Fine Arts Center, School, and Performing Arts Theater, Fort Wayne, Indiana (Site-plan sketch)
Louis I. Kahn
American, born Estonia. 1901–1974
1963
A charcoal sketch on tracing paper in which Louis I. Kahn experiments with compositional ideas for a Fort Wayne arts complex, using loose geometric forms to work out relationships between the fine arts center, school, and theater.
You first notice two energetic plan variants rendered with bold, smudged charcoal—triangles, circles and rectangles overlapping and bleeding into one another on translucent tracing paper so the drawing reads like a live, thinking process rather than a finished map.
The sheet reveals Kahn’s method of design-as-drawing, where quick, repeated studies on tracing paper articulate spatial order and helped define mid‑century modern architecture’s focus on geometry, monumentality, and the sketch as a primary tool of invention.
Medium
Charcoal on tracing paper
Dimensions
12 x 23 1/4" (30.5 x 59.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the architect
Accession
388.1967
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
