Propiedades generales de los hiperespacios n-ésimos

If Kahn is not precisely any of that ascribed to him, then what is it that animates his creativity – his being? Although not before stated in such terms, I argue in this chapter that there is much of kenosis to be seen in Kahn. Indeed, I would further suggest that it is due to the instantiations of kenosis in Kahn’s work – appearing in his approach, designs, and realisations – that he is assessed, critiqued, and categorised so prolifically and diversely. It is a particularly personal instantiation of kenosis by which Kahn invites exactly such analysis – such ‘extending’:

I don’t know how to extend things, because I don’t have any historical knowledge, nor any research tendencies. I can’t look up and find other literature, I just can’t do it. And so it’s left, in a way, in a very undeveloped state, as though it were just an offering for someone else, you know, to extend.142

And so, Kahn is once again extended, here, but not this time in an attempt to merely extend the proliferation of labelling. Instead, this ‘extension’ invites the appearance of what underpins all such labelling, and paradoxically appears in the labels themselves – as seen in many examples.

Modernism – not least, Kahn’s brand of it – can be seen as somehow religious or with characteristics resembling a religious movement, but that is not due to any connection with a particular religion; rather, it is because creativity (not only architecture, and not only modern) and religion are ontologically kenotic. Kahn’s so-called happiness at the gates of mystery can be seen to derive from a willingness to self-empty and be filled with the unknown other. To the extent that his work reflects Shiva’s dance, such is due to the fact that Kahn engages in the whirling phenomenon of kenosis; moving between the sacred and the secular, the transcendental and the immanent, the constructive and destructive. If Kahn, the romantic idealist, looks back to the classical, it is only to find his place in the modern, and he does so by way of kenosis. Insofar as he is able to dissolve scale and time in order to find abstract simplicity, such ability lies in a kenotic approach that accommodates complex relationality. His charge to designers can be seen as a call to self-empty, to heighten attentiveness to the other and other things of the situation, and to respond as the situation requests, recognising that the order of things is neither pre-existent nor singular, but indeterminate, contingent, and plural – requiring constant working-out. And his openness to such working-out can be seen in his activism. Kenosis is a call to action, a call to strive for betterment, despite the impossibility of absolute achievement. If Kahn’s architecture ‘situates’ people, if it is socially, culturally, and politically responsible, and if it is immune to style, then, I contend,

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that is because his approach to each situation is kenotic: emptying, receptive, and responsive.

Of course, it might be argued that kenosis, particularly in its adjectival form – kenotic – is merely another label to trump and replace those already ascribed. But kenosis is not the name of, or definition for, a particular way of being, as differentiated from other ways of being. It is being. It is constantly happening, and humanity can either engage with it or self-assertively ignore and resist it for a time, though such ignorance and resistance paradoxically come to be a part of the kenotic unfolding. Kahn seems to recognise as much in an exchange with one of his students, who asks “Why architecture?” The teacher, Kahn, replies, “If you were to define it, you would destroy it.” But then he turns the question back to the student, in what he calls a “Hebraic way,” suggesting that the better question would be, “Why anything?” To that, the student answers, “Because it is,” and Kahn affirms the reply. “Yes. Exactly. Because it is.”143 _At

a more fundamental – perhaps even spiritual – level, Kahn reveals the kenosis of his approach and understanding:

I tried to find what Order is. I was excited about it, and I wrote many, many words of what Order is. Every time I wrote something, I felt it wasn’t quite enough. If I had covered, say, two thousand pages with just words of what Order is, I would not be satisfied with this statement. And then I stopped by not saying what it is, just saying, “Order is.” And somehow I wasn’t sure it was complete until I asked somebody, and the person I asked said, “You must stop right there. It’s marvellous; just stop there, saying, ‘Order is.’”144

Rather than rushing to label Kahn and his work, I suggest that it is sufficient to witness the kenosis in his approach and in his buildings. To do so – including with discursive text such as this – is to extend Kahn, and also to open-up and engage kenosis. It is also to see the name ‘Kahn’ as open and self-emptying. It is to see that Kahn’s being (and that of all humanity) is between and therefore becoming. Thus it might simply be said – in present tense, to reflect the continued becoming of both the architect and his architecture – “Kahn is.”

Thomas Gieryn notes that “in buildings, and through them, sociologists can find social structures in the process of becoming.” He laments the fact that the becoming is often “solidified first in floor plans, then in walls and doors,” such that “retrofitting begins almost immediately … and every once in a while, somebody is forced to reconsider (and justify) how the building came to be this way.” Portrayed is a kind of material and semiotic deconstruction, amidst which “meanings and stories are sometimes more pliable

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Lobell, Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn: 56.

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than the walls and floors they depict.”145 _{Kahn’s buildings continue to undergo abundant}

reconsideration and deconstruction of that sort, but they prove highly resilient. Kenotic instantiations at the Salk demonstrate – in the most literal and physical sense – that walls and floors can be as pliable as meanings and stories. And almost all of Kahn’s ‘mature’ buildings demonstrate that the kenosis of their design and realisation is that which animates their becoming, as well as the becoming of the social structures they host. That pliability – the paradoxical strength of self-contraction, the monumentality of understatement – has seen almost no retrofitting, other than that intended as part of the design concept, and has required relatively little justification. If it can be said that “Order is” and “Kahn is,” then the same can also be said of Kahn’s architecture. It is.

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