ABSTRACT
Kahn became one of the central figures in the attempt to re-establish modern architecture by reclaiming its past history. In 1944, while Europe was in the throes of the Second World War, Kahn presented his famous essay 'Monumentality' at the New Architecture and City Planning conference organised by Paul Zucker at Columbia University in New York. With his 1944 essay 'Monumentality', Kahn entered the debate with an entirely personal contribution and attempted a form of synthesis, which many thought impossible. Kahn's sensitivity towards history had its roots in his own European Jewish origins, but this was offset by a completely American sense of freedom that was an essential feature of the New World. In Rome, Kahn discovered the structural and tectonic nature of space: the wall as an embodiment of space, and the importance of the dome or the vault as a unifying element in the composition of a uniform structure.
