Book Review: Louis I. Kahn's Trenton Jewish Community Center
Louis I. Kahn's Trenton Jewish Community Center by Susan G. Solomon, published by Princeton Architectural Press, 2000. Paperback, 200 pages. (Amazon)
Adapted from the author's dissertation on Kahn's work for the Jewish community in the 1950s and 1960s, this book begins by placing the architect in the Jewish world before he received the commission for the Trenton Jewish Community Center (TJCC) in 1955. What would seem to be an important consideration gives way to other important matters: the Center's decision to move to the suburbs from a downtown site, the question of how to design for a previously untested building type, and Kahn's attempts at extending the Modern Movement with his personal imprint. The longest chapter, dealing with the plans for the TJCC, gives the most insight into the difficulties of the commission (encompassing a bathhouse, day care and community building, only the first two were eventually built) and the achievement of Kahn in the design of the bathhouse, specifically as the impetus for his now legendary distinction of served and servant spaces. Or to sum up in the architects own words, "If the world discovered me after I designed the Richards [Medical Research Building], I discovered myself after designing that little concrete block bathhouse in Trenton."
Adapted from the author's dissertation on Kahn's work for the Jewish community in the 1950s and 1960s, this book begins by placing the architect in the Jewish world before he received the commission for the Trenton Jewish Community Center (TJCC) in 1955. What would seem to be an important consideration gives way to other important matters: the Center's decision to move to the suburbs from a downtown site, the question of how to design for a previously untested building type, and Kahn's attempts at extending the Modern Movement with his personal imprint. The longest chapter, dealing with the plans for the TJCC, gives the most insight into the difficulties of the commission (encompassing a bathhouse, day care and community building, only the first two were eventually built) and the achievement of Kahn in the design of the bathhouse, specifically as the impetus for his now legendary distinction of served and servant spaces. Or to sum up in the architects own words, "If the world discovered me after I designed the Richards [Medical Research Building], I discovered myself after designing that little concrete block bathhouse in Trenton."
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