Albert Kahn

Abstract

Though he has been marginalized in most mainstream accounts of modern architecture, Albert Kahn (b. 1869–d. 1942) is increasingly considered one of the most important and consequential US architects of the 20th century. Kahn is known primarily for the technically innovative and rigorously functional factory buildings that his still-extant firm Albert Kahn Associates, Inc. (founded 1903) designed for automotive manufacturers, including the Ford Motor Company, but his firm was also responsible for hundreds of eclectically styled buildings for other purposes in Detroit, Michigan. Research and writing regarding Albert Kahn often requires considerable effort to disambiguation. Most importantly, Albert Kahn the man is far from a synecdoche for the firm he founded, Albert Kahn Associates, Inc., which employed upward of several hundred people at its height and is still in operation under the simplified Kahn moniker today. Some mid-20th century historians and critics substituted the inaccurate and often derogatory moniker “Albert Kahn Inc.” as name for the firm to suggest its alienated and impersonal nature. Albert Kahn’s siblings are also worthy of attention in their own right. Frequently mentioned in the extant literature are brothers Julius (b. 1874–d. 1942) who was a trained engineer, inventor and co-founder of the highly successful Trussed Concrete Steel Company; Moritz (b. 1880–d. 1939), who was also an executive of the Kahn firm pivotal in its operations in the USSR between 1929 and 1932, and occasionally Louis (b. 1885–d. 1945), who was a manager and executive in the Kahn firm. Views of Albert Kahn have served as a barometer for the intellectual climate in architecture culture since the early 20th century, indexing the relative importance of aesthetics, ethics, and technics. Studies of Kahn and his firm have, until recently, primarily focused on their contributions to industrial architecture and the influence of their early factory buildings on architecture culture at large. These studies often describe the give-and-take between assembly lines and the streamlined, pragmatic design of the buildings that encompassed them. An upsurge of recent attention to Kahn’s work has been oriented away from issues of design toward larger histories. Some scholars have addressed the shift toward large, integrated offices within the profession, for which Albert Kahn Associates was a groundbreaking exemplar. Others have addressed the ways Kahn served the growth of global enterprise, revealing that his marginalization from architectural history has effaced the willful complicity of US architects in compounding capitalist power and solidifying its ideology. These topics remain rich veins for future researchers.