13/12/2018

Erika Spiazzi 904124

The Kahn Method

The book review

1. Peters Behrens and Albert Kahn: two different approaches to Industrial Architecture

Speaking about the work, related to Industrial Architecture, of these two architects it’s possible to say that
Peters Behrens’s approach is more linked to aesthetics. Behrens, as artist was able to give form and
meaning to the factory.
Albert Kahn, as we’ll see later, is more linked to the function and to what is essential for the building and
his used. According with Kahn’s thought decorations and aesthetics can be applied but with a reason.
They are both focus on the flexibility and the better used of the space and of lighting, ventilation, etc. in
order to improve the quality of employees and the quality of the productions sector.

2. The Architect’s Work: from the Artistic Vision to the introduction of Scientific Management Method

As it has been mentioned a little above architects design thinking about aesthetics and functionality. It
doesn’t matter which will be the function of the building or the complex but it has to be functional and it
has to be appreciable in a aesthetical point of you.
In these buildings the beauty and the appearance are extremely important and, sometimes, those aspects
became more decisive than the usability and other characteristics that should have the same importance.
Albert Kahn disagree with this point of view. He believes that functionality and flexibility have to be the
main goals of all the project.
As Albert Kahn himself said in one of his last interviews:

Strictest economy must prevail in manufacturing buildings, especially in National Defense projects.
Therefore elimination of non essentials and of everything not purely utilitarian is imperative.[...]
Occasionally a client is particularly solicitous about the appearance of his factory, and occasionally it proves
difficult to dissuade him from building a classic temple.

From his words it is clear that his thought is closely linked to the exaltation of the building's functionality.
He believe that usefulness and adaptability have a huge priority in the design of the building, everything
else comes after.
His goal was to show that mass modern building issues could be settled satisfactorily just by depending on
cooperation and logical administration.
In his vision the architect is a technician for the client and he is a combinations of many skills. This character
has a significant collaboration with the figure of the engineer. Also essential to the construction sector is
the contractor, who is in charge of guaranteeing that everything is actualized effectively in the correctly
development of the building. The last, but not least, character of this scenario is the client. For Albert Kahn,
relationships with the client called for the observation of precise rules.
All of this, as indicated by Albert Kahn, could be obtained just in a structure that included architects, urban
planners, and civil and mechanical engineers; an organization in which the cooperation of different partners
persuaded by sufficient compensations, was basic.
3. “I’m going out to the Ford workshops in Detroit. As architects, I am in a kind of stupor” (Le Corbusier).
The European “Modern Movement” and the US Industrial Buildings

4. The Albert Kahn architectural theory in the “Architectural Trend” essay (1931)

This particular thought comes from the main concept that good architecture, to be called in this way, has to
be related and has to be connected to the concept “time”.
Albert Kahn refer to this idea thinking that contemporary architecture has to refer to the past, it cannot
come from nowhere. This trend to not fallowing particular reference and styles create strange and bizarre
architecture.
Kahn, speaking about American Architecture, thinks that, because America is a composite of many nations,
its architecture should be a collection of styles and it should be able to reflect this fact. If, in re-employing
older forms and applying them in the contemporary architecture to solve newer problems it’s wrong, then
all the architecture of the past is wrong.
He also think that architecture to be worth must first and last serve its function.

In other words, he believe that good architecture has to be referred to the past, he thinks that architects
should used elements and solutions already done before and applied them in a new way to contemporary
architecture. Anybody else who look for something never done before is doing something extremely wrong.

5. Assembly line, architectural space and landscape: the design and construction of Ford Motor Company
buildings (1910-1940)

The collaboration between Albert Kahn and Henry Ford started because the prestige that surrounded the
architect convinced the businessman to work together.
Both of them are self-made man with solid principles and very strong goals. Somehow they are the two
sides of the same coin.

The first product of the collaboration between Kahn and Ford was the Highland Park Building built in 1909:
a four-floor factory, with a total length of 22 x 262m.
The weight-bearing structure was reinforced concrete with 6m spans between the wheelbase of the
columns. In this building there were no interior dividing walls. The vertical connections, pushed to the
exterior of the building, rise up at regular interims along the more extended side of the building.
They placed all the auxiliary facilities with the hydraulic elevators which transported materials to the work
floor.

The elementary arrangement of the Highland Park Building was the solution for the assembly line
production: sufficiently bright floors spread out on a level plane and joined successfully.
The interaction of the two processes of conceptualizing (cohesion between the work of the production
engineers and the architects who designed the physical space) end up in a precise method of labor
management thought by Albert Kahn itself.
Just few years later its completion, were through a functional transformation that demonstrated the
extraordinary flexibility of its spatial organization. It became an integral part of a bigger complex composed
by a group of structures, each of which it’s specialized in a particular work operation. At that point, the
factory concentrated under one roof became obsolete.
This is when Henry Ford started to applied the assembly line concept to complexes which have one-floor
buildings that placed specific tasks (production and assembly stages) all connected and linked together.
This concept, for example, is very clear in the River Rouge plant. The principle of this complex was to save
money, time and space obtained through the continuous movement of the materials. Fallowing this
thought, the main character of this complex is the High Line, a building in concrete with five sets of tracks
which connected all the industrial area.
After this first new ideas and thought derived from this period of collaboration with Albert Kahn Ford
coined a new word: Anti-urbanism. He said:

A great city is really an helpless mass.

The city cannot feed, clothe, warm, or house itself”

After having underlined this problem, Ford starts to suggested to integrate agricultural work and industrial
labor.

Bibliography:

- Bucci, Federico. 2017. Il metodo Kahn = The Kahn method. Milano: Franco Angeli.
- https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/architecture-20c/a/peter-behrens-turbine-
factory
- https://www.archdaily.com/619290/spotlight-peter-behrens