The library, like the school was a place for which Louis Kahn felt the deepest

reverence. Books were kahn's most treasured possessions, for "the world is pug before
you through the books" and Kahn felt that books were literally priceless. A book us
tremendously important . nobody ever paid for the price of a book, they only paid for
the printing . therefore, Kahn believed that the library should be a sacred place: 'the
book is an offering ... The library tells you of this offering. In 1956, almost ten years
before he was commissioned to design the library at the Phillips Exeter academy in
new Hampshire, Kahn had already begun to question the typical programme of the
library in his competition entry for Washington university: " the space and their
constituent from as a building should originate from broad interpretations of use
rather than the satisfaction of a program for a specific system of operation. Kahn held
that the usual library programme led to two quite distinct and separated spaces, "one
for people, one for book", yet he strongly believed that "books and the reader do not
relate in a static way.
Though not evident in the submitted scheme, it was during the design of washington
university library that kahn first spoke about the pivotal idea of the individual reading
carrel, and its generative potential, stating that it was his "desire to find a space
construction system in which the carrels were inherent in the support which
harboured them. reading within a cloistered space with natural light in nearness to
the building surfaces seemed good.
revealing his historical inspiration, kahn then quoted from a historical description of
the medieval monastic library at durham , england, with cloister colonnade glazed
from floor to ceiling, and carrels equipped with desks set into every window niche,
while, on the other side of the cloister, against the wall of the church and away from
ths sunlight, were placed great wooden cabinets full of books. This source would hace
been reinforced by kahn's memries of the windows seats, overlooking the central
courtyard, built into the upper level of the monatery cloister of bramante's s.maria
della pace in rome, which kahn had visited, and which were so beautifully depicted complete with a monk, shown reading - in one of the plates in Letarouilly's edifices de
rome moderne, from which kahn had traced as a student.
For kahn, the architecture of the library naturally evolved from this inspiring
beginning: " then from the smallest characteristic space harboredd in the construction
itself, the larger and still larger spaces would unfold... wall-bearing masonry
construction with it niches and vaults has the appealing structural order to provide
naturally such spaces. while it would be another ten years before kahn actually
designed a building where, as he said, "the carrel is the niche which could be the
beginning 0of the space order and its structure", the concept was so compelling that
kahn never ceased considering its implications. A year, in 1957, kahn arrived at his
second pivotal insight into the nature of the library. a man with a book goes to the
light. a library begins that way. he will not go fifty feet away to an electric light.

related directly to the concept of reading carrels at the periphery, this empathetic
understanding of the nature of the individual act of readin was complemente by kahn's
third pivotal insight - the collective expression of the library as an institution,
embodied in the great central room which, upon entry, presents us with the books.
Charged by richard day, phillips exeter academy's new principal, with finding an
architect capable of giving the school a significant work of modern architecture (as
opposed to the neo-Georgian style heretofore characteristic of the campus), the library
building committee interviewed a number of the leading architects of the day,
including I. M. Pei Rudoloh, Philip Johnson and Edward Barnes. Yet the committee
was immediately struck by kahn's profound and richly nuanced conception of the
library as a modern institution, and he was awarded the commission in November
1965.