My Architect: A Son's Journey produced and directed by Nathaniel Kahn, 2003, U.S., color, English, 1 hour 46 minutes

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif—My Architect, A Son's Journey is not a new film; it had already been well acclaimed before I encountered it for the first time yesterday during a "retreat," which was more like a seminar, of the City of San Diego's Historical Resources Board, on which I am privileged to be an appointee.  

During the lunch break of the 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. meeting in the board room of the Natural History Museum  in Balboa Park, one of the board's staff consultants., Michael Tudury, put the video up on screen, in order to provide us with some background on the late architect Louis I. Kahn. Later, I borrowed  the video so I could watch it again in the quiet of my home.  

Kahn's design for the Salk Institute in the La Jolla section of San Diego is well recognized as a fine example of "brutalism"—which may sound like an insult, but actually  is a  compliment. In the field of architecture, "brutalism" refers to a style emphasizing massiveness, heaviness, as if, like the pyramids of Egypt or the coliseum of Rome, its structures are built to last an eternity.  The Salk Institute with its two rows of mammoth buildings facing each other over a courtyard that is distinguished  by a narrow waterway seemingly running right to the point where the horizon meets the Pacific Ocean, not only is an awe-inspiring campus, it is, in the opinion of the scientists who work there, an extremely practical one.  

Kahn worked out a way to run all the conduits between floors in such a manner that they would always be accessible to the institute's numerous biological research laboratories, permitting each scientist great flexibility in how to configure his or her research area.   At the same time, even though the buildings are at right angles to the Pacific Ocean, Kahn managed to provide each  suite with an extension providing a  view of the magnificent horizon—corroborating the belief of the institute's founder, polio vaccine discover Jonas Salk, that art can profoundly influence science and vice versa.

When a son calls someone "my architect," rather than "my father," you realize right from the opening title that Kahn's was not the average American family with a house in the suburbs, two cars in the garage, and two adoring children whom mom took to school and to soccer games.  In fact, Kahn had three children, each of whom had their own mom, and Kahn had only married one of them.  

That was Esther Israeli Kahn, mother of Sue Ann Kahn.  With Ann Tyne, an architect who worked for him, Kahn had a daughter, Alex.  And with Harriet Pattison, a landscape architect, Kahn had Nathaniel, the youngest and, one assumes, last of his children. When Kahn was found dead in New York City's Penn Station in 1974, Nathaniel was just a boy of 11, who knew his father only as the mysterious man who would visit his mother clandestinely, and sometimes read and draw with him.  Nathaniel didn't start his "journey" in search of his father until a quarter century later.

The documentary is riveting because it is so personal.  In addition to the Salk Institute, Nathaniel visited some of his father's architectural creations including the Richards Medical Research Building in Philadelphia, the city where Estonian-born Kahn grew up and was schooled;  the Bath House in Trenton, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the Library at Exeter College, a ship that converts into a concert stage when it pulls up to a port; and the work which still was in progress when Kahn died, the capital complex of Bangladesh.  

Along the way, Nathaniel interviewed on film some of the architects and builders who collaborated or competed with Kahn on projects, and who were influenced or impressed by his works. These included Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Jack McAllister, Edmund Bacon, Saul Worman, Frank Gehry, Robert A.M. Stern, Moshe Safdie, B.V. Doshi, and Shamsul Wares.

But at the same time as the son attempted to understand the kind of architect his father was; he also grappled with what kind of man he was. To address that question, he had to talk to members of his father's families.  Esther was already dead; but he spoke with his own mother, and with Ann Tyne as well as with his two half-sisters, Sue-Ann  and Alex.  They had been aware of each other's existence as children, but strict separation had been maintained among them.  Gathered in as touching a scene as you'll ever see, Nathaniel asks at one point: "Are we a family?"   Sue Ann, the only legitimate heir of Louis, responded kindly, "We are if we want to," adding that this question depends upon what is in their hearts, not upon the "fluke" of their common paternity.

As the movie progresses, Nathaniel questions two of the three principal women in Kahn's life, but none so searchingly as his Episcopalian mother whose relationship with Kahn shocked her family and whose decision to give birth to Nathaniel, rather than abort him, was one of the reasons for  her permanent estrangement from one of her brothers. 

When Kahn was found dead in the train station, apparently of natural causes, the address he shared with Esther on his passport had been crossed out.  Harriet believed that was because Kahn finally was planning to move in with her and Nathaniel permanently.  She repeated this belief frequently to her child. As a result of all the interviews that Nathaniel had done, viewers are led to the conclusion that Kahn's only real marriage was to his work.  So we understand the reason for the question when Nathaniel asks his mother whether her dearly-held belief  "was a myth?"  She, on the other hand, was shocked that he could question this romantic verity.

There are a few sections of the movie dealing directly with the Jewish experience. One of Nathaniel's early interviews is with a rabbi who was a first cousin of Kahn's and who was unaware that Kahn had a son until Nathaniel's quest for knowledge about his father started receiving publicity. When Nathaniel shows him his birth certificate, the rabbi jokes maybe he should also ask to see the "brit" certificate for his circumcision.

Later, in discussing why, despite his fame, Kahn did not receive any of the commissions when Philadelphia undertook the massive redevelopment of its central core, Worman suggested that "blood was important in Philadelphia; I think maybe Lou's blood had a yellow arm band..."

There were other unrealized commissions as well—most notably in Jerusalem where Kahn had drawn up plans for two separate synagogue projects, one of which would have been so massive, it might have dwarfed Jerusalem's signature golden Dome of the Rock mosque.  To understand the politics of the situation, Nathaniel interviewed former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, still charming and chomping a cigar in his 90s.  

Israeli architect Moshe Safdie—whose own works can be seen on the UCSD campus very close to the Salk Institute—suggested that because he was Jewish by birth Kahn would have liked to have done some Jewish architecture.  However, Safdie speculated that spiritually Kahn was at home with any religion, that his work showed tremendous spirituality, and in temperament as well as life style, Kahn was a true nomad.

Nathaniel engages throughout the film  in some schtick, the love of which one assumes, especially after meeting his mother's straight-laced sisters, Nathaniel inherited from his paternal line. Nathaniel skates in the courtyard of the Salk Institute, and broad jumps along  the course of its famous waterway. He runs holding his ears from the blast of the horn on the concert ship.  He keeps re-fetching the yarmulke that blows off his head at the Western Wall.  He retains in the documentary  a sequence in which a Haredi reproaches him with a glance for filming him while davening at the Wall.  My favorite bit, however, came in Bangladesh, when Kahn asks some people who had worked on the Capitol construction project if they knew the name of the architect.  Yes, said one proudly, Louis Farrakhan.  

Not Farakhan, but Louis I. Kahn —and come to think of it, that's what his father was, an icon.

On occasions, Kahn would lecture to a class about the innate qualities of certain building materials—qualities that he believed should be honored, not short-changed. Kahn's personal building materials had their flaws—when he was 3 years his face was burned in a kitchen fire, prompting classmates to taunt him as "scar face."  Those scars may have been what turned Kahn inward, reflective, and ultimately into a great architect.  

As a boy, Nathaniel would have his father tell him over and over again about the kitchen fire that had disfigured him.  Louis' own father thought the boy would never recover, that he would be "better off dead."  But Louis' mother said, to the contrary, the fire would make him great.   Growing up as the illegitimate son of a world renown architect was Nathaniel's own fire, and, with this documentary, he too, has shown the world he has the stuff of greatness.