Kahn at Penn: Transformative Teacher of Architecture. By James Williamson. New York: Routledge, 2015. xv + 204 pp. $163.00 (cloth); $52.95 (paper).Temples for a Modern God: Religious Architecture in Postwar America. By Jay M. Price. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. xi + 256 pp. $82.00 (cloth).Prayer literally takes place. People pray and listen for God in actual places. The idea of seems to imply that God is more likely to be encountered in certain places than in others, and the Celtic intuition of thin affirms locations where the divine breaks through more easily in earthly experience. Divine mystery, for example, may be more easily sensed in an evocative setting such as Durham Cathedral, although mystery is not limited to the grand and the Romanesque. On the other hand, divine creativity may be better grasped where sacred place and nature are gracefully joined, such as the many fine contemporary chapels with windows of clear glass at Episcopal camp and conference centers. While the biblical God transcends all limitations of place, Episcopalians and other Christians have long known the importance of returning to sacred places in order to experience some aspect of the divine nature.James Williamson s Kahn at Penn: Transformative Teacher of Architecture is a book with a subtle but important connection with Episcopal architecture. Although the author references the Episcopal Church only once,1 I know for a fact that Williamson is an active Episcopalian because I am his parish priest. Williamson is also the architect of two Episcopal churches, including St. George's Episcopal Church (completed in 2007) in Germantown, Tennessee, an inspiring design that resists easy categorization as either traditional or contemporary.The subject of Williamsons book is the life and work of architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974), who taught at the University of Pennsylvania and maintained his own architectural office in Philadelphia. Williamson was one of Kahn's students. Kahn's architectural buildings are numerous, but two religious designs are particularly relevant for Episcopalians. The First Unitarian Church of Rochester was designed by the Episcopalian Richard Upjohn in the nineteenth century, and subsequently was replaced in 1962 by Kahn's building. Kahn's First Unitarian is a fine example of his mystical view of natural light and shadows. The second example of Kahn's sacred architecture, Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem, was never built but Kent Larson's Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterpieces includes several computer-generated images of this synagogue.2 Hurva reveals Kahn's mastery of the balance between the communal and the individual, as well as the balance between transcendence and immanence.The subject of Williamson's book, however, is Kahn's teaching and philosophy of education, not his architecture, although these subjects are inseparable. Kahn's philosophy of education and architecture could be described as mystical. For example, Williamson notes Kahn invented a term-unmeasurable-to describe he believed to be the mystical forms of architecture.3 Williamson summarizes:Kahn taught that the architect must use intuition to discover the eternal, pre-existing Form of a building, an understanding of its existence will, of what the building wants to be, without regard to the site, the program, or the architect himself might want to design. The concept recalls the metaphor in Plato's Republic of the prisoners whose understanding of the unseen world outside their cave is shaped by the shadows projected on its walls.4Kahn's teaching style was eclectic, socratic, and deeply influenced by the Talmudic method.5 Williamson writes, Indeed, some of his observations have biblical overtones, such as his enigmatic statement, 'Order Is.' In its economy, ambiguity and sense of much left unsaid, it is reminiscent of Yahweh's revelation to Moses: 'I am that I am.'6 Williamson overlooks the influence of the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet Rumi, whose parable about architecture is cited in full at the end of Kahns lecture given in 1969 in Zurich, Silence and Light. …