Real-Life Communication
Architectural historians need to be excellent communicators. Their work involves convincing other people that a building needs to be saved, and how it can be done efficiently and effectively.
"To get something built or to preserve something, you have [to] persuade people," says Jeffery Howe. He is a professor of architectural history. "People are going to part with a lot of money and they have to trust your ideas."
Reading and writing skills are important for architectural historians who do research and write for scholarly magazines. "Historians write for architectural journals and digests," adds Howe.
Many architectural historians work in university settings teaching students about the value of art and architecture. "If you're teaching, communication skills are important," he says.
You're teaching a first-year architectural history course. Today, you're introducing the class to one of the more important North American architects of the 20th century, Louis Kahn. This is your introduction to the class before you begin showing slides of his architecture:
Louis Isadore Kahn was born in 1901 in Estonia, but moved to the United States in 1905. He became internationally recognized for his architectural work in the 1950s. His first well-known project was the Yale Art Gallery, built in 1951 to '53 in New Haven, Connecticut.
Kahn believed that in his buildings, there should be a distinction between the serving volumes and served volumes. In his buildings, the serving spaces were small spaces where the mechanical and functional aspects of a building were stacked in slim towers. The building's larger open spaces were called the served spaces.
Dividing a building into these two spaces gave the buildings order and a monumental look.
Some other works by Kahn include the Performing Arts Theater (Fort Wayne, Indiana), the Phillips Exeter Library (New Hampshire), the Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas), and the Mellon Center for British Art Studies (Yale University).
After your presentation, you ask the students a few questions to make sure they've absorbed the material. These are the questions you ask:
- Where was Louis Kahn born?
- When did he move to the United States?
- What was his first well-known building?
- Which of his buildings is located in Fort Worth, Texas?
How should your students answer you?