{"product_id":"you-say-to-brick-the-life-of-louis-kahn","title":"You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn","description":"\u003cp\u003eWINNER OF THE MARFIELD PRIZE AND PEN AMERICA LOS ANGELESS 2018 LITERARY AWARD IN RESEARCH NONFICTION. FINALIST FOR THE 2018 PEN\/BOGRAD WELD PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY  One of the Washington Posts 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2017  a New York Times Notable Book of 2017  and one of Kirkuss Best Nonfiction Books of 2017  \"Wendy Lessers You Say to Brick is easily the most complete narrative of Kahns life and career  magnificently researched and gracefully written.\" Inga Saffron  New York Times Book Review  Born in Estonia 1901 and brought to America in 1906  the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia. By the time of his mysterious death in 1974  he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces  all built during the last fifteen years of his life.  Wendy Lessers You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn is a major exploration of the architects life and work. Kahn  perhaps more than any other twentieth-century American architect  was a public architect. Rather than focusing on corporate commissions  he devoted himself to designing research facilities  government centers  museums  libraries  and other structures that would serve the public good. But this warm  captivating person  beloved by students and admired by colleagues  was also a secretive man hiding under a series of masks.  Kahn himself  however  is not the only complex subject that comes vividly to life in these pages. His signature achievementslike the Salk Institute in La Jolla  the National Assembly Building of Bangladesh  and the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabadcan at first seem as enigmatic and beguiling as the man who designed them. In attempts to describe these structures  we are often forced to speak in contradictions and paradoxes: structures that seem at once unmistakably modern and ancient; enormous built spaces that offer a sense of intimate containment; designs in which light itself seems tangible  a raw material as tactile as travertine or Kahns beloved concrete. This is where Lessers talents as one of our most original and gifted cultural critics come into play. Interspersed throughout her account of Kahns life and career are exhilarating in situ descriptions of what it feels like to move through his built structures.  Drawing on extensive original research  lengthy interviews with his children  his colleagues  and his students  and travel to the far-flung sites of his career-defining buildings  Lesser has written a landmark biography of this elusive genius  revealing the mind behind some of the twentieth centurys most celebrated architecture.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44955267956789,"sku":"ByrdShop_0374279977","price":27.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780374279974.jpg?v=1770301464","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/you-say-to-brick-the-life-of-louis-kahn","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}