ABSTRACT
To understand what Kahn's arrival in Italy really meant, we have to look at him through the perceptions of the period and think about what was happening at the time. Vincent Scully's second book on Louis Kahn, published in 1962, was the 'sanctification' of the architect; he is included among the 16 'masters of architecture' in the series published in New York by Braziller between 1960 and 1962. The series featured monographs on Philip Johnson and Eero Saarinen, also in 1962. Between 1962, the year of Scully's aforementioned book on Louis Kahn, and 1966, there had already appeared in Italy other important writings on Kahn and more generally on the new American architecture. This chapter on Philadelphia was devoted entirely to Louis Kahn; Manieri was fully aware that Kahn was, at that moment, the key figure in a complex scenario that the entire book was committed to explaining.
