The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn Facsimile Now on Kickstarter
An exact copy of the architect’s long-unavailable 60-year-old book accompanied by a new, illustrated Reader’s Guide.
By Steve Kroeter and Stephanie Salomon February 17, 2021
Originally published in 1962 and out of print for almost 50 years, The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn was the first book on influential 20th-century American architect Louis I. Kahn (1901–74) to feature his own images and words — and the first to capture the modern master’s powerful and unique spirit.
Updated, October 1, 2021. Following the successful conclusion of our Kickstarter, the facsimile edition of The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn, and an accompanying Reader’s Guide, co-published by the Yale Center for Btitish Art (distributed by Yale University Press), will be reissued in late 2021.
To make this elegant and important book available again, and in honor of Kahn’s 120th birthday this February, we are reissuing it in a new facsimile edition (an exact reproduction), along with an all-new companion Reader’s Guide, which includes additional visual material, much of it previously unpublished.
Notebooks and Drawings was the brainchild and passion project of a then 25-year-old Richard Saul Wurman, a former student of Louis Kahn, then age 59, who employed him in his Philadelphia office. Wurman (acclaimed today as one of the first practicing information architects, and founder of the renowned TED Conference), asked to select all the drawings and texts for the book. To his surprise, Kahn agreed. “I didn’t choose what were considered his best, most finished drawings,” Wurman says today. “I chose those that spoke to me—much in the same way that Lou would say you had a conversation with the building . . . the drawings that told me what they were trying to be.”
Wurman worked closely on the book with experimental printer Eugene Feldman, who pioneered the use of offset lithography as a fine-art form. “I wanted the spirit of Lou—I wanted a book of him,” adds Wurman. As a result, the two created a book that expresses Kahn’s creative process in a way that has been unequaled.
Richard Saul Wurman and Eugene Feldman’s Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn was the first book devoted to my father’s art, and he loved it.
— Nathaniel Kahn, son of architect Louis Kahn and the director of the Academy Award-nominated film about his father, My Architect.
In addition to his architectural designs from the 1950s and ’60s, the book features drawings and sketches Kahn made during his travels to Egypt, Greece, and Italy, places that inspired the architect’s interest in monumental forms. He would go on to interpret these forms for a modern age in such works as the Salk Instutute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California (1959–65).
To view the entire book, visit our dedicated website, The Louis I. Kahn Facsimile Project.
The Kickstarter runs through March 31, 2021.
Announcements
Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
.png)
Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Millman
Love Letter to a Garden
By Debbie Millman
Contributions by Roxane Gay
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: April 15, 2025
From the award-winning artist, designer, and the host of the podcast Design Matters, Debbie Millman, this book tells the visual story of falling in love with gardening—and the philosophies that work conjures. Spread throughout are simple recipes using the garden’s ingredients from Millman’s wife, best-selling author Roxane Gay.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
.png)
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
Popular NowWeekMonth
- Archigram: The Magazine
- The Book We Need Now: New from Stefan Sagmeister
- Quote of the Day: Witold Rybczynski & Paradise Planned
- Summer Reading for Design Lovers: The Story of Architecture
- One Book and Why: Design School Dean Frederick Steiner Recommends . . .
Recent Articles
