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What the trained eye gathers in one of Kahn's buildings is no historical inventory; it is more like a dialogue between assumed equals past and present based on first principles. Kahn's use of brickwork, often stretched in warm massive curves, goes back to medieval Siena. The immense cylinders, arcs and courts at Dacca were inspired by the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. At times, Kahn's forms possess a superb and primal practicality. The Ahmedabad dormitories, for instance, with their stairs set in a thick vertical silo flanked on either side by dark openings, are both a celebration of the sun and a defense against it. Structure is to architectural history as history is to instinct. The unique power of Kahn's work is to excite one's participation on all levels; he is a poet of fact, not of style. "Creative inspiration," as Kahn sums it up, "comes directly from the necessity of wanting to know how you were made. I think all of knowledge has only to deal with how we were made. You discover your own structure by making other structures."
∙Robert Hughes