Left to Right: Bust of Franklin D. Roosevelt by Jo Davidson, 1943. Courtesy, William J. vanden Heuvel. Photo, Uri Wegman. View of Roosevelt Memorial model and East River, looking west toward the United Nations and Manhattan. Basswood and canvas on unpainted wood base, 1974. George Pohl, photographer. George Pohl Collection, University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives. Room sections and Garden, stair, and riprap details. From a set of architectural and landscaping drawings produced in 1974–75. Graphite on waxed linen. David Wisdom Architect and Mitchell/Giurgola Associates, Architects, a Joint Venture. Drawn by John Haaf and Michael Rubenstein.

COMING TO LIGHT:
The Louis I. Kahn Memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt for New York City

I had this thought that a memorial should be a room and a garden. That’s all I had. Why did I want a room and a garden? I just chose it to be the point of departure. The garden is somehow a personal nature, a personal kind of control of nature, a gathering of nature. And the room was the beginning of architecture. I had this sense, you see, and the room wasn’t just architecture, but was an extension of self. —Louis I. Kahn

Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name co-sponsored by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute at The Cooper Union from January 10 – February 18, 2005, this catalogue examines the evolution of Louis I. Kahn’s design for the Roosevelt Memorial, his only completed late work that remains unbuilt.

Designed between 1972 and Kahn’s death in March 1974, the memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt was to be constructed at Southpoint Park on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island. Reproduced within the book’s pages are illustrations of Kahn’s model and drawings for the memorial including previously unpublished sketches from a pocket notebook that Kahn carried with him during his travels. These are accompanied by the construction documents for the project, which were completed with the support of the office of Mitchell/Giurgola Architects and David Wisdom Architect after Kahn's death in March 1974.

The catalogue contains several major texts on both the Roosevelt Memorial and its context within the body of Kahn’s work. These include Kahn and the Civic Realm by Robert Geddes, Kahn and the Belated Monument by Michael J. Lewis, and Monument, Memory and Modernism by Anthony Vidler, Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture.

NY: THE IRWIN S. CHANIN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE OF THE COOPER UNION, 2005.
48 PAGES. 12 X 8.
44 ILLUSTRATIONS, 25 IN COLOR.
SOFTCOVER, $20.00.