Louis Kahn Drawings 路易‧卡恩繪圖

This collection of material comprises five drawings by Louis Kahn as part of his 1968 proposal for the rebuilding of the Hurva synagogue in Jerusalem. Kahn's proposal was never realised; eventually, a near replica of the 19th century temple was unveiled in 2010. Despite its being unbuilt, the Hurva synagogue is recognised as occupying an important place in Kahn’s oeuvre. It powerfully and succinctly captures many of Kahn’s fundamental ideas about architecture, while expanding the narrative of his work on politically fraught sites.

Beyond resonating with Kahn's own Jewish background, the project was a remarkable opportunity to engage his longstanding interest in ruins, which he had notably explored as a resident of the American Academy in Rome in 1950. A deft negotiator of negative space, Kahn had been formulating his ideas about hollow columns since the 1950s; in his Hurva proposal, they accommodated door openings on the ground floor and connected the balconies above. The exterior of the synagogue was to be clad in golden Jerusalem stone, while the interior was to be left mostly in raw concrete, with interstitial openings providing diffused, ever-shifting light.

Even by the standards of Israel, the synagogue’s site is a contentious and symbolic one. The Hurva had its origins in 1700, when a group of newly arrived Jews from Eastern Europe, under the rabbi Yehuda HeHasid, chose its location for what was to be Jerusalem’s only Ashkenazi temple, in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Work progressed haltingly until 1721, when members of the local community demolished the partially-built structure. The site lay empty until 1864 when construction on a second synagogue began, a domed building that sat on the site until 1948 when, two weeks after the declaration of the State of Israel, was destroyed by Jordanian soldiers. After Israel seized East Jerusalem from Jordan during the Six-Day War of 1967, efforts began almost immediately to erect a new Hurva synagogue on the site of the old. Kahn was asked to design it.

Kahn’s impact on architecture in Asia includes his landmark projects in Dhaka and Ahmedabad, and his influence on architects ranges from Balkrishna Doshi in India, to more recently Wang Shu, Dong Yugan, and Dong Gong in China. Kahn’s archive is held by the University of Pennsylvania.

The Louis Kahn drawings were gifted to M+ in 2018 by Ram Karmi, the Israeli architect who had helped Kahn won the Hurva commission.