Альберт Кан: Америкалық өнеркәсіптік сәулетшінің өмірі мен еңбектері

American architect

Albert Kahn (March 21, 1869 – December 8, 1942) was an American industrial architect who designed industrial plant complexes such as the Ford River Rouge automobile complex. He designed the construction of Detroit skyscrapers and office buildings as well as mansions in the city suburbs. He led an organization of hundreds of architect associates and in 1937, designed 19% of all architect designed industrial factories in the United States. Under a unique contract in 1929, Kahn established a design and training office in Moscow, sending twenty five staff there to train Soviet architects and engineers, and to design hundreds of industrial buildings under their first five year plan. They trained more than 4,000 architects and engineers using Kahn's concepts. In 1943, the Franklin Institute posthumously awarded Kahn the Frank P. Brown Medal.

Kahn was born on March 21, 1869, to a Jewish family in Rhaunen, in the Kingdom of Prussia. He received his early education in the school of Luxembourg. At age twelve in 1881, Kahn immigrated with his family to Detroit, Michigan. His father Joseph was trained as a rabbi; his mother Rosalie had a talent for the visual arts and music. Kahn had four brothers, including Moritz, who became an engineer, and Julius Kahn, an engineer and inventor, who later collaborated with him in his architectural firm. They also had two sisters. Kahn quickly learned English and went to Detroit public schools. In 1883, he got a job at the architectural business of Mason and Rice where he got his initial architectural training. While working there he primarily designed residences and bank buildings. In 1891, at age 22, he won a Rotch Traveling Fellowship to study in Europe, where he toured Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium with Henry Bacon, another young architecture student. Bacon later designed the Lincoln Memorial that is located in Washington, D. C. After leaving Mason & Rice in 1895, Kahn joined in a partnership with Alexander B. Trowbridge and George W. Nettleton known as Nettleton, Kahn & Trowbridge. He married Ernestine Krolik in 1896 and they had four children. Kahn, in 1902, formed a partnership with his brother Julius, a civil engineer. Later that year, Julius developed a novel and scientific method of reinforcing concrete with steel, making reinforced concrete construction practical and economical. After receiving a patent on the "Kahn System" of construction in 1903, Julius left Kahn's firm and established the Trussed Concrete Steel Company, or Truscon, to market the product. Reinforced concrete allowed for much larger open spaces within factory interiors not obtainable with conventional wood construction and at a lower cost than steel frame construction. Concrete had other beneficial characteristics, such as far better protection from fire and greater load bearing capacity. By 1905, hundreds of buildings within the United States were being constructed using the Kahn System, including the first reinforced concrete automobile plant, completed for the Cadillac Motor Car Company at 450 Amsterdam Street in TechTown, Detroit. Julius Kahn collaborated with his brother on the design of many industrial projects throughout the US constructed with reinforced concrete, particularly automobile factories, with the result that Kahn became widely known for his expertise in the construction of concrete industrial structures. Kahn was also responsible for designing many of the buildings and houses built under the direction of the Hiram Walker family in Walkerville, Ontario, including Willistead Manor. Kahn's interest in historically styled buildings is also seen in his houses in Detroit's Indian Village, the Cranbrook House, the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, and The Dearborn Inn, the world's first airport hotel. Kahn's firm designed the Art Deco Fisher Building in Detroit's New Center area, a 28 story designated landmark. In 1929, the building was awarded a silver medal by the Architectural League of New York in the category of the year's most beautiful commercial building. From 1917 to 1929, Kahn's firm also designed the corporate headquarters for all three of the major Detroit daily newspapers and the General Motors building, at the time of its completion in 1922, the second largest office building in the world. His work was part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics.

On May 8, 1929, through an agreement signed with Kahn by Saul G. Bron, President of Amtorg, the Soviet government contracted Albert Kahn Associates to help design the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, the first tractor plant in the USSR. On January 9, 1930, a second contract with Kahn was signed for his firm to become consulting architects for all industrial construction in the Soviet Union. and designed 521 plants and factories under the nation's first five year plan.

Kahn died in Detroit on December 8, 1942. Many of his personal working papers and construction photographs are housed at University of Michigan's Bentley History Library. His personal working library, the Albert Kahn Library Collection, is housed at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian house most of the family's correspondence and other materials. The life and works of Kahn were celebrated in an exhibition of photographs, drawings, and models at the Detroit Institute of Arts from September 15 to November 1, 1970. It commemorated the 75th anniversary of the architectural firm which was founded by Kahn. Many of Detroit's leading industrialists who work in the buildings designed by Kahn were present at the celebration. A staff writer for the Times Herald newspaper in 1970 wrote that Kahn was often called the father of industrial architecture. He was referred to as Architect of the Colossal by Reader's Digest magazine. The science museum Franklin Institute in Philadelphia recognized him as an architectural pioneer and awarded him their gold medal. The American Institute of Architects awarded him two of their gold medals in his lifetime. The staff writer estimated that Kahn was the architect of two billion dollars worth of structures before his death in 1942. The committee on science and arts of the Detroit Institute of Arts noted that none of Kahn's discoveries were ever patented, but instead were placed in the hands of architects and engineers engaged in construction during World Wars I and II. The 184 page catalogue put in book form called The Legacy of Albert Kahn consists of two essays on the works of Kahn, one by W. Hawkins Ferry the architectural writer and Honorary Curator of Architecture at the Detroit Institute of Arts and another written by Walter B. Sanders as a Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. Detroit Free Press writer and historian John Gallagher notes that Kahn produced 1900 buildings, among them being the Fisher Building, the General Motors headquarters, the Ford River Rouge Complex, and many buildings on the campus of the University of Michigan. He points out that what was modern in 1920, like his automobile factories that he built between 1900 and 1920 were obsolete by 1990s standards and were being torn down. Some of his other buildings at that time no longer served the purpose for which they were constructed and were being remodeled for other uses.