As part of the 50th anniversary of the Kimbell, expert engineers, architects, and art historians will discuss the working relationship of two brilliant Estonian-born colleagues: structural engineer August Komendant, a pioneer of precast, prestressed, thin- shell concrete, and Louis I. Kahn, creator of modernist architecture with monumental forms and poetic light.
Their dynamic but sometimes contentious collaboration produced some of the most innovative, acclaimed buildings of the twentieth century, including the Salk Institute and the Kimbell Art Museum.
Schedule
Welcome
Eric M. Lee, director, Kimbell Art Museum
Moderator and Panelist
Guy Nordenson, professor, structural engineering and architecture, School of Architecture, Princeton University, New Jersey; partner, Guy Nordenson and Associates, New York
Panelist
Thomas Taylor, design director, Datum Engineers, Dallas
Engineering Modern Architecture: Highlights of August Komendant’s Career
Carl-Dag Lige, junior researcher, Faculty of Architecture, Estonian Academy of Arts,Tallinn, Estonia
Komendant and Kahn: Collaborative Design Innovation with Materials and Geometry
Caitlin Mueller, associate professor, department of civil and environmental engineering; associate professor, department of architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
Kimbell in Context:Technology and Collaboration in Concrete Modernism
Tyler Sprague, associate professor, department
of architecture; adjunct professor, department of civil and environmental engineering, University of Washington, Seattle
Kahn and Komendant: Design in Two-Point Perspective
Shantel Blakely, assistant professor, School of Architecture, Rice University, Houston