The son of Rabbi Joseph Kahn, Albert Kahn was born in the town of Rhaunen, Germany (near Frankfurt), on 21 March 1869. Difficult economic conditions led to the family’s immigration to the United States (by way of the grand duchy of Luxembourg), and in 1881, the Kahn family settled in Detroit, a major industrial center in the upper Midwest.

For various reasons—his family’s economic difficulties being perhaps the most significant—Kahn was not able to follow a normal course of education leading to a university degree. Instead, his design abilities, developed through a series of free private lessons given to him by the sculptor Julius Mechers, enabled him to begin his architectural apprenticeship with the Detroit firm Mason and Rice at the age of 15. Quickly finding success as a draftsman in the firm, Kahn focused on the practical aspects of architecture and made excellent use of the firm’s library. The combination of Kahn’s intellectual interests and practical experience enabled him to win a scholarship from the journal American Architect for a year’s study abroad. Kahn’s year of travel through Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany—roughly the same as the traditional European tour undertaken by more privileged students of architecture—allowed Kahn to develop new, significant friendships (including with Henry Bacon, architect of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington) while deepening his knowledge of architecture through site visits and the sketching of buildings and their details. Returning to Mason and Rice, Kahn’s sketches of notable works, while significant from an educational perspective, had a direct bearing on his architectural work for the office. In 1896, Kahn, along with two other architects from Mason and Rice, formed a new firm, Nettleton, Kahn, and Trowbridge. After Trowbridge left to become dean of the Cornell School of Architecture in 1897, the firm became Nettleton and Kahn until finally, on the death of Nettleton in 1900, Kahn reassociated with George Mason, his original employer, for a brief period before finally opening an office under his own name.

In the course of his early career, Kahn worked with numerous historical styles, the Italian Renaissance being perhaps the most prominent. Nonetheless, the architect's stylistic predilections did not preclude an interest in the development of new materials and methods—an interest that foreshadowed his understanding of industrial and technological enterprise. This tendency was further facilitated by his firm’s development in the early part of the 20th century; having facilitated his brother Julius’s engineering education, the two brothers were able to create a professional association in 1903, with Julius working with Albert as the architect’s chief engineer. Julius Kahn, an expert in the use of reinforced concrete, was also something of an entrepreneur, founding a company (Trussed Concrete Steel Company in Youngstown, Ohio) in order to develop and manufacture what became known as the “Kahn bar” or “Kahn system” of reinforced concrete. This turn of events was to prove essential to the development of Kahn’s own architectural practice, culminating in Albert Kahn Incorporated Architects and Engineers.

Kahn’s commissions during the early years of the 20th century included prominent civic, institutional, and residential buildings in the Detroit metropolitan area, lower Michigan, upstate New York, and Ohio. These works included Temple Beth El; the Belle Isle Conservatory and Casino; the Belle Isle Aquarium; several classroom, auditorium, and library buildings for the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and numerous large private residences in the Grosse Pointe, Bloomfield Hills, and Windsor, Ontario, suburbs of Detroit. In addition, Kahn began to design industrial buildings—the type of structures for which he is best known—as early as 1901. These industrial buildings, most of which were for various automobile manufacturers headquartered in Detroit, were not limited to automobile assembly plants but included office buildings, showrooms, and materials processing plants (mills, stamping plants) as well. During the same period, Kahn was also involved with the design of buildings for the military; many of them affiliated with the development of airpower.

Although usually overlooked given the significance of his industrial buildings, Kahn’s civic, institutional, and corporate architecture, along with the numerous residences, were of very high quality, adhering to architecture's traditional aesthetic and building principles. Scripps Library and Gallery in Detroit (1898, Nettleton and Kahn), the Belle Isle recreational buildings (1903-08), the William L. Clements Library (1922) at the University of Michigan, the Detroit Athletic Club (1915), and the Grosse Pointe residences, among other works, are elegantly proportioned, well-constructed works that bespeak Kahn’s attention to the civic nature of architecture—in the case of the institutional building—and the highly specific aspects of formal and informal private life.

Over the course of his career, there was little stylistic unity between the different categories of building projects. For Kahn, every architectural program type required a different set of criteria; thus, he saw no inherent contradiction in designing a residence in Tudor style, a library building in the manner of the Italian Renaissance, and an office building according to the principles inherent in tall-building architecture. In this sense, Kahn distanced himself from the modernist promotion of universal, internationalist principles. Working in a region outside the “epicenters” of modern American architecture (Chicago and New York) over the course of his career enabled Kahn to continue to develop a mode of architectural production that many would judge to be inconsistent.

Unlike many architects of his day, who often delegated industrial-design projects to junior members of the firm, Kahn did not consider the design of industrial buildings to be beneath him. For Kahn, these projects represented an untapped opportunity for architecture, a view primed by the firm’s embrace of the engineering aspects of building design. Kahn’s early work with the automobile industry (the Packard Motor Car Company buildings [1903-10], the Grabowsky Power Wagon Company Plane [1907], and the Chalmers Motor Car Company [1907]) was noticed by Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company. Ford, known for his persistent search for improvements in the efficiency of production techniques, contacted Kahn for the design of a new production facility in Highland Park, Michigan, just outside Detroit. With Ford, Kahn not only designed an industrial edifice but also facilitated a new program for production. Kahn’s work with Ford established the view that the architect was no longer simply the recipient of an organized set of programmatic needs but an agent in the development of the program itself—a critical member of a team that engaged the functional aspects of industrial processes. In his work with Ford and in later projects for commercial and military assembly plants, airport terminals and hangars, hospitals, office buildings, laboratory buildings, and libraries, Kahn exemplified the notion that architecture is a matter of both form and function and that every building type exerts specific functional needs that can be facilitated through building form, and vice versa, that form is able not only to support but also to enable functional requirements.

Kahn’s work was notable for its embrace of modern technological enterprise, including new materials, structural assemblies, and means of production. Accordingly, the architect was not relegated to being a “form giver” but rather could also participate in the development of systems that underpin modern technological enterprise and, hence, modern life.

ELIZABETH BURNS GAMARD

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.