Roosevelt Memorial Park, New York

Architect: Louis Kahn (1973/74), Mitchell | Giurgola Architects (2012)
Text: Eszter Götz
Photos: Paul Warchol

Louis Kahn started working on the designs of the New York-based park devoted to the memory of President Roosevelt about forty years ago. A year later he died, and thus the concept remained in blueprint and unfinished. Finally, the foundation stone was laid in 2010 and the Four Freedoms Park was inaugurated in October, 2012 as completed by Mitchell | Giurgola Architects. This year the park is one of the potential winners of the American contest named Design of the Year. The statuette blends two types of memorials: monumental figurative sculpture and abstract architecture which have been rarely matched so far in the history of art.

Louis Kahn’s Retrospective Exhibition
Vitra Design Museum, Basel, 02. 23 – 08. 11.

Louis Kahn was one of the most influential architects in the 20th century. Since his death in 1974 this is the first large-scale retrospective exhibition based on his works organised by the Basel-based Vitra Design Museum. Presenting Kahn’s life, the basic pillars of his way of thinking as well as his impact, this show is a complex project with the potentials of freeing his oeuvre from the categories of the various „isms”.