First Unitarian Church and School

Louis Kahn – First Unitarian Church and School, Rochester, NY, 1959

The First Unitarian Church and school stands in Winton Road South, 220 in Rochester, New York and was commissioned in 1959, by the Congregation of the First Unitarian Church, to the architect Louis I. Kahn.
Most of Louis I. Kahn's projects have a spiritual character, devoid of program and function. In this work the architect conceives a massive central volume, intended for the faithful and religious services. Around this central structure with a symmetrical plan, Kahn develops the service functions, with an asymmetrical entrance, and an articulated series of accessory rooms with classrooms for students, offices and bathrooms, separated from the central body by a continuous perimeter ambulatory, and concealed by walls erected with concrete blocks. The building is emblematic of the creative process of Louis Kahn, for which it is not the form that follows the function, as the Modern Movement said, but rather it is the function that is gradually outlined while the structure and form is thought.