Exeter Library, Exeter, New Hampshire, USA
1967-72
Louis Kahn

Brief Review of the Exeter Library by architect Adrian Welch:

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.

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.

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.

Still, that's my immediate not totally-informed reaction and I have many more Louis Kahn buildings to visit. Views welcome: info@e-architect.co.uk



Exeter Library architect : Louis Kahn

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Exeter Library context : New Hampshire



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Comments / photos for the Exeter Library Architecture page welcome:
info@e-architect.co.uk

Exeter Library Building - page : adrian welch / isabelle lomholt