Architect Louis Kahn died alone, and bankrupt, in New York City’s Penn Station in 1974. Filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn documents his father’s riches to rags story in the Oscar-nominated film, My Architect (2003).
The Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities’ Second Look Film Series will feature My Architect during a free and public screening at 6 p.m. Monday, Jan. 26, in the Wolstein Building Auditorium.
In a TED.com talk about the movie, the filmmaker explained that while some documentaries are about learning something new, this film is about emotions and the journey: “life—that once you get in it, you can’t get out.”
The film is also Nathaniel Kahn’s personal journey into understanding his father’s life, from childhood to his rise in the architectural world. Interviews with architects Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson and I.M. Pei illustrate his father’s past. But the son also reveals the double life of Louis Kahn, who was married and fathered children (including Nathaniel) by two mistresses, a fact missing from his obituaries.
Sally Levine, Cleveland architect and instructor in Case Western Reserve’s architecture design studio in the Art Studio Program, will introduce the film and provide background on the father’s contributions to design.
Levine is a nationally recognized expert on universal design, which is an architectural movement to design spaces and structures that encompass human diversity in talents and abilities to perceive, think and move.
Levine serves on the board of directors for the Institute for Human Center Design in Boston and also has served on Access to Design Professionals National Task Force and Chicago Mayor’s Committee on Education for Northerly Island, which has focused on universal design.
Registration is recommended by emailing bakernord@case.edu or calling 216.368.2242.