Yeah." "That was part of his mystery." "My mother and I lived on the outskirts of Philadelphia at the end of a secluded road." "Lou would visit every once in a while, mostly at night." "We never knew quite when it would be." "He'd call at the last minute and say he was on his way." "My mother would frantically whip up a five-course meal and have a Martini in a frozen glass waiting for him." "I got to stay up late, and Lou would tell me wonderful stories about India and elephants and tigers." "In the middle of the night, we'd all bundle into the car and drive him back downtown." "I'd lie in the backseat." "We were all silent." "When I asked my mother why we couldn't all live together, she explained that his wife wouldn't give him a divorce." "Why didn't he just run away?" "We'd stop at the end of Clinton Street and let him out." "He'd walk down the block and disappear into the dark house, his wife's house." "Her name was Esther." "They had a daughter named Sue, who was 20 years older than me." "When I was in first grade," "I found out I had another half sister, Alex." "Her mother was a lady named Anne." "Then there was my mother and me." "Lou was 61 when I was born." "All three families lived within several miles of each other, but we never crossed paths until Lou's funeral." " Do you remember this guy?" " Hell of a man." " Sure, I remember him." " Did he ever ride in your cab?" "20, 40 times." "Who knows?" "He was a cab rider, strictly cab rider." " Yeah, he didn't drive?" " Never." "He used to sit in front." " He sat in front?" " Oh, yeah." " Really?" " Yeah." "That was your dad, world-famous architect." "Yeah, that was your father." " Do you remember him at all?" " A little bit, vaguely." " Did he ever ride in your cab?" " Vaguely." "He loved the women." "Not the young ones, but he loved the women." "Do you remember what he looked like or..." "His face was pointed." "Yeah, and his hair was..." "his hair was, you know, very thin, like a blond." " Like a what?" " Like it was blond." "Yeah." "Oh, blond, uh-huh." "Do you remember that he had scars on his face?" "Oh, sure." "It would look like he was burned." "Yeah." "This is where your father had his office, right there, where it says tickets, upstairs." "That's 1501." "That's where he was, right here." "The office at 1501 Walnut Street was the last place I saw my father." "My mother would bring me here sometimes after hours and on weekends." "Lou would lean out the top floor window and toss down a key wrapped in yellow tracing paper, to let us in." "When I went to high school, I had a teacher in the arts who was head of the department, Central High:" "William Gray." "And he gave a course in architecture, the only course... in any high school, I'm sure... in Greek, Roman, Renaissance, Egyptian, and Gothic architecture." "And at that point, two of my colleagues and myself realized that only architecture would be my life." "How accidental our existences are, really, and how full of influence by circumstance." "Here at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the world's great architects," "Professor Louis Kahn, teaches and creates." "This is his Richards Medical Research Building, called by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City probably the single most consequential building constructed in the United States since World War II." "It is principled, vigorous, fundamental, and exhilarating." "This building is Kahn's greatest achievement." "People come by all the time with their cameras taking pictures of this awesome architectural wonder, and we just sit upstairs in the window and laugh at them, because it's not a good place to work." "I don't feel comfortable in my room, in my lab." "The temperature is not constant." " The temperature is not constant?" " Yeah." "I don't like that birds fly into the windows and get killed." "It's not a pretty building." "You know what I mean?" "It doesn't have a good-looking architectural to it." "You know what I mean?" "It needs face, something different..." "Maybe paint the pillars a different color than the building or something." "You know," "I mean, something to give it a little pizzazz instead of, like I said, look like a bomb shelter." "This was Lou's only major building in Philadelphia, and I wanted to like it." "But I had to agree it was kind of disappointing." "Around this time, an article appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer about my search." "It quoted me as saying that I wanted to hug my father's buildings, which was very embarrassing, but it stirred things up." "I got several letters, including one from a relative of Lou's who was a rabbi." "He said that he'd officiated at Lou Kahn's funeral and Lou Kahn didn't have a son." "Hello?" " Is this Rabbi Kramer?" " Yes." "Yeah, hi." "This is Nathaniel Kahn calling." "God in heavens, the whole world opened up, my friend." "What are you talking about?" "I mean, gosh, I've been raising hell with the Inquirer." "I said, "Find that man."" "You're raising hell with the Inquirer?" " Why are you doing that?" " To find you, sir." "Oh, well, I'm glad you did find me." "Look, don't forget Lou Kahn's my first cousin." "Lou Kahn is your first cousin?" "And my parents was his godparents." "Wow, I didn't know that." "Well, I knew Lou very well." "With all due respect, I hear Lou fooled around." "Well, you know..." "Anyway, I'm here, so that's a good thing." "What would you do with the film once you..." "Oh, it'll be on... it'll be on TV, you know." " Wow." " Yeah, so..." "I'd like to come and interview you." " I'm photogenic." " Oh, you're photogenic, okay." "Let's see if anybody's home." "Just calling for you." "Oh, that was kind of you." "No camera, please." " No camera?" " No camera." "No, I understand." "I know you were skeptical, so I wanted to show you my birth certificate, which, um, you know..." "My bris certificate?" "I don't have that." "What do they do?" "That's okay, I understand." "Not that I'm proud of being... but I'm trying... '74, right, and you..." "the two of you were there at his funeral, right?" "But people in the family really didn't know that he was an internationally known architect, did they?" "Does that mean no money to show for it, you mean, or what?" "Why did they think that he traveled the world and he didn't amount to anything?" "I grew up not knowing anything about Lou's family and the Jewish half of my background." "I'd hoped so much that Kramer would fill in that part of the story for me, but I was disappointed." "In this society, how you made it is now like the dust has cleared." "Something else was happening, though." "Details about my father were coming back to me:" "his voice, the rough feel of his scars." "That was one of my favorite stories." "I made him tell it to me over and over." "He was three years old back in Estonia." "There were coals glowing in a stove." "He was captivated by the light." "He took the coals out and put them in his apron." "It caught fire, and the flames seared his face and the backs of his hands." "His father thought it would be better if he died, but his mother said he would grow up to be a great man because of it." "I first met your father... some AIA affairs." "And I sat right next to Lou." "And I praised him, on the Richards Laboratory." "I thought that was really a marvelous group of buildings." "And it was then that he told me, "You know," ""go to Scotland."" " Really?" " Know that?" "No." "The Scottish castle gave him the inspiration." " For Richards?" " Yes." "And I said, "That group of buildings are really one of your best."" "And he said, "Well, the best is yet to come."" "That was Salk." "So then he told me about his relationship with Salk." "He said, "I have the best client."" "And he said, "Well, I view somehow that this will be an important piece of work."" "And as it turned out to be." "I consider it to be a masterpiece of his." "The two of you have varying degrees of success with clients." "You seem to have succeeded very well." "I am..." "I am, but I'm a little bit more able to... a little more patient, perhaps, because of my being Chinese." "If my client..." "let's say a person did not agree with me," "I'll let it pass, and I'll come back another day." "I don't think Lou would do that." "Lou would probably..." "push it right through." "And then when he found a client that is sympathetic, it's a client for life, huh?" "And I don't think I could claim that." "On the other hand, I probably... lost fewer clients than he did." "Oh, way fewer." "I think you've built way more." "You've had way more success rate" " in terms of your buildings..." " Building doesn't mean success." " No?" " Building... three or four masterpieces are more important than 50, 60 buildings." "Quality, not quantity." "Architecture has to have the element of time." "How can you judge a work today, let's say a work by anyone of these modern architects that you know about that's exciting and wonderful." "And then what'll happen to it 20, 50 years later?" "That's the measure." "That's why that Salk Center will always be as perfect as it was conceived." "The teakwood may fade away." "It probably did... or has." "But the spirituality of that project will remain." "Now, that building will stand the test of time." "No question about it." "There is something spiritual about this space." "For the first time since he died," "I felt I was getting closer to my father." "The scientists told me the building is not only beautiful, but it works." "Unlike the Richards medical towers, where the labs are small, these labs are totally open, spanning the full length of the building, and each scientist has a study with an unobstructed view of the Pacific Ocean." "Lou was 65 when Salk was finished." "He said it was the first building he was really happy with." "I looked up one of the men who worked with him on the project, a guy named Jack MacAllister." "Jack moved out here during construction and never left." "I was in charge of this project when I was 25." "You had an incredible responsibility." "Unbelievable." "That was one of the things that he had:" "enormous trust in young people." "Lou put me in charge and gave me his checkbook." "And he said, you know, "You distribute the fees."" "And I grew a beard because I wanted to look older." "I'm serious." "How old were you when Lou died?" " I was 11." " That's what I thought." " I was 11, yeah." " Did you know him well?" " I have a sense for him." " Right." "And I saw him, you know, once a week, maybe." " That's all, though?" " That's about all, yeah." " Did you ever travel with him, or..." " No, no." "That's why I wanted to talk to you, because you spent a lot of time with him." " Oh, yeah, me and my family did." " Your family did too?" "He used to spend Christmas with us, yeah." " He spent Christmas with you?" " He loved Christmas, yeah." "He absolutely loved it." "I can remember him lying on our bed watching cartoons with the kids... and then falling asleep, you know?" "They'd just say," ""Lou's sound asleep, Daddy."" "That's when we'll leave... "You know, leave him be." "He's tired."" "Lou was very willful, you see?" "He didn't want anything in his buildings to look like he hadn't anticipated them." "So when something was going to happen, instead of trying to suppress it, he made more of it." "And that's a way of thinking about things, you know," " not just architecture, about anything." " Sure." "Any adversity, any difficulty." "Instead of trying to cover it up, you pull it out and express it, and then you own it." "And, I mean, you might say... it's probably a loose fit, but it had to do with his own physical imperfection" " that..." " His face, you mean?" "Yeah, that the scars on a building that are produced by the way it's made should be revealed." "I think he really believed that." "It all had to do with revealing the process of what it was about." "And he probably learned to think about himself that way." "I've never said the before, and it may be bullshit, but it's an interesting thing to think of." "You know, you can't be stupid all your life." "You got to be smart too." "We used to use the expression, you know, in the college... when I went to college." "When we couldn't solve a damn problem, you know, because it was so difficult and... or you didn't study for the examination you took that morning, you know, we always said, "I wish we were smart" "instead of good-looking."" "That was the expression we used." "He was an incredible man who we all supported and forgave for a lot of things because of what he was doing." "What kinds of things did you have to forgive him for?" "Oh, I once... on very short notice he came to me and asked me to build a model of a project while he was out of town." "And I went in, and I spent two or three days working on it." "I finally finished it." "I went to bed at about midnight, and he came in from wherever he was." "He may have been in India, I don't know." "And he came to the office about 3:00 in the morning, called me at home." ""Jack, this is Lou." "That model you built is a piece of shit." Bang." "What do you say?" "Maybe it was." "He could have been right, you know?" "But..." "You know, he was capable of that kind of thing too." " At 3:00 a.m.?" " Yeah, at 3:00 a.m." "He didn't know what time it was." " Did you ever drink with Lou?" " Oh, yeah." "Oh, you should ask my first wife." "Hello, Mr. Katz?" "This is Nathaniel Kahn returning your call." "Yes, I would like very much to hear what you saw that night in Penn Station, New York." "What an incredible coincidence." "Please give me a call back and let me know where I can meet you, or I'll try you again later." "Thanks." "Bye-bye." "Are you David?" "No, I'm not David, no, sorry." "I'm supposed to meet somebody right here." "... Me too a guy named Richard Katz." "What are you doing?" "Actually, this guy Richard Katz was... my dad died 26 years ago, and he was with my father in Penn Station, New York." " Is that right?" " Yeah, and" "I don't know the story of what happened." "So Richard Katz is coming to tell me." " Is that great?" " I don't know if it's great." " It's something, anyway." " That's... yeah." " Yeah, I hope he shows up." " I hope he does." "I hope my guy does." "Is that... is that the guy you're supposed to meet?" " No, maybe that's yours." " No, I don't think so." "Are you Richard?" " How you doing?" " Hey, Richard." "I'm Nathaniel." " Yeah, I figured it'd be you." " Nice to meet you." "Right." "Right." "There was a policeman here and a policeman here," " and the dead man was here." " And where were you?" "I'm pretty sure that I was over here." "So when you came in, were the policemen already there?" "No, no." "I see this face of this guy, and he didn't look very well." "Did you know he was dying?" "Was it clear to you that..." "I've never seen anybody die." "So I don't think I would know that." "I've seen one or two dead men, and they don't look like that." "They look very peaceful." " He didn't look peaceful?" " No." "You remember that, that he didn't look peaceful?" "What was... what was the..." "I mean..." "He just didn't." " Scared?" " What did he die of?" " Heart attack." " He did?" "That's a real sad story that you didn't know your dad at all." "I have a kid who's 18 years old, and I didn't get to see him from the time he was 8." "So it's kind of a different story, isn't it?" "Or is that the same story?" "It's a different story, because... well, if I had died," "I guess it would have been the same story, huh?" "Why hadn't you seen him for ten years?" "Oh, it was a custody case." " Did you want to keep him?" " Sure." "My kid." "My son." "I mean, I don't just feel sympathy for you." "I feel sympathy for Lou." " Why?" " 'Cause you were his son." "A man has feelings for his son." "I know there must have been some kind of social convention that somehow kept you apart." "And I don't want to make excuses for that social convention." "Whatever it was, out with it..." "I mean down with it." "That's bad." "Whatever it was, it was bad." "It's just sad." "How accidental our existences are, really, and how full of influence by circumstance." "I wonder if I'll ever find out exactly what happened that night in Penn Station." "For years, I thought maybe my father hadn't really died, that he was out there somewhere living a parallel life." "I suppose that was because he left no physical evidence that he'd ever been in our house, not even a bow tie hanging in the closet." "I remember my father's hands." "Sometimes that's all I could see when he would sit on my bed and tell me stories about his childhood late at night." "He said he was born on an island with a castle on it off the coast of Estonia in 1901 or 1902." "He wasn't sure which." "He came on a steamboat to Philadelphia with his family in 1906." "They were very poor, but Lou was good at art and music." "His drawings won prizes, and he made money playing piano in the silent movie houses." "He told me Philadelphia was a city where a small boy could find what he wanted to do for the rest of his life." "I went back to the neighborhood in north Philadelphia to find the places he always talked about." "The whole family lived on the top floor of a tenement." "And when a wealthy lady gave Lou a piano, there was no room left for his bed." "So he slept on the piano." "They couldn't afford pencils for him to draw with, but that was okay, because you could make charcoal by burning sticks in the backyard." "The kids teased him and called him 'Scarface', so he waited until the last bell to go to school." "There was a girl he loved named Ada, but she loved someone else." "The next part of the story he didn't talk about much, so I have to rely on the architecture books." "He won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with a degree in architecture in 1924." "In 1930, he married Esther Israeli, and their daughter, Sue Ann, was born ten years later." "Esther worked in a medical lab and supported the family throughout the '30s and '40s as Lou struggled to get commissions and to find a style he could call his own." "It was the era of the new modern architecture:" "sleek steel skyscrapers and houses defined by walls of glass." "Lou tried to design that way, but it never felt right." "In 1947, with Esther's help, he started his own office with several men and one woman." "He was almost 50 years old and still hadn't found himself." "I wanted to show you some sketches I made when I was... when I was in Rome." "Then in 1951, he was invited to be architect in residence at the American Academy in Rome and to travel throughout the ancient world." "What he saw changed his life." "These are the sketches I made a long time ago in Egypt, you see." "Timelessness, monumentality." "That's what mattered." "When Lou got back, he finally knew what he wanted to do:" "build modern buildings that had the feel and presence of ancient ruins." "He'd also become deeply involved with the woman working in the office, a young architect named Anne Tyng." "She's the mother of my half sister, Alex." "Lou was not a domestic person." "Let's face it." "He never was." "And..." "He lived, really, in the office, you know?" "He had his bench where he would take catnaps, and he even sent his laundry out from the office." "I mean, he was really... and, of course, I know that he crossed his home address off on his... on his passport." "That's why they had a hard time locating his... in letting people know that they found him dead in 30th Street Station." " Penn Station, New York." " Penn Station." "My mother always said that Lou had crossed off the address because he planned to leave Esther and come marry her." "I don't think he was capable of doing that." "I mean, I'm sorry but" "I really can't see him doing something like that." "I realized he was not about to do that." "He always said that work was the most important thing, that you cannot depend on human relations, that, really, work is the only thing you can count on." "Did you fall in love with him right away?" "Lou?" " Sure, yeah." " Why?" "Well, he had tremendous charm." "I mean, he was charismatic, and he was very accessible and very endearing to people." "And when you got pregnant, were you surprised?" "Oh, yeah, it was a physical shock." "But that didn't seem to change his idea of what he was going to do." "And he just would say," ""Well, you have to be philosophical about it."" "So, I mean, I could spend the rest of my life being philosophical, but there was not much point in that." "You know," "I had to do something." "And if he's not going to do something about marrying me, it's time I moved on." "But in spite of myself I..." "I mean, when I left him, I didn't..." "I didn't really want to." "So..." "Next to arrive on track five is the scheduled Buffalo to Trenton." "Looking at Anne on that platform," "I kept thinking of my own mother." "Neither one of them ever got married." "They both live alone." "They were both single mothers when being a single mother was a major scandal, and they both believed in my father completely." "Anne left Philadelphia in 1953 and went to Rome for a year to have Alex in secret." "Lou wrote many letters to her while she was away." ""Dearest Annie," ""last night, I dreamt about you." ""I was in our office telephoning." ""You walked in and mentioned to me" ""that you could wait no longer." ""Your eyes somehow were black and flashing," ""looking at me reprehensively." ""Annie, Annie, I think of you always." ""I miss so much our meetings together." ""I hope nothing changes about our way of life."" "Well, of course, it would change." "When Anne returned, she collaborated with Lou on a small community center and bathhouse in Trenton, New Jersey." "It was Lou's first chance to fully apply his ideas about ancient architecture." "Anne is 80 now and hasn't been back to Trenton in 40 years." "Well, how do you go in?" " I think we go right in there, I think." " Is this a door?" " Looks like it's boarded up." " Was it not like that?" "No, this was never closed like this." "Oh, there's a lock here." " Hello?" " Hello?" "Is it open?" "Oh, hooray." "Thank you." " Hi, I'm sorry about the holdup." " Thank you." " Let me get out of your way." " Thank you very much." "Do you... do you know Anne Tyng?" " No." "Hi, Rob Frey." " Hi, nice to meet you." " An honor to meet you." " Anne was the... the architect with Lou on the project." " Unbelievable." " Wonderful." "Wonderful." "Okay." "If it's okay if we just want to look around?" "Oh, absolutely." "Gosh." " It's painted now, huh?" " Terrible." "I mean, it's just such a shame." ""Dearest Annie," ""I must build one of the great buildings of the time." ""You must help me build this particular building." ""I doubt if I can do it without you." ""Just think how low architecture has gotten down." ""We, Anne, you and I, are going to show them the way." ""All my love, Lou."" "Do you think this building was very important for Lou?" "Well, he says so himself, you know, that the world discovered him when he built the Richards building, but he had discovered himself when he built that little concrete-block bathhouse in Trenton." "So that... that says it, I think, right there how significant he felt it was." "Do you think about him a lot now?" "Well, he's kind of there, you know?" "Don't need to think about him." " Part of you?" " Well, he's there." "He's there in you, he's in Alex, you know..." "He's in his buildings." "And..." "And I think the ideas that you work on together connect you always somehow, you know?" "Lou split up with Anne when Alex was about three and then got involved with my mother a few years later in 1959." "In spite of everything," "Anne has always felt that we're all connected and that we are, in some strange way, a family." "I wonder if Lou thought of it that way." "Or was each relationship an entirely new beginning?" "The question is often asked, "Why isn't Lou Kahn" ""working directly in the work which the government is doing in the actual rebuilding of Philadelphia at this moment?"" "I see it still as being the most useful plan, yes, and the most expressive." "It's the most expressive and the most useful." "Uh, yes." "Expressive." "I repeatedly made the effort to involve Lou directly in our work in Philadelphia, but it's turned out that the special quality of his genius could not be brought together with the reality of the problem." "I'd always heard that Ed Bacon was Lou's nemesis in Philadelphia." "Bacon was in charge of rebuilding the entire downtown area in the '50s and '60s, and he hired Lou to come up with plans for how the job should be done." "But something had gone very wrong." "We started work, and I wanted to communicate to the stupid public in the most acerbic fashion I possibly could the essence of the idea." "And Lou would say," ""Wouldn't it be nice to put a curving stairway here?" "Or how about kind of a little tower here?"" "And suddenly, I realized that the purity of my communication was being encrusted by Lou's fantasies." "So Lou didn't get it?" "Lou didn't understand what you wanted?" "He didn't understand it." "He did not understand it." "And so he was angry as could be angry." "And he got nice ladies to give tease, where they would complain about me not using Lou Kahn for this purpose." "By the way, there's not a single shred of any way in which" "Lou influenced downtown Philadelphia." "Nothing, I know." "Isn't that a tragedy?" "Well, I tell you one thing." "It's... thank... would have been an incredible tragedy if they had built one single thing that Lou proposed for downtown Philadelphia." "They were all brutal, totally insensitive, totally impractical." "The whole idea of doing circular garages up on Vine Street..." "Yeah, but the idea of leaving the cars outside the city and then letting people walk into the city..." " it was a great idea, don't you think?" " No!" "It absolutely wasn't." "It wouldn't have worked for a damn." "So ultimately, isn't it just two strong men... two strong egos that don't get together?" "God damn it, no." "It's an absolutely pure ignorance on Lou's part, and it's the same damn ignorance as the American Institute of Architects is based on now, that you have no responsibility to preparing the way for a system on the larger order," "and you only do the little things that come along." "So you simply have not understood a word I've said." "Watch where you're going!" "Some of Lou's ideas were utopian and impractical, but this was the '60s." "And like a lot of people then, he was questioning the way we live." "Do we really want the skyline of every American city to look more or less the same?" "Why can't people leave their cars outside the city and walk instead?" "To express is to drive." "And when you want to give something presence, you have to consult nature." "And there is where design comes in." "If you think of brick, for instance, you say to brick, "What do you want, brick?"" "And brick says to you, "I'd like an arch."" "And if you say to brick, "Look, arches are expensive," ""and I can use a concrete lintel over you." ""What do you think of that, brick?"" "Brick says, "I'd like an arch."" "And it's important, you see, that you honor the material which you use." "You don't bandy it around as though you said," ""Well, we have a lot of material around." "We can do it one way;" "we can do it another."" "It's not true." "You can only do it if you honor the brick and glorify the brick instead of just shortchanging it." "I remember hearing him talk at Penn." "And I came home, and I said to my father and mother," ""I just met this man." ""He doesn't have much work, and he's" ""sort of ugly... funny voice," ""and he's a teacher at school." ""I know you've never heard of him," ""but just mark this day" ""that someday you will hear of him," ""because he's really an amazing man."" "Tell me the story of Philadelphia." "What was it that stopped Lou from building more there, from being more successful there?" "Because he spoke his truth." "And he was not controllable, and he wouldn't have been controllable by the powers that be that really wanted control" "of the image of Philadelphia." "They wanted to have Philadelphia bask in their image or be connected to it or get credit for it in some way." "But really fundamentally why?" "It's all the obvious stuff." "Blood was important in Philadelphia." "And I think Lou's blood had a yellow armband." " Jewish?" " Yes." "I really think so." "I think that was important, even though they might not even have known it was, maybe consciously, I felt it." "I felt it." "I felt it." "Frustration and failure are really the things that make you." "Maybe he was made by being short and ugly and Jewish and having a bad voice and not wanting to be good with people, or whatever." "Maybe he was made by that, because it made him go internal." "So you can't just say," ""Oh, isn't it a shame he didn't build more buildings?"" ""Isn't it a shame he wasn't this or that person?"" "We're made by those things." "I think he had trouble, because he was a mystic, and he wouldn't be able to talk the lingo of the business world." "You know, architecture is so passionless in the modern movement." "There was no sense of..." "I mean, it was all mechanical." "And that's why the postmodern thing happened, because people couldn't handle it." "It was just so cold and formless." "And Lou was kind of the breath of fresh air in that, I mean, in America." "And my first works came out of my reverence for him." "Good night." "When Lou's ideas about architecture finally caught on, he had ten years left to live." "Maybe he knew time was running out." "He never said no to a lecture invitation or a possible job, no matter how tired he was or how far he had to go." "If they wanted him, he was there." "One night when Lou came to visit, he made a little book with me:" "The Book of Crazy Boats." "There was a boat made out of a spoon and one made out of a biscuit, and there was a sausage boat with toothpicks stuck in it to keep it upright in the water." "At the time, I had no idea that he was going to build a crazy boat." "It's a weird-looking thing." "Yeah, we saw that coming in yesterday." ""What the hell is that thing?"" "Yeah, it looks like sort of a, you know, Jules Verne thing." "Lou built this boat out of steel." "It's a music barge that motors up to small towns all over the world and opens up into a concert stage." "It was commissioned by a man named Robert Boudreau, who is both the ship's captain and the orchestra conductor." "I didn't tell him that I was Lou's son." " Hi." " Hi, Robert." "Hi." " Nice to see you." " Hi, there." "What are you up to?" "Put that damn thing down." " Yeah, how are you?" " Hi, nice to meet you." " Quite a boat you have here." " Thanks." "This is that symphony boat to that cruiser in front of us." "I think it might be a good idea if you just moved out until we went in to dock and then came back in." "So, Robert, this boat is very futuristic." "Oh, yeah, people say this thing's from Mars, you know?" "You know, I love this boat." "This is my boat, I created it, with Lou." " So you loved him?" " Oh, yeah." "That's a Louie Kahn doorway for sure, isn't it?" "You don't get 'em any better than that." "Isn't that amazing?" "Well, take a look." "Take a look over there." "They're having all this light come right through that." "Do you have to go now?" "Can you come back, or no?" " No, no, I'm going to go." " Okay, well, did you know why" "I came to see you today?" "Well, I'm making a film about Lou." " Well, I knew that." " You knew that." " I knew that." " But..." "I'm Lou's son." "God." "I saw you when you were six years old." "I saw you at the wake." "I saw you with your mother." "You remember that day?" "What a crazy world." "You are Lou." "Have a nice concert." " Where's Nathaniel?" " Why'd you get so upset?" "Gosh, you love a man..." "and I knew Lou had a son, and I was told never to tell that Lou had a son." "I don't know." "Lou was... didn't talk about his family much, except about his daughter." "He didn't talk about that." "Men don't talk about those things." "That was his, that was his very personal thing." "We all have those personal things." "Thanks." ""Dear Harriet, I keep thinking" ""how your sweet words have helped me" ""during these trying days of advice and criticism." ""What will happen is all I still don't know..." ""I mean, the hatred of your brothers," ""Abbot and Willie." ""My only hope is that the beauty of new love" ""will in some way make them understand." ""Now over me is a heaviness of quiet and incompleteness," ""and I'm still very discouraged by the feeling of ineptness." ""Lou."" "Well, we were soul mates," "I would say, and inspired each other so that it was an equal exchange in many ways." "And I was a critic." "I do think that I brought the sense of nature and another sight to Lou's work." "Where did you work in the office?" "I worked in a room, and sometimes it was locked." "Why?" "Well, because of his wife, who would come in, drop by sometimes." "Sounds fairly..." "fairly nerve-wracking." "It was nerve-wracking." "It was humiliating in some ways." "When the buildings were created and finished and... for example, the Kimbell Museum." "Everyone went out to the opening, but I was not invited." "I was not allowed to come." "Is it partly because you were a woman or that you were involved with him?" "Yes, I think all of those things, yeah." "Didn't you ever say to him," ""Well, why don't you respect me more?" ""Why don't you include me in these things" ""or make me a part of your"..." "Well, you see, I felt so... so happy and delighted to work on things." "I mean, to work on something like this was just... was just thrilling." "And when... when we were working on projects, we were just completely absorbed with the ideas." "And... and... and there was just great freedom and love of what we were doing." "And so that was the price that I paid." "It was worth it, you know?" "My parents met by chance at a party in Philadelphia." "My mother was 32, and Lou was almost 60." "Her family was appalled by the relationship." "And when she got pregnant, she decided to disappear for a while." "She went to stay with her friends," "Charles and Susannah Jones." "They offered to adopt me if she had to give me up." "I was amazed to see this little man that she was so taken with." "And I didn't quite get his number, I have to say." "I mean, he turned on the charm." "And I was sort of a Yankee, and it didn't rub off." "I mean, I didn't get it." "And then it revolved that she was pregnant and that her family really resented that and..." " didn't accept..." " No, they didn't." "They didn't accept that." "And time went by, and I said to Charles," ""You know, what's she going to do?" ""She hasn't made arrangements," ""and the family isn't coming through." ""They're making it difficult." ""I really think we should do something."" "And there was one sister, Edwina, who did stand by her and said, "You know what I can do?" ""I can provide a man to stand up with you" ""and get married and give a name to that child," ""and then you just can get divorced two weeks later."" "And Charles and I said, "No way." ""We don't want to have anything to do with that." ""That's such a travesty of marriage." ""Just go ahead with it and have this baby." ""It's going to be all right." ""Let him keep his name if you want," ""or have him take your name." "Don't worry about that."" "And I also have to say that you had to recognize it right at the beginning from Harriet's point of view" "And I also have to say that you had to recognize it right at the beginning from Harriet's point of view as a very true love, an immense love... and that it would be a lifelong love," "which I think it has been." "And you can't judge that, because that kind of love is on the side of life and is a good thing." "My uncles, Abbot and Willie, never bought that romantic love affair idea." "They hated my father and refused to ever even mention his name." "Maybe if he'd married my mother, it would have been different." "But even as her husband," "Lou would not exactly have been their idea of an Episcopalian gentleman." "My mothers' sisters, however, would talk with me about him." "Did the family feel that she needed to get away from... from everybody for a while?" "I don't think our family had anything to do with it." "I mean, I think it was your father who determined that Harriet should go." " Ask her sometime." " Really?" "But she... but you didn't think she should come to the vineyard with you to live?" "I couldn't at the time." "I wasn't in a position to have her." "And she didn't want to come to New York with me, 'cause I told her that she could come to New York with me." "And she chose not to, which was fine." "I don't..." "And Abbot came to me, and he said," ""I think she should have an abortion"." "I said abs..." "I said no." "I'm glad she did because you're here, Nathaniel." "I said, "It's... it's none of our business." "That's for Harriet to determine."" "I said, "I will not go along with that."" "And I didn't." "Oh, he was furious." " Uncle Abbot?" " Yeah." "There is a certain romanticism in your mother that..." "Drives me up a wall." "All of us, because there's a lack of realism." " She's so impractical." " So impractical." " But she does..." " Drive me wild." "But even at the time of settling, mother's estate mother's attorney was shocked to learn that Nathaniel was a bastard..." ""Dear Lou, I never wrote you a letter before, did I?" ""I've been thinking about all those summers" ""you promised to come to Maine and then didn't show up." ""At the time, I thought it was just because of your work." ""But obviously, there were other reasons." ""Did you ever really have any intention of coming," ""or did you just say you would to get my mother off the phone?" ""Because we waited for you..." ""and waited and waited and waited."" "Well, howdy there." "This is Classic Country, Dallas-Fort Worth, with a daily tidbit." "Construction is well underway on the Kimbell Art Museum in the heart of the cultural district." "It looks a little bit like a cement cattle barn to me, but they say the inside is going to be gorgeous, lit entirely by our Texas sun." "Well, good luck." "Well, let's get back to music right now." "One of our favorite stars:" "Hank Williams." "And he arrives kind of unannounced on the job and with these plans, these sketches showing how he wanted something." "Then I said, "Is this..." "what are these, Mr. Kahn?"" "He says, "Well, this is how I want you to do that detailing."" "And I tore 'em up and threw 'em in the trash can, and I says, "Too late, sorry." "We're too late."" "You know, he'd get an idea, kind of like a wife, he'd get an idea and... it may have been a good idea yesterday, but it was too late today." "We would spend hours deciding whether we were going to use a hex head cap nut screw or a Phillips head or a socket pit or whatever, you know?" "You'd ask Lou a question, and you'd get a lecture." "You never would get an answer." "You'd get a dissertation on the philosophy behind the thought." "He was just an artist, you know?" "And most artists don't have any discipline." "They just keep on going." " Like the Energizer bunny." " Yeah." "He just keeps beating that drum." "What was that?" "Just like the Energizer bunny, you know, on television." "He just keeps beating that drum till the battery runs out." "To have approval on a new element is... is a great feeling." "It's because it isn't just a copy of what has been thought to be what's necessary and what is accepted." "It... it feels as though you're an architect." "A work of art is not a living thing as..." "that walks or runs;" "but the making of a life, that which gives you a reaction." "To some, it is the wonder of man's fingers." "To some, it is the wonder of the mind." "To some, it is the wonder of technique." "And to some, it is how real it is;" "to some how transcendent it is." "Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it if you've heard it once." "And you look for it." "Though you know it, you must hear it again." "Though you know it, you must see it again." "Truly, a work of art is one that tells us that nature cannot make what man can make." "Don't put him up on some gigantic pedestal up there." "He was in the trenches." "The stories would come out of his office... it would be guys would have their wives in final moments of labor, and he wouldn't let them go home or take them to the hospital 'cause they were working on a project, you know?" "And he didn't know day from night." "You know, and he had no kind of..." "I mean, I think that most architects who are intensely involved in their practice have this problem, but I think he had a really big problem." "And I think he was very unhappy about not being selected" " for the John F. Kennedy library." " Sure." "I mean, you can just see Jackie going into I. M. Pei's office on Madison Avenue, or wherever it was in New York, and there would be flowers lining the corridor." "And, you know, you'd go to Lou's office, and there'd be an old pastrami sandwich sitting on somebody's desk." "I mean, don't think that he was always trying to be a prince." "He was very much trying to be a player." "He wanted work." "He wanted recognition." "He wanted..." "Doesn't every architect want?" "I can't speak for every architect, no." "I don't know." "I think most architects who are... he was success oriented." "At the time of his death," "Lou was $1/2 million in debt." "Here he is chatting with some prospective clients as if he has all the time in the world." "And in the meantime, he must know he's going bankrupt." "The office lost money on every project, except the Salk Institute." "And the list of jobs that fell through, and didn't get built, kept getting longer and longer:" "the Dominican Sisters Convent, the U.S. Consulate in Luanda, Angola, the City Tower project, the Pocono Arts Center with seating for 9,000, the Fleischer House, the Morris House, the house for cheerful living," "the Baltimore Inner Harbor Development Project, the Kansas City Office Tower, the Roosevelt Memorial in New York City, the Palazzo dei Congressi in Venice, the Abbas Abad development in Tehran, Iran," "and two that must have really hurt:" "the Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia;" "and in Jerusalem, the Hurva Synagogue, a building that would have shared the spotlight with the great monuments of the holy city." "That was the commission of a lifetime." "There is a flight at 1:00 at night, in the morning." "Yeah, in the morning." "So I don't think we'll finish, you see." "I don't either." "When I arrived in Jerusalem," "I found myself surrounded by pilgrims." "Everybody comes here looking for something, so I fit right in." "The synagogue Lou was commissioned to build would have overlooked the mosque known as the Dome of the Rock and the Wailing Wall." "My father never talked to me about being Jewish." "I don't know how he felt about it." "But when he stood here looking at the remnants of the temple of his ancestors, he must have felt a connection." "It was impossible not to, even for a half-breed like me." "Thank you." "Saulie cannot come in by himself." "When was the first time you met Lou?" " Do you remember?" " Can I offer you one?" "I'd love one." "Is this satisfactory?" "Teddy Kollek is the legendary former mayor of Jerusalem." "He and Lou worked together on the synagogue project for seven years." "Look, first of all, I'm 90 years old." "And my memory has gone altogether." "I remember single items but not... you came a little too late for me on that." "What was it that made it not possible to build it?" "Ruthie?" "'Cause unfortunately he died so soon." "No, you had nobody... you had nobody who dared to take the plans of your father" " and to complete them." " No, that's right," "His death stopped it in the middle, although we didn't have the funds yet to do it." "But I'm sure we could get the money needed." "But unfortunately, he died before he completed it." "Now it's a million times more difficult to create it, because the whole idea of the Hurva was to serve the entire city and to be a cultural and spiritual center." "And to do that today in the Jewish Quarter" " will be very, very difficult." " Why?" "Because, uh, the..." "Because the Jews are quarreling." "Jews are quarreling and..." "Why is that, Teddy, because..." "The Jews are quarreling." "People around thought it was too big and politically it was trying to compete with the mosque, and..." "Was that... is that wrong?" "That... some people thought it's it'd create a political problem with the Muslim, and..." "We decided it shouldn't be higher than the mosque." " That was the idea." " That was the decision." "But he redesigned it and I think..." "He did redesign; there was..." "The two... there were three schemes in all." "He had a lot more freedom to decide without any interference from the public at the time." "I mean, I still hope we'll be able to do it one day." "So they... who blew it up?" "The Jordanians blew it up?" " Yes, in '48." " In '48?" "And it was never... it was never rebuilt?" "It was just left this way?" "Yes, they thought about it, but they decided they are going to keep it that way." "What do you think?" " They should keep it that way." " Keep it this way?" "Not... not rebuild it." "Why?" "Because it's something in our past, in our history." "And we have to remember this." "Many soldiers died in this war." " So better to leave it?" " Yeah." " Thank you." " Thanks." " Bye." " Bye." "Actually, Lou agreed with the soldier." "The ruins should be left as a monument." "He wanted to build the new synagogue in the adjacent plaza instead." "So much has changed since then." "Would he have designed the same thing now?" "Would they have thought Lou an idealistic dreamer for wanting to unite the Jews of the world with a single building?" "Do you think Lou had a strong sense of being Jewish and what that meant?" "You know, I think it's been overplayed." "Lou was a very spiritual person, but I don't think that was rooted necessarily in Judaism." "I think it was as much rooted in Christianity and in Buddhism and in all kinds of myth that he knew a lot about." "And he felt just at home doing a mosque in Dhaka as he was doing the Hurva." "But I think that when he came here something happened." "Mikveh Israel didn't get built." "He must have been bitter about that." "You know, he must have been aware that as a Jewish architect he'd done no great Jewish buildings." "Philadelphia had Frank Lloyd Wright's synagogue, or temple." "And I think when he came here, he felt that the Jews entrusted him to do this." "And I think he wanted very much to have it realized." "But, you know, he was a real nomad." "And, you know, when I was in the office, he would come in from a trip, and he would be in the office for two or three days intensely." "And he would pack up and go." "And there was this kind of sense of the nomad in him." "I mean, you know, as tragic as his death was in a railway station, it was so consistent with his life." "You know, I mean, I often think I'm going to die in a plane or I'm going to die in an airport or, you know, die jogging without an identification on me." "I don't know why I sort of carry that from that memory of his, the way he died." "But he was sort of a nomad at heart." "I remember now that Lou had a little carpet in the office that he'd roll out in the floor and sleep on when he was too tired to keep working." "Maybe he never felt settled anywhere." "He was a wanderer from the beginning." "His family moved 17 times in their first two years in America." "And it turns out Kahn wasn't even his real name." "It was Shmalowsky." "His father changed it in 1915." "The only constant in Lou's life, was his wife Esther." "They were together from when he was 28 until he died." "I don't know if he thought of her house as home, but it was certainly his base." "I used to say to Lou," ""You know, Lou, if you would put some of your energy into making money, you'd be a billionaire."" "Money was something that was there." "He would... he kept saying... and unfortunately, my daughter, who's also an artist, says the same thing." ""But, Mother, it's only money."" "And he owned nothing." "He owned nothing." "He didn't believe in owning anything." "Books and neckties." "Other than that, nothing." "He would not own..." "I only saw Esther once." "It was at Lou's funeral." "She looked right through me." "Unfortunately, she died before I could talk to her, so I have only this interview she did with an architecture scholar." "In the terrible depression, when friends would come over, we couldn't afford to go anywhere." "We would put a magazine up on the piano, and friends would stand around and say," ""Oh, Lou, play that like Bach, or play it like Mozart, or play it like Beethoven, or play it in jazz."" "And he would do that." "We would sing the notes in this magazine." "And shortly before he died, he said to me, "You know, Esther," ""I don't think I would have been a great pianist, but I might have been a great composer."" "There's a house Lou built outside Philadelphia." "I called up my half sisters and got them to meet me there." "All these years, we've never talked about our three families." "I always used to ask him," ""Why don't you design a house for us, Daddy?"" "Right, right." "And once, he explained to me that he had this idea of a house with many, many mullions." "And you'd look through those windows, and you'd see a woman preparing a meal." "It was a very romantic idea of what home was." "And he could never build it for himself." "I think his vision was just so different from the way his personal life really was that there was no way he could..." "Take the two and put them together at all." "I had a scrapbook when I was a teenager, so I would get little..." "like I'd save every card, every little thing, you know?" "No, really, when he..." "Oh, these things are two of his famous bow ties tied at the rakish angle very carefully." "Fortunately, my mother saved some of his ties." "Nice ties." "Well, I heard you guys talking about when Lou died." "Were you saying that that was when you first saw me?" "That's right that's when I first saw you." "I came in with my mother, and I saw Harriet." "And I saw a toe-head, blond hair, very nicely decked out youth of 11... 10, 11." "And I figured that had to be you." "And I don't remember..." "You were there with your mother, but I don't remember..." "I don't think we spoke." "Well, my mother..." "this is what happened." "Before the funeral, my mother was called by a friend of your mother's and told to not show up, because your mother had requested to not... she didn't want to see my mother at the funeral." "I wonder if that's true." "That's what we were told too." "Oh, yes, she was called up and asked that that would... that she was carrying out the wishes of your mother, and..." "Oh, but you came anyway." "But I... my mother was absolutely furious and hung up the phone." "So I said, "Well, Mom," ""what's the point of being furious?" "We're going anyway."" "The casket was there, and I remember being... some arms went in front of us, and we were pushed into the side room." "You were very..." "I remember you being on the side, because I had to search for you." "And I went deliberately to Harriet to say something, 'cause I-I had never met you, and I knew, whoever you are, you must be suffering in some way." "And she just..." "I said, "Hello, Harriet."" "And she just stared straight ahead." "And she didn't have anything to do with me." "And I felt really bad about that, because I went up with the best of intentions to say, "Look, I'm not my mother," or..." " You're not, you know?" " You're not, yeah." "I had nothing to do with that." "And, you know, on the other hand," "I hadn't really made contact with her since you were born." "And I felt badly about that, but I knew I couldn't have handled it." "But..." "I guess what I've always wondered is, are we a family?" "What are your expectations of what a family is?" "I don't know the answer." "We're a family through choice." "I mean, if we care about each other, it's because we decide to, not because we happen to be related through some fluke of a father that happened to have these children." "Yeah." "What were you thinking, Lou?" "I've been to most of your buildings now." "India and Bangladesh will be the last." "I like your Exeter Library." "It looks a lot like the factory buildings you walked by as a little boy back in Philadelphia." "But nobody expects what you did inside." "I always believed that in the end you'd chosen my mother and me." "That was the myth I lived on." "But you didn't really choose any of us, did you?" "Did you think that Lou would marry you?" "Yes, and I didn't expect to get pregnant, and I was really surprised when I told Lou, and then his comment was, you know, "Not again."" "So I certainly thought when I told him that he would... that he would in some way do something to help me." ""Not again" meaning what?" "Well, that this had happened to him before with Alex." " You know." " With Anne?" "Yeah, with Anne." "Well, didn't you know what you were getting into?" "Oh, come on, Nathaniel." "Well, I just..." "I mean, you know." "You always protect him." "That's hard, you know?" "I mean, he was..." " I did trust him." "I was pretty stupid." " You know mom, what he did to you and I" " was... was pretty bad, really." " Yeah." "Don't you think?" "I mean, honestly, are you ever angry at him?" "No." "Really?" "You're not angry at him?" "Well, I did get angry sometimes, but not... but just..." "I just felt..." "I don't know." "Kind of a tragedy that he didn't work it out, isn't it?" "You know, it seems almost too much he was on the way home to maybe come live with us." " Yes." " Who knows?" " You still believe that?" " I do believe it." "Do you think he crossed off his passport on his way home to..." "to show something?" "Yes, to indicate... yes." "Why else would he have done it?" "Why else would he have done that?" "Can you give me an explanation?" "It's a good myth to have." "I don't think it's a myth." "I don't think it's a myth at all." "I mean, I have very strong conviction about that, because I know what... what Lou said to me, you know, when we... when we parted." "What did he say?" "He said he would do it." "I mean, he said..." "I said that I can't..." "I can't bear it any longer, and you have to... you have to do something, and you have to live with us." "And he said he would." " Really?" " Yeah." "So..." "I mean, what do you think?" "You think it's a myth, Nathaniel?" "What's your explanation?" "Is it hard being alone, Mom, so much in your life?" "Yes." "I always wondered why you didn't find someone else to share your life with you." "Well, I'm kind of a romantic fatalist." "Somebody comes along, you know, and I'm kind of a loner too." " Nathaniel?" " Yeah." "Come in." " What?" " Lightning." "I know." "I'll come in." "Do you miss him still?" "Sometimes." "But not a great, great deal." "You don't think about him as much as you used to?" "No." "Is that shocking?" "Before taking off for India and Bangladesh," "I finally went back into Lou's old office." "As it turns out, one of the men who used to work for him has the place now." "It was exciting times." "I must say, it was exciting being here." "I was..." "I can't say there were ever times when I was..." "I never quit because of anger." "I never quit because of frustration." "I quit because I couldn't take it anymore." "I couldn't work those hours anymore." "But I felt he was always an honorable... thoroughly honorable guy, except for the way he treated the women in his life." "And that was not honorable, but..." "Do you remember thinking about that?" "I mean, how the women took it?" "I did, because I was married, had a wife, two children." "And I knew what that was like, and I knew... that's when I... that's when I finally quit." "For the last time, I came home and... my Estelle was crying, and she said, "We never see you."" "And I said, "Oh, that's it." "I can't..." "Can't do it anymore."" "But he just could juggle people's lives, and it didn't bother him." "I don't understand it." "I don't know how he could do it." "I don't know how he had the mental strength for it." "It would have..." "I would have had a breakdown." "But he didn't." "He was such a tough guy." "He really was tough as hell, you know, I mean..." " Mentally." " In what way?" "Well, how could he juggle three or four lives like that?" "Lou was very secretive." "He liked to keep his business to himself." "And he'd call and say," ""You know where I am, but nobody else is to know where I am."" "And I'd say, "Okay,"" "because they would call looking for him." " Who would call?" " Esther would call Saturdays and Sundays, or Anne Tyng would call." "She would get very frustrated." "Anne, you know, lives two blocks from my home." "I see." "And Harriet too would call." "Yes, and Harriet would call." " And so, what would you do?" " I mean, he would be, like, MIA." "And sometimes I didn't know where he was or what he was doing." "But he'd just say, "I'm not in the office," ""so tell them such and such," ""or tell them you don't know where I am." "So, you know, whatever." "He would tell me what to do, and I just did it." "So you... you remember, then, the day that Lou left for India the last time?" "Oh, yes, yes." "You were here to see Lou off with your mother." "Yeah." "How did you know that?" "Well, I was in the office with you, because we couldn't push him out the door." "I came to the office because" "I knew he wouldn't..." "he'd miss his plane." "And he did the same thing." "He changed his clothes in the room where the Xerox machine was and came walking out all disheveled and left money... foreign currency from another country... all over the place." "And you and your mother literally had to push him into the taxicab." "And once he got in the cab, then I could go home." "My own memory of that night is somewhat different." "He was working on the model for the Capital of Bangladesh." "We left him at the office at around 10:00." "He waved down to me from the top of the stairs." "The last thing I saw of him was his hand." ""Dearest boy o' mine," ""the architecture seems like gingerbread bakery to us." ""To the people of the East, it's an expression of delight." ""I think of you always and with all my love." ""Daddy." ""P.S.: your father does not feel much like a conquering hero." ""Someday I hope to be able to teach you to be a better man than I."" "My first day in India," "I was chased by an insane monkey and contracted dysentery." "I can't imagine how my father made this trip so many times, a 73-year-old man traveling alone." "He spent most of his time here with an architect named Doshi." "He's the one who invited Lou to come to Ahmedabad and build the Indian Institute of Management." "On the day before he died, Lou toured the building and had his last dinner with Doshi and his family." "It was March 16th, 1974." "For us, Lou's visit was always a very exciting moment... great anxiety as well as anticipation of learning something more and appreciation." "There are very few people you will find anywhere who will talk about matter in spiritual terms." "Nothingness mattered to him." "Silence mattered to him." "The enigma of light mattered to him." "So those... those are not normal parlance." "Those are not normal discourses, but these were the ones which we liked, and he talked about it." "And when somebody understands this, he cannot be an ordinary person." "He has to be a highly cultivated soul whom we call guru." "We call him a yogi." "And that is why I think, for us, he was from here." "I have a feeling that he was really reaching, you know, his higher level... just to reach recognition and understanding." "In India, we always say that nobody dies." "They go to the next world." "It's a transition." "The body dies." "The soul doesn't die." "The consciousness doesn't die." "And Kahn had..." "Lou had reached that stage of super consciousness, where, for him, everything was alive, and everything was in the stage of transformation." "And as I know that you were waiting for him to come back, he has not come back as yet." "But he's there watching, blessing, and wishing." "So I just feel that... you have to..." "If you go into silence, you will hear him." "Definitely, you'll hear his voice." "I am very, very sure." "Doshi was right." "For a moment, I felt the way I did as a kid, that maybe he just disappeared and that I'd see him again." "If he was anywhere, he'd be here." "I just want to make my last remark in reverence to the work that has been done" "by architects of the past." "What was, has always been." "What is, has always been, and what will be has always been." "Such is the nature of beginning." "I'm making a documentary film about the building," " about the architect." " About the building?" "We are the morning walkers who come all the time here and enjoy the walking, scenic beauty, and atmosphere." "And this is the nicest place of Bangladesh." " We are proud of it." " You're proud of it?" "Oh, yes." "The nationality made upon this." "Do you know anything about the architect?" " Architect?" " Mr. Lou Kahn." "I've heard..." "I've heard about him." "He's a top-ranking architect." "Well, actually, I'm here because I'm the architect's son." "He was my father." "That Louie Farrakhan." "No, not Louie Farrakhan." "Louie Kahn." "Louie Kahn." "Yeah, you're the son of Kahn?" "Nice to meet you." "Your father, is he alive?" "No, he's been dead for 25 years." "We are very pleased to welcome you." "The parliament building and capital complex took 23 years to build, the same as the Taj Mahal." "It was all done by hand, thousands of workers carrying baskets of concrete on their heads, climbing up and down bamboo scaffolding." "During Bangladesh's war for independence from Pakistan in 1971, the enemy pilots didn't bother bombing it, because they thought it was an ancient ruin." "The complex was finally finished in 1983, nine years after Lou died in Penn Station." "He never saw it finished, Bob." " He didn't?" " No." "He never saw this." "Just taking pictures?" "Yeah, we've been here now for about five days, and... it's..." " Five days?" " Yeah." "That's a lot of pictures, then." "But do you think they'll really capture the quality of this building in terms of space, light, the volumes, and the layering of his spaces, those ambiguities?" "Well, I don't know, Mr. Wares." "When you think about this film," "I probably have at the most ten minutes." "Oh, God, this is... this is... don't tell me that." " Ten minutes for this building?" " Probably." "I see;" "I think it's..." "I think it's... the whole thing is very... very useless, because you cannot treat this building like this." "It was almost impossible, a building for a country like ours." "In 30, 50 years back, it was nothing, only paddy fields." "And since we invited him here, he felt that he has got a responsibility." "He wanted to be Moses here." "He gave us democracy." "He is not a political man." "But in disguise, he has given us the institution for democracy from where we can rise." "And that weight is so relevant." "He didn't care for how much money this country has or whether he will able to ever... ever finish this building." "But somehow he has been able to do it, build it here." "And this is the largest project he has, got, in here, the poorest country in the world." "So I think..." " It cost him his life." " Yeah." "He paid." "He paid his life for this, and that is why he is great, and we'll remember him." "But he was also human." "Now, his failure to satisfy the family life is an inevitable association of great people, but I think his son will understand this and will have no sense of grudge or a sense of being neglected, I think." "He cared in a very different manner, but it takes a lot of time to understand that." "In social aspect of his life, he was just like a child." "He was not at all matured." "He would not say no to anything." "And that is why we got this building today." "I have no other way to really understand him, but I think he has given us this building, and..." "We feel all the time for him." "That's why he has given love for us." "He could not probably give the right kind of love for you." "But for us, he's given the people the right kind of love." "That is important, and you have to understand that." "He had an enormous amount of love." "He loved everybody." "To love everybody, he sometimes did not see the very closest ones." "And that is inevitable for men of his stature." "On this journey, my father became real to me... a man, not a myth." "Now that I know him a little better," "I miss him more than ever, and I really wish things had been different." "But he chose the life that he wanted." "It's hard to let go." "But after all these years," "I think I found the right time and place to say good-bye."