A stunning celebration of the architect's residential masterpieces Louis Kahn (1901-1974), one of the most important architects of the postwar period, is widely admired for his great monumental works, including the Kimbell Art Museum, the Salk Institute, and the National Assembly Complex in Bangladesh. However, the importance of his houses has been largely overlooked. This beautiful book is the first to look at Kahn's nine major private houses. Beginning with his earliest encounters with Modernism in the late 1920s and continuing through his iconic work of the 1960s and 1970s, the authors trace the evolution of the architect's thinking, which began and matured through his design of houses and their interiors, a process inspired by his interactions with clients and his admiration for vernacular building traditions. Richly illustrated with new and period photographs and original drawings, as well as previously unpublished materials from personal interviews, archives, and Kahn's own writings, The Houses of Louis Kahn shows how his ideas about domestic spaces challenged conventions, much like his major public commissions, and were developed into one of the most remarkable expressions of the American house.

The untold story of America’s first independent female architect   Minerva Parker Nichols (1862–1949) was the first American woman to practice architecture independently. Her specialty was residential spaces—though her commissions also included an iron foundry and a macaroni factory—and she was a significant figure in the design of the emerging railroad towns just outside of Philadelphia, where she was in active practice from 1883 until 1896. She was also a writer, teacher, and active participant in several reform movements of the era. Creating an archive in the absence of one, this book recovers Nichols’s forgotten story to document a career that spanned seven decades, engaging with contemporary questions about absences in the historical record, the challenges of architectural history and preservation, and the need for new tools and frameworks to address these gaps. A catalogue raisonné of her completed architectural works includes illustrations drawn from historical materials as well as newly drawn plans for five of her most significant designs. Archival material, paired with new photography documenting more than 30 extant buildings in the Philadelphia and beyond, offer a full and fully illustrated reconstruction of Nichols’s life and career. Distributed for the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania