| | Louis I. Kahn's Trenton Jewish Community Center. Susan G. Solomon.
Adapted from the author's dissertation
on Kahn's work for the Jewish community in the 1950s and
1960s, this book begins by placing the architect in the
Jewish world before he received the commission for the Trenton
Jewish Community Center (TJCC) in 1955. What would seem
to be an important consideration gives way to other important
matters: the Center's decision to move to the suburbs from
a downtown site, the question of how to design for a previously
untested building type, and Kahn's attempts at extending
the Modern Movement with his personal imprint. The longest
chapter, dealing with the plans for the TJCC, gives the
most insight into the difficulties of the commission (encompassing
a bathhouse, day care and community building, only the first
two were eventually built) and the achievement of Kahn in
the design of the bathhouse, specifically as the impetus
for his now legendary distinction of served and servant
spaces. Or to sum up in the architects own words, "If
the world discovered me after I designed the Richards [Medical
Research Building], I discovered myself after designing
that little concrete block bathhouse in Trenton."
. . or . . 
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