Exeter Library New Hampshire, Louis Kahn building USA, American 20C project design, Modern NH property date
Exeter Library Building
20th Century American Architecture: Major Modern USA Building by Louis Kahn Architect.
page updated Mar 29, 2016
Location: Exeter, New Hampshire, USA
Date built: 1967-72
Design: Louis Kahn architect
Exeter Library
Brief Review of the Exeter Library by architect Adrian Welch:
photo by Rohmer at en.wikipedia – Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is/was here. Original uploader was Rohmer at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2932569
Phillips Exeter Academy Library
This building has none of the landscape-integrating prairie horizontals of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses but instead hits you across well-maintained landscape as a massive squat pile of bricks.
photo by Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7016342
photo by Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7016342
Inside the geometry of the circle dominates, reminiscent of the National Assembly building, Dacca. I found the contrast between the simple – and stark – modern geometries and the fancy baroque travertine stair curious.
photo by Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7016342
The rough brick carrying into the interior – you brush against it moving up and down the stairs or squeezing past carrousels – has a harshness that I haven’t felt in Aalto’s houses where he used this device, to me the building has massive power, major ego but lacks the sheer class of the Salk Institute or the rational elegance of the Richards Medical Center.
photo by kathia shieh – Exeter Library [Louis Kahn], CC BY 2.0, http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11500653
Still, that’s my immediate not totally-informed reaction and I have many more Louis Kahn buildings to visit. Views welcome: info(at)e-architect.com
Exeter Library architect : Louis Kahn
Phillips Exeter Academy Library
The Phillips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S., with 160,000 volumes on nine levels and a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes, is the largest secondary school library in the world. It is part of the Phillips Exeter Academy, an independent boarding school.
When it became clear in the 1950s that the library had outgrown its existing building, the school initially hired an architect who proposed a traditional design for the new building. Deciding instead to construct a library with a contemporary design, the school gave the commission to Louis Kahn in 1965. In 1997 the library received the Twenty-five Year Award from the American Institute of Architects, an award that recognizes architecture of enduring significance that is given to no more than one building per year.
Kahn structured the library in three concentric square rings. The outer ring, which is built of load-bearing brick, includes all four exterior walls and the library carrel spaces immediately inside them. The middle ring, which is built of reinforced concrete, holds the heavy book stacks. The inner ring is a dramatic atrium with enormous circular openings in its walls that reveal several floors of book stacks.
source: wikipedia
Jun 22, 2018
Phillips Exeter Academy Class of 1959 Music Center Building, New Hampshire, USA
Design: William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc.
Phillips Exeter Academy Class of 1959 Music Center Building
Location: Exeter Library, Exeter, New Hampshire, USA
Architecture in Northeast United States of America
Contemporary Architecture in Northeast USA
Exeter Library context : New Hampshire Architecture
Boston Buildings
image from architect
Massachusetts Architecture
image © Timothy Hursley, The Arkansas Office
Hood Museum of Art Building Renovation, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
Date built: 1985
Original Building Design: Charles Moore Architect
image courtesy Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
Hood Museum of Art Building
Fine Arts Center, School, and Performing Arts Theater, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA
Date built: 1959-73
photo courtesy wikimedia commons
Louis Kahn’s Fine Arts Center, School, and Performing Arts Theater in Indiana
Museum of Fine Arts
1999-2009
Design: Foster + Partners
image : Foster + Partners
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Comments / photos for the Exeter Library Building – major 20th Century Architecture in New Hampshire, USA page welcome
Website: Phillips Exeter Academy Library